Too many professors, not enough students and not enough money. All these factors combined don’t exactly make for a successful place of learning, a fact the administrative staff of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point were well aware of when they cut multiple liberal arts majors from their curriculum and let go of numerous professors in order to keep the institution afloat this past March. Due to lack of state financial support and spiking increase in enrollment in urban universities, the school has decided to relocate its resources, thus cutting less popular majors, such as history, philosophy and political science and strengthening or creating ones with higher demand, including environmental engineering and a new captive wildlife major.
The motive behind these monumental choices stems from the school’s desire to attract more students to the institution and prepare them for careers that are essential and popular in the Stevens Point area, where a large percentage of the students reside and work upon graduating. While this idea makes sense, it begins to mold the university into the shape of a career or technical school as opposed to what it broadcasts itself as: a public university. As students and faculty alike largely reacted with no great love for this decision, the ethical responsibilities of the administrative board must be discussed.
Chancellor Bernie Patterson’s ultimate priority—to keep the university up and running— while perfectly coherent and admirable, undermines the comprehensive philosophy of a university if executed at the expense of broader liberal arts programs. As liberal arts exist to educate pupils to almost limitless cultures and practices outside their own, limiting students to only study what is within their vicinity is hypocritical of a university. While many students have voiced their support for this notion, the viability of the institution itself, of course, cannot be ignored. The fact of the matter remains, though, that by removing liberal arts education, the university harms its students’ ability to find a career in all walks of life, not just locally.
Other universities have been pushed to terminate some of their liberal arts majors as well, and employees and pupils have, once again, not received the news well. While these educational institutions are right to believe that cost cuts like those will alleviate financial pressure, experts hypothesize that trimming costs in such a brazen manner may be more detrimental than beneficial. They maintain that, since colleges are designed to provide a well-rounded education, depriving students of the option to partake in liberal arts studies is to hinder their instruction overall, making it difficult for students to expand beyond their degree.
For now, though, ways to lower costs include laying off staff and reducing extraneous spending such as solar energy, but this only goes so far. The issue at hand is undoubtedly not a simple one to tackle, so administrators have to ask themselves if it’s worth it to keep the institution going if what’s at its very core is being risked. Sometimes, the captain goes down with the ship, and other times, the crew transfers to a lifeboat, original ship left behind.
