Loving the liberal arts: Some students want more than a credential
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 23
- 2 min read
Not every college student is an AI-dependent, screen-addicted, semi-literate careerist, writes Jennifer Frey, a philosophy professor. Many are searching for a liberal arts education that will help them reflect about "the ultimate questions of human life."
Two years ago, she created the University of Tulsa's Honors College, which "focused on studying the classic texts of the Western tradition," she writes in a New York Times op-ed. Students chose to "read thousands of pages of difficult material every semester, decipher historical texts across disciplines and genres and debate ideas vigorously and civilly in small, Socratic seminars."
Then the president and provost left, and the new administration decided to "go in a different direction." Frey quit.
At Tulsa, we invited our students to enter “the great conversation” with some of the most influential thinkers of our inherited intellectual tradition. For their first two years they encountered a set curriculum of texts from Homer to Hannah Arendt. These texts were carefully chosen by an interdisciplinary faculty because they transcend their time and place in two senses: They influenced a broader tradition, and they had the potential to help our students reflect in a sustained way on what it means to be a good human being and citizen.
The cuts are supposed to save money, she writes. That's the same reason the university cut liberal arts programs in 2019, an effort that "largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model."
"A new administration has turned a once-vibrant academic institution with a $1.1 billion endowment and a national reputation in core liberal arts subjects into a glorified trade school with a social-justice agenda,” wrote Professor Jacob Howland at the time.
After a few years, the university swung back to liberal arts, and now it's swinging away. "Even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power," writes Frey.
At the K-12 level, "classical" schools -- often religious private schools and secular charters -- are expanding, attracting parents who want a traditional, values-focused education for their children.
In 2013, while visiting Edinburgh University after our daughter had been admitted, we attended a tour group session where another American mother asked, "When do they complete their general education requirements?" It was embarrassing. In the British system, students are expected -- required -- to have completed their "general education" preparation to qualify for admissions. Edinburgh did not ask for high school grades from Americans, only standard test scores (including AP scores in the student's chosen field/faculty) and a short essay. Way too many American colleges -- including "liberal arts" colleges -- are not requiring rigor and preparation from those they admit, nor are their upholding standards of achievement among their students. Instead, they waste money on remedial and unnecessary…
It's hard to love something and then find out that you can't afford it, and that the "premium" of a college education -- liberal arts or otherwise -- that was generated by people having graduated for years ago has eroded to almost nothing. Tulsa tuition is $50,960 and the average annual salary of a liberal arts graduate is about $50,000. Throw in $13,000 in annual room and board and you needn't be a math major to figure that this model is unsustainable for a student. Worse, the small number of students entering college today with a truly adequate high school education, i.e., four years of math, English, history, science and language, suggests that they lack the preparation to do traditional…
My degree was in math, but I'll put my "liberal arts education" up against anybody's. And the courses were required.
As was pointed out in the book "Paying for the Party," Most college students do not want to take four or more semester of a language that is not English or not spoken by their parents. And most liberal arts degree have a language requirement.