The deflating higher-education bubble is causing budgetary anguish at many colleges and universities; the inevitable cutting back has begun.
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Scott Yenor urges leaders to cut with a purpose, namely excising those parts of higher education that are not just wasteful, but poisonous.
What does he have in mind? Here’s a slice:
As I have written, national accreditors for departments of social work and national associations like the National Council for Black Studies, the National Women’s Studies Association, and the American Sociological Association are tip-offs to what is going on in particular disciplines. As others have catalogued in the case of sociology, when national meeting topics, leading disciplinary journals, and book-prize winners all reflect a leftist monoculture, perhaps the discipline’s place in the university should no longer be secure. Religion departments also have specific, leftist political commitments sown into the nature of their disciplines, as have history, English, anthropology, and queer-studies departments.
Yenor wants to see boards of review poring over the dubious parts of the curriculum to identify the malignant tumors. What an excellent idea. To free up the funds for that, I’d suggest closing down the DEI office.
Yenor continues:
Politicized disciplines could be designated as such and earn demerits in the program evaluation. Certainly, economic factors must have some weight in program evaluation, but cuts must also serve a sustainable vision of higher education in America. At least a third of all program-evaluation points should be awarded on the basis of contributions to the overall academic enterprise at the university.
Yes — let’s restore the academic mission by getting rid of ideological junk.