The State University at Albany has decided to eliminate majors in Classics, French, Italian, Russian, and Theatre, and that is sad evidence of the decline of higher education! 🙁
While these areas of knowledge will continue to be available as majors in hundreds of universities, it is a troubling development that a major state university in New York State has decided to abandon these fields of knowledge!
French was always considered the “diplomatic” language of choice, and Russian was regarded as an essential language due to the competition between the old Soviet Union and the United States.
Classics and Theatre are part of a liberal arts education as well, and Italian is a romance language that is significant to many studying that nation’s impact on history and culture.
It is understandable that cost cutting measures are essential in higher education, and that many fields of knowledge in the liberal arts seem areas difficult to create employment in the future.
But the thought is: Does this mean that at some point in the future, it will be felt that history, art, literature, philosophy and other areas of the liberal arts thought to be “impractical” will be seen as “unnecessary” to offer as majors for those who seek to specialize?
If whole areas of knowledge, including those chosen by SUNY Albany to eliminate as majors, are seen as “impractical”, then we are going down the road of ignorance and narrow mindedness, so this action by SUNY Albany is one to regret and mourn! 🙁
It goes to the fundamental question of what constitutes a college education. Too many programs today teach only materials required for a specific degree. For example, the four year bachelors nursing program is only in courses designed for their program. There is no interest in English, Math, Sociology, foreign languages, etc. At one time, a college degree stood for a well-rounded individual conversant in many topics and subjects. Today we are turning out doctors that may know a little about medicine but have no concept of history, politics, literature, and most alarmingly, business or how to run a medical office. The best degree in college always has been and always will be a liberal arts degree.
I agree 100% with Fred, for a degree you are required to take courses in english and math but it just scratches the surface and most students pass the class and forget all they learned once they leave the class. One subject that more people are ignorant in is American history and Government. you could go to a university campus get a random sample of students to name the first five presidents or the process of making a bill into a law and most of them would not be able to answer it. Education has been put in the back of the bus and that will hurt our economy. This should be the top issue of most voters in this country, not only higher education but grade school as well.