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! 🙁