by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
City Journal<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe offer unlimited opportunities to help students achieve their goals,\u201ddeclares<\/a>\u00a0the California State University system on its homepage. \u201cWe prepare graduates who go on to make a difference in the workforce. We engage in research and creative activities leading to scientific, technical, artistic and social advances. And we play a vital role in the growth and development of California\u2019s communities and economy.\u201d With 23 campuses, 412,000 students, and a $7 billion budget, the CSU system is the nation\u2019s largest, so the implications of its educational approach are important to understand. As this utilitarian language suggests, the system dedicates itself to everything except what public higher education was once supposed to accomplish: providing for the masses the liberal education that traditionally was a preserve of the privileged.<\/p>\n The university\u2019s abandonment of its traditional mission has made it harder for Cal State students to reap liberal education\u2019s greatest benefit: a \u201cproperly trained mind,\u201d as Cardinal Newman identified it, one characterized by \u201cgood sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candor, self-command, and steadiness of view.\u201d Liberal education also cultivated the \u201cforce, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect.\u201d These qualities, Newman felt, enabled those who possessed them to enter \u201cwith comparative ease into any subject of thought\u201d and take up \u201cwith aptitude any science or profession.\u201d And in Matthew Arnold\u2019s words, liberal education offered its beneficiaries \u201ca stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.\u201d Those fortunate enough to obtain this sort of training were likely to be less susceptible to received wisdom, and hence more intellectually autonomous and capable of political freedom.<\/p>\n By contrast, today\u2019s CSU disseminates the very \u201cstock notions and habits\u201d that liberal education once challenged. Its focus is on a relentless economic utilitarianism: making a \u201cdifference in the workforce,\u201d playing a \u201cvital role in the growth and development of California\u2019s communities and economy,\u201d and engaging in \u201cresearch and creative activities leading to scientific, technical, artistic and social advances.\u201d Even when the creative arts get a brief nod, the university views them through the lens of \u201cadvances,\u201d as though the arts, like technology, must always make progress and improve. Where\u00a0once<\/a>\u00a0the university was a brief haven from the pressures of economic competition, it now puts itself in service to those imperatives. Job training is what we do now \u2014 only we do it less efficiently, and more expensively, than vocational schools like\u00a0National University<\/a>,\u00a0DeVry<\/a>, and the\u00a0University of Phoenix<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another force that has remade CSU is the therapeutic sensibility, which has transformed the system into a social-welfare agency and an instrument of \u201csocial justice\u201d \u2014 the notion that lurks behind the talk of \u201cmaking a difference\u201d and aiding the \u201cdevelopment of California\u2019s communities.\u201d In practice, that means university programs like \u201cservice learning\u201d \u2014 a form of forced volunteerism imposed on students regardless of whether they\u2019re \u201cconcerned with social issues,\u201d as the service-learning program on my campus, Fresno State, puts it. Given the faculty\u2019s leftward slant, one can imagine which social issues are deemed worthy of benefiting from unpaid workers. Or consider the federally funded College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), which thrives at CSU and across the country. CAMP describes itself as \u201ca supportive service program that provides recruitment, academic, personal, career, cultural, leadership and retention services.\u201d Only potential university students whose parents have worked in agriculture for at least 75 days over two years are eligible. Why are these kids more worthy of solicitude than, say, children of factory workers? Because farm workers are mostly Mexican, of course. Programs like CAMP ensure that the university will increase its population of Hispanic students, thus providing statistical proof that the system is serving \u201csocial justice\u201d by welcoming the historically excluded. This obsession with ethnic and racial diversity perverts the traditional idea of a liberal education. Aggressively pursuing a superficial diversity of skin tones or surnames means lowering admission and evaluation standards in order to achieve the desired ethnic and racial mix. Hence the CAMP program offers its clients \u201cacademic\u201d and \u201cretention\u201d services, which shepherd the underprepared through their courses to graduation.<\/p>\n Needless to say, this diversity quest isn\u2019t the only factor driving the admission of students unqualified for university-level work. Colleges and universities have skillfully promoted the seductive notion that everybody should go to college \u2014 indeed, that all have a right to go to college. For decades, the number of students taking remedial courses has been rising; in the CSU system, it is now more than\u00a0half<\/em>\u00a0the entire student body. These courses were once prerequisites for attending a university.<\/p>\n Shortsighted utilitarianism has always been a threat to liberal education. Starting in the 1920s, many universities, following the lead of the University of Chicago, created the General Education core curriculum to offset the narrow specialization that increasingly characterized higher education. The GE requirements, which included courses in art, history, and philosophy, would give students a simulacrum of a broader liberal education and complement their more utilitarian degrees. But the plan failed miserably. Academic departments, particularly those with few students, see the GE courses as cash cows and try to get as many of their courses as possible into the GE curriculum. These courses tend to be narrowly focused within their disciplines. At CSU, for example, students can satisfy their GE requirement in Arts and Humanities by taking Introduction to Hmong or American Sign Language. Another GE area \u2014 Social, Political, and Economic Institutions and Behavior \u2014 includes courses like Africana Cultures and Images and Introduction to Asian Americans. Any unified, coherent experience of the humanities winds up lost in the disjointed variety of the material.<\/p>\n The courses themselves are frequently ideologically biased. Traditional courses teaching the Western tradition still exist, but they\u2019re now just one among many choices. For example, students at my university can fulfill one of their Arts and Humanities course requirements by taking a survey of ancient and medieval art. In such a course, there\u2019s at least a chance they will be exposed to the great classics of Western art. But another option for the Arts and Humanities requirement, Chicano Artistic Expression, is necessarily an ideological course \u2014 since \u201cChicano\u201d designates a certain political viewpoint based on identity. In fact, identity politics has an area requirement all to itself, \u201cMulticultural\/International,\u201d with such course options as Cultural Diversity and Oppression and Women of Color in the United States. Most egregiously, the GE Critical Thinking options, which are supposed to include courses in basic writing, speaking, math, and thinking skills, also include Critical Thinking: Gender Issues and Critical Thinking in Chicano and Latin American Studies. I doubt that much truly critical thinking about the questionable assumptions of identity politics goes on in those courses.<\/p>\n The disappearance of liberal education helps explain why today, despite their Latin mottos and medieval graduation gowns, most state universities look less like traditional colleges and more like other state-funded bureaucracies, run not by scholars but by managers and functionaries. No longer do they provide students with a grounding in the \u201cbest that has been said and thought,\u201d as Arnold put it. What they do provide is a poor substitute: vocational training and unexamined left-wing orthodoxy.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal \u201cWe offer unlimited opportunities to help students achieve their goals,\u201ddeclares\u00a0the California State University system on its homepage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[79,22,16],"tags":[217,1014,221,84,73,128,1054,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Or","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":527,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-wasted-educational-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":0},"title":"A Wasted Educational Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Pope Center\u00a0Commentaries As former White House Chief of Staff and now Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel famously said, \u201cYou never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste.\u201d The economic Armageddon facing the country\u2019s largest state university system, the 23-campus California State University, undoubtedly qualifies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-a-creature-of-the-corrupt-university\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":1},"title":"Obama a Creature of the Corrupt University","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The November presidential election was the favorite topic at the Freedom Center\u2019s West Coast Retreat last weekend. Amidst the prognostications and arguments about which Republican would or should get the nomination, or how pessimistic or optimistic conservatives should be about defeating the President, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1445,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/despicable-israel-libels-on-display-in-california-universities\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":2},"title":"Despicable Israel Libels on Display in California Universities","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The moral and intellectual corruption of American universities has recently manifested itself in the California State University system, the largest in the country. A group of faculty and administrators has sent a letter to Chancellor Charles Reed asking that he not approve the reinstatement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2043,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-other-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":3},"title":"The Other California","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York after spending the summer bumming around Italy and Greece, the customs agent looked at my passport and said with a Bronx sneer, \u201cBruce Thornton, huh? Is that one of them Hollywood names?\u201d Hearing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3326,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-abandons-history-for-melodrama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":4},"title":"California Abandons History for Melodrama","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Just when you think California can\u2019t get any wackier, the state legislature steps up and proves you wrong. Despite a looming fiscal catastrophe that should be concentrating the minds of politicians, the Assembly is set to vote onSB 48, a bill already\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8482,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-postcolonial-rot-spreads-beyond-middle-east-studies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3127,"position":5},"title":"The Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine In theory, Middle East Studies programs are a good idea. 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