Plenty of liberals—and not just liberal professors—think there is a conservative conspiracy to use online education and MOOCs, to destroy genuinely higher education in this country. I see no organized conspiracy, and much of the liberal paranoia amounts to whining about the results of legitimate political defeats. Nonetheless, there is something to the thought that hostility to higher education as it now exists in our country is growing, and opposition to political liberals has gotten mixed up with hostility to “liberal education.”
However, I would call that hostility less conservative than libertarian. Plenty of conservatives are all for the beautiful, seemingly useless, and deeply truthful tradition of liberal education. And so we conservatives often finding ourselves allying with liberals against the libertarians who want to deconstruct the parts of that tradition that do not prepare us for the rigors of the global marketplace of the 21st century. We conservatives find ourselves allying with anyone who doesn’t want to reduce higher education to technology.
Make Way for Trendy Theory
Conservatives (such as me) agree with many libertarians in not thinking much of the way the humanities are often (although not always) taught in our country. Respect for texts is replaced by trendy theory; the open-mindedness of philosophy is replaced by strident ideology; disciplined reflection is replaced by angry activis; the guidance of tradition is replaced by the relentless liberation from oppression. And there’s more: the search for God and the good are replaced by dogmatic relativism; scientific inquiry (and an appreciation of its limits in grasping the whole truth about who we are) is replaced by scientism (or a proper appreciation of scientific truth is replaced by blather about Western logocentrism); and human dignity is replaced by the class-based struggle for self-esteem and power of identity politics. To the extent that liberal education becomes captured by a conventionally liberal or “radical” political agenda it becomes vulnerable, with good reason, to criticism by those who have a different, but not necessarily less reasonable or “liberal” in the precise sense, political agenda.
Having said all that, it remains the case that when we conservatives read about libertarian think-tanks that are concerned with the affordability and productivity of higher education, we fear that those two concerns are their only educational goals. Republican governors in southern states, such as Texas, are all focused on delivering students degrees at the lowest possible cost. And they want to apportion education resources according to the single standard of salaries offered to graduates, aiming to starve not only “gender studies” but philosophy majors and professors. For some of our most libertarian governors, the disruptive thought is that our colleges should become discount job-training centers. That means, of course, most of the requisite skills and competencies can be more efficiently acquired online. And the “conversational” and bookish romance of liberal education does little more than support unproductive illusions that generate an inefficient use of resources. Those self-indulgent illusions, our libertarians believe, are a main cause of the outrageously unsustainable higher-education “bubble.”
What Tocqueville Saw
From the perspective of us conservatives, the exclusively middle-class perspective that generates too single-minded a concern with affordability and productivity is hostile to genuinely higher education as such. We conservatives, of course, are especially moved by Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America. Tocqueville observed that America is a pretty much exclusively middle-class country, and that “middling” orientation affects every feature of American lives. One result, he claims, is that he couldn’t find any higher education in America.
The good news about being middle-class, of course, is that everyone is free. Nobody is compelled to work for someone else. The bad news is that everyone has to work for himself; nobody is given the aristocratic leisure that comes through relying on the work of others. The most unfriendly way of putting this is that the Americans are free like aristocrats to work like slaves. Another way of putting it is that everyone is a being with interests. Nobody is above and nobody is below pursuing his or her self-interest rightly understood.
That means that everyone is interested in education to secure the skills and competencies required to flourish in the competitive world of work. So, Tocqueville marveled, literacy is more or less universal in America. And we conservatives don’t deny for a moment the justice of this practical orientation; everyone really does have the personal responsibility to work effectively to secure himself and his (or her) family. So we agree with the libertarians that we should be concerned when our educational system fails to help people acquire the skills they need to find a productive place in the competitive marketplace that is a free economy.
But, for Tocqueville, that middle-class vocational education shouldn’t be confused with higher education. Higher education is for those who are more than beings with interests. It is for those who are restlessly impelled to know the truth about who we are and what we’re supposed to do as beings with souls. So for us conservatives the big downside of democracy is, as Tocqueville says, metaphysics and theology–and art, literature, and theoretical physics–lose ground to the pervasive techno-orientation of democratic life. Our problem with democratic education and democratic language is that understand us as less than they really are.
What Doesn’t Hold Up Today
When I teach Tocqueville, I ask students what parts of his descriptions of American life just don’t hold up that well today. They point, of course, to his praise of the exemplary chastity of the American woman, as well as the close American connection between love and the almost unbreakable bond of marriage. They also say that he was very wrong on the absence of higher education in America. Look at how many of our young people are in college today! But it not so hard for me to point out that what we call college Tocqueville would call training in the competencies required to flourish in the middle-class world of work. I can even add that what there is of liberal or higher education is in America is withering away. Look at what’s happened to our “general education” programs! The number of students choosing “traditional” majors in the arts and sciences continues to drop steadily. Also dropping steadily is the number of residential colleges proudly displaying the “liberal arts brand.” And some of those who are keeping the “brand” (or the brochure and website) are dispensing with the liberal arts substance.
So it’s actually easy to convince students that most of what goes on in our colleges and universities isn’t higher education. If it’s about textbooks, PowerPoint, online this or that, MOOCs, multiple-choice texts, and assessable competencies, it isn’t higher education. And we think that our libertarians, in their laudable efforts to secure the skills and competencies against political correctness and ideological self-indulgence, are ready to scuttle properly higher education as luxury we just can’t afford anymore. Even worse, they sometimes suggest that philosophy, literature, theology and so forth are just preferences or hobbies that students shouldn’t be scammed into paying big bucks for.
Too Vocational or Not Vocational Enough?
So we conservatives think of the countercultural agenda of higher education as an indispensable correction to the reductionist excesses that accompany thinking of ourselves as too exclusively a middle-class people. Countercultural doesn’t mean, of course, some variant of Sixties’ self-indulgence. It means, among other things, orthodox theology and Socratic philosophy. It has to do with kinds of disciplines that you can’t pick up “on the street” in a free and democratic country. A worthwhile human life, it’s true, is rarely complete without the satisfactions of meaningful and productive work. But it’s also true, as Allan Bloom reminded us, that each is meant to be more than a clever, competent specialist. To be human, to live “in the truth” about who we are and what we’re supposed to do, is most of all to live well, to live responsibly in love and with death.
So one obvious difference between conservative and libertarian descriptions of our colleges is that we conservatives say they’ve become too vocational or too exclusively middle class. But the libertarians say that they’re not vocational enough. There’s truth to both criticisms. Too much of what goes on is neither vocational education nor higher education. We could dwell here over gender studies and various other “studies” majors. And I’ve already mentioned the various trendy and self-indulgent innovations throughout the social sciences and humanities. I could even add how worthless the business major has become—not enough math and careful writing and too much pseudo-psychology and “working in teams”—as a way of preparing for being an entrepreneur or a corporate leader. Don’t get me started on “service learning” and “civic engagement” as ways of giving college credit for being charitable or being an indignant activist.
Having said all that, we conservatives still say, on balance, that the middle-class, “vocational” impetus is stronger than ever and stronger than it need be. And so we defend genuinely liberal or higher education as having a place—even if not the dominant place—in our colleges.
Books mentioned in this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.
Prof Lawler’s essay provokes wistful thoughts. In my case, I would dearly love for my son to study the development of great ideas and to study great literature along with the math and science he is planning to major in in college beginning next year. There are few better ways to enrich a young man’s soul as he enters manhood.
Thinking of my teen wrestling with great ideas and stunning literature in college, I am sure and certain that the experience would have a wonderful, molding effect on his character. He would simply become a different man. Most likely a better man. But there is an unwholesomeness that has taken over academia. I don’t quite like to think of the shape into which this warped study would mold his character.
Thus, to become a better man now means to stay away from organized academia. Or to select from academia only the socially neutral fields of study such as math, scence and technology. Very sad.
Well said. Like the libertarians that Lawler describes, plenty of conservatives actually welcome the decline of humanities programs in (non-conservative) schools. Why? Not because the humanities are unimportant, but precisely because they are vitally important. The university system as we know it has not only failed the humanities, it has actively betrayed the humanities and works steadily to destroy the humanities.
Yet, the essential study that you hope for your son, and that Great Books programs in conservative schools offer, will continue, because there is still a spark of humanity out here in the world. The study of the humanities that truly benefits civilization takes place privately, in non-academic settings, in a commercial context (like The Great Courses/fka The Teaching Company), in book clubs, in yahoo discussion groups, on Amazon…and on websites like The Imaginative Conservative.
Many conservatives believe that the complete destruction of non-conservative departments of humanities will not in fact result in a net loss but a net gain for the true study of the humanities. I don’t know if that is right, personally….but I certainly don’t dismiss that idea, even though it is radical.
As for your son, if you continue to encourage him in this regard and pave the way through example, discussion, etc….he will find his way, perhaps slowly, but inexorably, to the great, civilization, personally edifying conversation that is Western Civilization soon enough…perhaps not “soon”…but “soon enough”…..
A wonderful subject, and an important one to ponder. Thoughts:
Conservatives are not hostile to higher education, but rather hostile to the concept of higher education as understood by the students you mention claiming that “everyone goes to college” is equivalent to everyone having a higher education. That liberals tend to miss this point is accounted for by the fact that they seem not to recognize any higher crisis in higher education, focused as they are on practical crises like college costs. If liberals were more liberal in the sense of liberal arts, they might recognize that when people like Rick Santorum criticize going to college, he is not being a hypocrite, but rather attempting to protect the distinction between true higher, vocational learning and the practical arts. They ought to be kept seperate.
Libertarians are right that you don’t need higher education to succeed in the market. Look at European youths who never have a job until graduating with a Masters and go straight on welfare because they have zero ability to navigate the market or they go work in menial labor and resent the world. Not everyone is made for higher education, and we actually hurt people by keeping them in school and out of the job market when they have little promise or inclination to be poets and philosophers.
That said, colleges and universities dond’t help by marketing themselves as gateways to great jobs and money. Can you imagine the Jesuits doing this? “99% of seminary graduates find employment immediately… take home pay is three times the national average etc etc” It is equally absurd, in my view, when a liberal arts institution attempts to go this route.
I distinctly remember deciding to attend Hilllsdale because while all the other colleges advertised how close they were to big cities with clubs and parties, Hillsdale sent out material recomending students not bring their cars to campus because they would have too much studying to do to think about driving to Detroit or elsewhere for parties. I went to college because I had always wanted to be a gentleman, not to get a job. In fact, my single biggest paycheck came in the summer of my freshan year when I landed a great job with an Israeli company trying to go into business in Poland. Back then the market was booming and big things were possible. That one job paid for my sophmore year. Since then, things have stabilized and I actually had to work for a living instead of getting lucky. The point is, practical business skills really are learned outside college. College can help, of course, but it doesn’t have to and some of the worst government policies are signed off by PhDs with zero real world experience.
So, is there any practical benefit to liberal arts education? You bet: I’m fairly sure my wife, who is the epitomy of a lady, would not have married me, nor would I have such good relations with family and friends, nor would I make a good Godfather for my nephew, had I not learned to care for and cultivate my soul.
Finally – I will not risk disagreeing with Tocqueville, but for all the criticism leveled at American practical education – it did succeed where all the world failed: in making citizens. No small achievement that.
That is a great essay….
A fine piece! Have any of you ever met a cultured libertarian? There are some trained in the technical professions (ie, medicine but that is glorified training) and more who appear to be autodidacts. virtually all are materialists as shallow as Soviets of old. No wonder they write on their squirrely websites that higher education isn’t ‘cost-effective.’ next, how many conservatives do you know who are not politically charged contrarians? these are the clots who laugh when someone says ‘nuke the whales.’ if the Left drank orange juice, most of them would chug strychnine just to be opposite. is it any wonder they would end higher education altogether if it shut down some Leftist cow-colleges?
This is beautifully argued and I wish I could agree with it. Unfortunately, I come from a very poor background and am eminently familiar with the need for vocational-type college education; philosophy is great, but it doesn’t fill your kids’ bellies. The day companies start seeking out brilliant liberal arts graduates, I’ll encourage my kids in that direction; until then, I’ll tell them to choose vocational education, but keep reading the great books and expanding their minds outside of a university. Besides, many of our greatest thinkers were self-educated or belonged to intellectual salons and groups; university higher education may be overrated anyway.