Dr. Jonathan Sanford recently penned an article for First Things, lamenting the commodification of higher education. He lays the death of liberal arts education at the feet of the market, which he claims has done so to create more vocational education rather than embrace a holistic liberal arts view. As a Catholic, I certainly agree with the President of the University of Dallas of the importance of the liberal arts. Where I disagree is the root cause, on the name of the villain that slew the liberal arts.
I don’t believe that the classical liberal’s “free market” is to blame, rather the blame is our managerial regime. James Burnham’s managerial revolution is far more at fault for the death of the liberal arts than some supposed utilitarian free market ideology run rampant. The cause is utilitarian, but not in any way a Misesian or libertarian—as are often the villains to conservatives—would recognize.
The managerial revolution has become a very popular villain to point to, but it is not enough to simply accuse it of villainy. You must identify a causal connection between its occurrence and the phenomena you allege it causes. I intend to do just that. But to identify the change, you must identify the natural state of our colleges and universities.
The first colleges and universities were funded by donors and churches to pursue higher ideas and train the next generation of clergy. They were seminaries, more often than not. They were enabled to do so because their primary source of income was donors and churches, who cared for the liberal arts, for an education that made moral men and academics.
The land-grant universities, however, were created to serve as technical and agricultural schools. The Morrill Act of 1862 explicitly sought to establish schools that would advance research and study in agriculture, science, and engineering that the Republican representatives felt were lacking in the already-existing, classical liberal arts oriented universities. These institutions were not to explicitly reject the liberal arts but subordinate them to research in more “material” areas.
Then came the research universities, starting with John Hopkins, which gave birth to progressive economists like Richard Ely. These economists, like most of academia, became a new generation of intellectuals dedicated to progressive social engineering. Sociology, economics, psychology, all became subordinate to notions of engineering away all human problems. The liberal arts died at research universities, who exported graduate students that would staff all other universities. This group of intellectual managers were the first stage of what James Burnham described as the “Managerial Revolution.” Had the state not stepped in to create the land grant schools, and had progressives not imitated them in research universities, higher education may very well have continued to focus on the liberal arts.
The downward spiral continued as the managerial state marched across the American economy during the second World War. During the war, the Office of Scientific Research and Development provided research funds that employed academics in the production of weapons technology. Rather than focus upon the connection between philosophy and the various fields of science and mathematics, academics were paid to focus on the production of hard managerial technologies. The OSRD would become the National Science Foundation, the cornerstone of research funding in higher education. Today, the federal government provides more than half of research grants for higher educational research. This is only down from 71 percent of research funds in 1970.
Alumni and donors are no longer the chief customers of academics. These academics may be paid well, but they are paid better if they earn research grants. Those research grants are easier earned if their focus is in areas of interest to the state: the aggregation of statistics, weapons research, “strategic defense research.” Professors at the top schools are far more focused on their next journal publication, hoping they might win awards for their managerial research. It is simple incentives that bring them to care little for the liberal arts.
Because students are no longer the customers—the federal government being the true consumer when it subsidizes student loans—the faculty jockey for jobs programs in the form of general education. Faculty fight to secure the placement of their classes in general education curriculum instead in order to secure their ability to have steady work. No longer does the general education curriculum care about a comprehensive understanding of how all disciplines connect to one another (the “uni-” in “university”).
The managerial state—with this intent on military expansion, social control, and isolation of individuals from conflicting power groups—has no place for the liberal arts. It has become entrenched in higher education as the primary funder, primary regulator, and primary employer when its students are done. The largest employer of monetary economists are central banks, making it costly to insult your future employer in the tradition of a Ludwig von Mises or F.A. Hayek.
It stands to reason that other fields face similar pressures. Why take up research that may put your name on a blacklist for federal research funds? Why teach students about the liberal arts when you can teach purely technical classes and focus on conducting your own research that brings the real prestige in higher education?
In his 1951 God & Man at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr. counseled alumni to seize control back over Yale University and to displace the collectivists and atheists—the post-war managerial class in higher education. It was those dedicated alumni donors that allowed the liberal arts to flourish. Their apathy towards the care of their institutions allowed the federal government to call the shots in higher education. It changed the composition of faculty and administrators, never drawing the ire of alumni as long as they paid lip service “to God, to Country, and to Yale.”
The managerial bureaucrats and faculty in higher education are the product of the managerial regime taking control of higher education. The death of the liberal arts is not a concern of theirs, precisely because it stands opposed to the social engineering leviathan state. It is only through an understanding of the role of community, of church, and of the world around us that one becomes inoculated against Leviathan and its lies.
In some sense, education has always been a commodity. The difference is whose commodity it will be. Will it be the bureaucrats, or will it be those in love with the liberal arts and good society?
