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Read this sad story.
A billionaire with too much money and no vision buys the University of Tulsa.
His plan gutted the liberal arts, raised default teaching loads across the university from five courses per year to eight, eliminated all academic departments, created new divisions to house surviving programs (including one called “Humanities and Social Justice”), and established a “Professional Super College” consisting of the formerly independent colleges of law, health sciences, and business.
The author Jacob Howland is a professor of philosophy at UT.
Who needs philosophy these days?
Billionaires do the darnedest things.
Dismal. This is what happens when business and psychology majors rule the world. I know several people like this. They’ve never read a poem in their life, and they think their utilitarian values are the only valid values. More reason to bolster liberal arts in the K-12 level –a very uphill fight.
The template for this reinventionof higher education comes from the EAB consulting company mentioned in the article. You have hear about “empty seats” in the charter school industry. Here there are in a managing consultancy for postsecondary education. EAB has the template much as ALEC has a template for others to follow.
https://www.eab.com/technology/academic-performance-solutions/resources/infographics/instructional-capacity
Every time billionaires insert themselves and their money into policy, they leave a biased imprint with strings attached on the institution. It would have been better to tax them, and use the money to serve the common good rather than conforming to some billionaire’s plan or vision. Public institutions need to remain public, not play things for the 1%.
Phonylanthropists hate liberal arts as much as they hate liberals.
Incidentally, the author of the piece (Jacob Howland) was a good friend of mine growing up.
SDP, The Phonylanthropists hate liberal arts as much as they hate liberals, because they don’t know the difference between the two. They think liberal arts is a major that trains/brainwashes liberals.
Liberals:
“Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary evil.” Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual’s life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism
“A Liberal Arts Degree is an academic program that provides a comprehensive overview of humanities-related classes. This general degree provides a strong background for the student to work in a variety of fields. Keep reading to learn why a degree in liberal arts is one of the best academic programs. …
Keep in mind that a degree in liberal arts allows a student to explore a variety of classes. Therefore, a liberal arts student can take business or science related courses, but also humanities courses that challenge their worldview and help them grow as a person. This is becoming more important as job expectations are adapting to demographic changes and technological advancements in society.”
https://www.bestvalueschools.com/faq/what-is-a-liberal-arts-degree/
Don’t forget that the Phonylanthropists are as ignorant and arrogant as Donald Trump.
And just in case the Phonylanthropists lump the humanities in there with liberal and liberal arts degrees:
“What are the humanities?
The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world. These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella. Knowledge of these records of human experience gives us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before us, as well as to our contemporaries.”
http://shc.stanford.edu/what-are-the-humanities
“What follows is a sordid little tale of crony capitalism under the guise of public philanthropy.” From the Howland article.
This seems to be a tale repeated many times in this blog. One of two things seems true. There is really no such thing as philanthropy or it has been re-defined as a process whereby people with money turn it into power. Was it always that way? When my distant cousin gave land for Turrentine Academy, was he trying to help his community or was he trying to promulgate the warped values of his day?
I think the two ideas have always been mixed up with each other. I would like to have time to do a serious history of charitable giving in America with th goal of answering just this question: what have those who give large sums of money to symphonies, art galleries, libraries, and schools intend?
Sorry. That one will have to,wait for,another life. I still have to,learn to play Done Gone on the fiddle.
I think the only way one can be certain that philanthropy is genuine is if it is done anonymously and with no strings attached.
That does not mean that if it is not anonymous, it’s not genuine, but far too much of what is called philanthropy is simply narcissism.