Earlier in the semester, Cornell’s new Bowers school of Computing and Information Science announced that it had reached 2,000 major pathways. These new ways to spend four years range “from artificial intelligence, data science and robotics to digital agriculture, security and cryptocurrency.” Cornell offers 80 distinct majors with more than 4,000 undergraduate courses.
And yet, in all of it, Cornell lacks substance.
Also earlier in the semester, a viral New Yorker article included statements from Harvard’s undergraduate dean detailing the trouble in paradise further east. Students in Cambridge now have difficulty identifying the core components of sentences. While this affliction has yet to reach Cornell, we are not doing too much better.
The liberal arts are on life support. The quest to STEM-ify all higher education (especially but not exclusively) at Cornell is apparent in every action the administration takes. From the demolition of Hoy Field—a surface which Presidents have played baseball upon—for another ugly Upson clone to the expansion of STEM in Arts & Sciences distribution requirements after 2020, there’s a malevolent force at work in the depths of Day Hall. But first, perhaps we need some context.
“Genuine education is not a commodity, it is the awakening of a human being”
Hunter Rawlings, former Cornell University president
The phrase “liberal education” is thrown around with reckless abandon in the present day, usually in the pejorative sense. “What are you planning to do with that?” is the tired response many of us liberal arts majors face every Thanksgiving break. Our culture seems intent on moving beyond liberal education in favor of technical education.
This is a mistake. It is very easy for those of us pursuing degrees in English, Linguistics, Government et cetera to respond to the criticisms with canned talking points. “It develops critical thinking skills.” “Everyone goes to college now.” “I’m getting a useful graduate degree after.”
This is a mistake too. Liberal education, as properly understood, is not merely reading many books for the sake of deepening one’s selection of quotes to throw about in discussion. No, liberal education is the process of making people free. Necessary in this process is the cultivation of virtue and importance of leisure. Yet at Cornell, we have forgotten these foundational values.
American universities, especially Cornell, are a pure distillation of our nation’s protestant founding. The always-on-the-move nature of Cornellians is a point so frequently remarked upon that it has become blasé; however, an important point lies here. We must always be working on something because our colleagues are always working on something. Idleness and leisure are looked down upon at Cornell. In the arms race of who can get the least sleep, those without four prestigious internships lined up and service on at least two executive boards are arguably the healthiest, but lacking the most in social capital in Ithaca.
Cornell is uniquely cutthroat in this way. What should be a demesne of relaxation away from the rigor of school has become something far more insidious. The incoming freshman is forced to have three coffee chats, a first round interview, a second round interview, a social round, and who knows what else to access the most basic of student organizations.
Those willing to subject themselves to the bureaucratic obscenity of student organization life at Cornell are met with no real social life to speak of. Unless weekly g-bodies count as a social outlet, in which case we have likely found the origin of Ithaca’s depression problem.
“The Death of the English Major”?
Unlike Harvard, Cornell does not produce illiteracy in the conventional sense. Rather, Cornellians graduate with perhaps a more insidious form of ignorance. It is possible—likely, even—to graduate from Cornell without reading a word of the greatest books written in human history. Unlike many other top colleges, our alma mater has no core curriculum.
The colleges celebrate this omission, hailing “the theme of exploration” over the theme of actual knowledge. Breadth over depth ad infinitum.
In her quest to teach anything to anyone, our alma mater has forgotten to teach the most important things to everyone. While the inability to distinguish between nouns and verbs is not yet our affliction, what was once so standard among the college educated as to be banal is now exotic. Forget understanding Greek or Latin– how many Cornell undergraduates have read a word of La Divina Commedia, the most influential poem in Western history? How many Cornell undergraduates know the first thing about philosophy? Instead, the powers that be think it is very important to have everyone understand what a null hypothesis is.
I can hear the critics shouting the tired and obvious rejoinder: “I shouldn’t be forced to read dusty old books!” No. In a democracy such as ours, the system presumes a knowledge of one’s cultural inheritance. Why should we not move fast and break things, as Mark Zuckerberg has famously suggested?
Because we read, we think, and we consider. We take time to understand why things were the way they were. Perhaps traditions that have preserved for hundreds—if not thousands—of years are worth considering before being unceremoniously tossed aside. At any rate, some cultural enlightenment will do more for your soul than introductory statistics.
“Why is reading books written by dead people important for your soul,” I hear the cultural vandals cry. It is not the case that simply reading old books will make you a better person, more suited to personal freedom and self government. Indeed, if all one does is stare at the words on the pages without engagement, he has wasted a great deal of time. Study of the great works should make the reader ask—and hopefully answer—the most fundamental and difficult questions of life. If not now, when will today’s students have time to slow down and simply think about things.
No guidance
Beyond the flaws of Cornell’s industrialization of “jack of all trades / master of none,” is the lack of guidance the university provides. Even to the student interested in learning in depth about foundational subjects, Cornell’s encyclopedic course catalog is impossible to navigate.
Cornell often hides courses in strange departments. Many philosophy classes are inexplicably found in the German Studies department, for example. The casual browser of Cornell’s class roster will be overwhelmed with more options than one can evaluate, yet will miss the most basic and important options of all.
Academic advising helps, to be sure, but even full time administrators cannot possibly be expected to have information on an ever-changing roster of this size. Further, they have other duties to which they must attend. The incoming Cornellian’s best opportunity to know which classes exist (let alone those worth taking) is making friends with older students who have already been through the process.
The end of history
Francis Fukuyama ‘74’s famous (or perhaps infamous) 1992 article on The End of History? concludes with a rather somber note:
The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.
Francis Fukuyama ’74, The End of History
Here at Cornell, I fear we are rapidly approaching the end of history. Cornell’s wilful neglect of the College of Arts & Sciences, our alma mater’s largest and oldest college, renders clear the attitude of the administration. Now is not the era of linguistics or anthropology, English or government. As McGraw Hall slowly collapses on itself, the university spends tens of millions constructing new glass abominations for the hordes of new CS students she accepts each year.
Now is the era of STEM. Now is the end of history. Cornell seeks to create people who can solve those “endless … technical problems” and “sophisticated consumer demands.” Those seeking liberal education are only an afterthought.
It only gets worse
Any hope of Cornell providing personal, spiritual, or theoretical growth are but a pipe dream. How about physical development? Cornell has plenty of roadblocks in that department, too.
As has been frequently lamented by students, and unlike any other Ivy League school, Cornell charges for access to its fitness facilities. Cornell lies in the midst of a crippling depression crisis. Students lament just about everything– the endless work, the long hours, the cutthroat culture. Every study on the topic shows a positive correlation between exercise and improved mental health, and Cornell has constructed obstacles even there.
While gym memberships might not be a high barrier to entry, any disincentive is powerful at Cornell. So many forces encourage—if not compel—us to pour ourselves into our work every waking second. Why make time for another commitment? And thus, Cornellians become ever-more workaholic, ever-more depressed, and ever-more disconnected from the mission of the university.
Where are we now?
Pollack, Kotlikoff, Lombardi and the rest of the deanlets did not sit in a dark room in Day Hall’s basement, plotting about how Cornell can best produce a generation of culturally-illiterate neurotics. Every choice the university makes is in response to external demands on education. There is tremendous pressure on universities to focus on pre professional development and high-demand career paths. If the humanities must be sacrificed to produce more CS majors, so be it, or so the logic goes.
To remain competitive nationally, Cornell needs fancy new dorms, big renovation projects, and expensive capital investments. For this, they need wealthy alumni donors– disproportionately originating from engineering and business. The decision to let McGraw Hall rot was not made out of malice for liberal education, it was simply a response to market forces.
What kind of people are Cornellians? The answer is a frightening one. We no longer graduate confident, well-educated and read, virtuous people. We instead care far more about their starting salaries and job descriptions. Wanting to make a living is a fine, noble, and necessary goal, but turning money into an idol for which four important years are sacrificed is a tragedy. Marketability does matter, but at what cost?
The loss of something beautiful
Hoy Field stood proudly at the center of campus for 101 years. The administration made many attempts on its life over the years, but the community always stood firm. This time, we laid down and allowed the vandals in Day Hall to run roughshod over our history– for what? A new CIS building. Hoy Field is, in many ways, a metaphor for the liberal arts. Ignored, allowed to slowly crumble on top of itself, and eventually cleared for the shiny new object of STEM.
Once the craze subsides and CS is no longer the be-all-end-all, maybe Cornellians of the future will stop to wonder if it was all worth it. The sacrifice of our history will surely be scorned by our descendants, but maybe our way of life will be, too. All the late nights spent agonizing over club applications, the never-ending series of all-nighters to finish school work, the sacrifice of physical and mental health for a mere number– hopefully one in the 3.5-3.9 range.
All of these problems—which are hardly unique to Cornell—stem from one malady: materialism. We sacrifice everything for the promise of wealth in the future. We so rarely slow down and breathe, absorbing the breathtaking surrounds of this place that we will all soon leave. There’s always another meeting, another coffee chat, another study session. Something to add to the résumé in preparation for a big paycheck after Cornell ends.
When it’s all over and we walk away with the most expensive sheet of paper money can buy, maybe we will ask whether the years we spent here were worthwhile. The value of a Cornell education shouldn’t be determined by the size of one’s first paycheck after college. If all we’re doing here is preparing for what comes next without a touch of introspection, these are four years wasted.
This article originally appeared in the Cornell Review Spring 2023 print edition.
