No More Classical Studies at Michigan State
MSU is just one of many schools cutting back on programs of study these days.
Matthew Miller of the Lansing State Journal reported.
Final classics major at MSU gets diploma
Andrew Crocker wasn’t in East Lansing on Friday. He didn’t put on cap and gown along with Michigan State University’s 6,951 other graduates. He was in Dublin, Ohio, where family matters brought him some months ago.
His graduation merits notice because it marks an ending. Crocker was the last classical studies major at MSU.
“It’s sad to be the last person,” he said, earlier this week by phone, “especially because I loved it so much.”
Classics was one of a spate of programs placed on the chopping block in the fall of 2009. The university was both responding to declines in state support and taking the opportunity to reassess its priorities.
As Lou Anna Simon, the university’s president, told graduating seniors during the convocation ceremony on Friday, “During your time as undergrads, Michigan State University has boldly recast its land grant mission to meet new challenges and opportunities and to innovate our future.”
Comments
That is truly sad. Not only do we lose the works of the great philosophers, but we also lose any history that can help us minimize mistakes made by our predecessors. In other words, we can’t learn from their mistakes. Thus, we will be bound to repeat the same errors.
Spartan, ’66.
Classical studies is one of the fields in which it is difficult to make a living. Note the president mentioned “land grant”. It may be obsolete today–or not–but the place used to be Michigan Agricultural College. IOW, a place to train people to produce produce, among other things. Maybe that role ought to be considered in viewing the U’s emphases.
In addition, classical studies is one of the fields most susceptible to attack with a library card.
Lastly, you never know what kind of crap the profs are peddling these days and the idea that we have a rigorous, unbiased, true-to-the-source field of study in classical studies is a matter of faith.
Higher ed as a trade school always bothered me, but then, that was before you needed a trade to pay for the higher ed.