Last September the Washington Post released an adaptation of a letter that Ronald J. Daniels, president of John Hopkins University, had previously sent to students at the university. In that letter, he defended the value of humanities at a time in which its role in higher education is being questioned. A few days later, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about how the University of Notre Dame had rethought its core curriculum after realizing it had become a form of checklist for students rather than the foundational education it was meant to be.

Both articles laid out two cases of a widespread tendency within the university system—not only in the United States—toward a pragmatic view of higher education, even though this is antithetical to the meaning of education itself.

Teaching students to learn is often substituted for a mere transferring of those skills needed to succeed in the world beyond academia—economic success, that is. When this happens, higher education degrees become an obstacle course in which candidates must fulfill a number of requirements before they become marketable. Courses without a direct and obvious purpose in the job market are considered secondary and, consequently, pushed aside. And since the value of the humanities often becomes apparent only over the long term, it is common to see students giving up humanities courses in favor of more technically oriented subjects.

Can universities prepare students for the real world while remaining the temples of knowledge they are meant to be? I believe they can, as long as they remain loyal to their essence.

You can read the aforementioned articles here and here.