The St Norbert College campus in De Pere is up in arms after the school announced plans to eliminate as many as 13 majors and to lay off associated faculty and staff. Like many other colleges not only in Wisconsin, SNC is seeing declining enrollment and less demand for services. And the majors to be eliminated are those seeing fewer students studying in them every year.
While I applaud the school for “right sizing” its offerings (something that public education systems at all levels refuse to do), the list of programs up for elimination do alarm me–as they are career paths to jobs that we will most certainly still need in the future. It appears the list of jobs that “Americans no longer want to do”–or at least the next generations of Americans–is growing a bit too large.
Among the majors to be eliminated due to reduced demand is Chemistry. While most of us haven’t used beakers or Bunsen burners since high school, key industries in our area still need chemists. Those include paper mills, water and sewage treatment plants, plastic makers, and those that make dairy products.
Earth Science and Geology are also on the cutting list. Perhaps we have learned all we need to know about rocks. Maybe Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory was correct when he called Geology the “Kardashians of the science world”. But industries like oil production and mining still need geologist. So do environmental protection and regulatory agencies.
Somehow, not enough kids are interested in Computer Science anymore to warrant offering degrees in the field at St Norbert College. Is the plan to just let artificial intelligence handle all tech issues? Will every company just have to make do with “unplug it and plug it back in” for tech support? Will video gamers not interested in getting off the couch in their parents’ basement teach themselves to code and find new ways to entertain themselves?
Also on the chopping block is International Studies. I know that the current presidential administration believes we need absolutely nothing from any other country, but our companies will still need to do business outside of our borders. And eventually, we will return to actual diplomacy and trade discussions–and it would be nice to have people at the table that understand how business and culture operates somewhere other than the US.
The list of possible cuts includes Physics and Engineering Physics. Like Geology, maybe we have learned everything we can hope to learn about the forces that control everything in nature, but so long as we continue to build machines and structures, we will need to have people designing and building them that understand how they are going to work.
Possibly facing elimination is Mathematics. Yes, anything relating to basic math can be calculated on your cellphone now. And anything more complex can be computed by high-powered computers and AI. But, we will still need someone to teach those unable to use such tools the very basics of math at a young age.
It’s especially difficult to see History on the list of potential cuts. None of the fields that I have listed so far have seen so many changes in the way it is taught. Today’s academics are making every effort to include the widest range of perspectives and representatives as they can–no matter how minor their contributions to our shared stories may be. The foundational ideas of our societies and governments are being denigrated and portrayed as aggressive acts of oppression, racism, misogyny, and the other dozens of derogatory terms formed by viewing actions of people not through the lens of their own time–but rather by projected norms of today. No wonder no one wants to study that field anymore.
Now there are a number of majors that fall under the “costs a lot for a degree, and have few ways to make a lot of money in them after that” designation. Art and Art Education along with Theatre Studies are the kind of niche fields of study that appeal to a small number of kids–most of whom, to be brutally honest, aren’t that good at it. Or at least not good enough to convince enough people to pay for their services.
French may be cut as well. This might be useful for someone looking to work for a French company, and we obviously need teachers at the lower levels of education to work with kids looking to learn the language–that is if we aren’t just going to have kids listen to Babbel audio lessons on-line while a non-French speaking teacher sits at the front of the class scrolling away on their phone. Of course, if Donald Trump makes good on his threat to take over Canada, we’ll need some Francophiles to understand what all the people in Quebec are complaining about constantly.
And finally, there is the likely elimination of Theology and Religious Studies. When you think about it, this is the heart and soul of a private Catholic college. It is why Saint Norbert College exists. But like many similar institutions, it is a history and ideology that is fading away. Students, faculty, and administration seldom, if ever, refer to the Norbertine mission to provide an education grounded in Catholic teachings. When have you ever heard Lawrence administrators mention the school’s Methodist and Episcopalian history? Marquette University has gone away from its Jesuit roots–hiring its first lay president in 2014–and doing away with on-campus housing for members of the sect. While it undermines the history of the institutions, it certainly matches the declining interest in younger generations for organized religion.
Now, it’s not just a lack of interest in the career fields staffed by graduates with degrees in these majors. We are also seeing the long-term effects of the failures of primary education systems playing out in college classrooms. Classes in Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering are hard. There are complex concepts that need to be deciphered and understood–and the 60% of students that fail to be proficient in reading at the early grades usually aren’t sufficiently “caught up” by the time they arrive in college to handle the work. You can find a multitude of articles on-line from academics admitting defeat in trying to get their college students today to read an entire book and understand the plot much less nuanced ideas.
And advanced concepts in Mathematics aren’t easily solved by the 60% of kids that were never proficient in the field learning that “10 is your friend” and by building “math mountains”. Pre-pandemic, more than a third of UW System students had to take a remedial math course (which does not provide credits for graduation) just to be eligible to take credit bearing math courses. And you can bet that number has only increased in the days after “remote learning”.
Before you make a Trumpian argument that too many kids are majoring in “stupid stuff like ‘LGBTQ+ Studies’ or ‘Black Culture'”, be aware that I do not find those listed as majors at Saint Norbert College. You can save those arguments for Ivy League schools and those in the University of California System.
Not all is lost on campus, though. There will still be plenty of opportunities for kids at St Norbert to earn degrees in Marketing, Business Management, and Communications, so they can join the sizeable pool of people with those degrees NOT working in Marketing, Business Management, and Communications.
