Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP

~by David Aiken~

On April 26, 2019 University College Roosevelt took managerial steps to sever all recognizable ties with the educational tradition of classical Liberal Arts. While the title of ‘Liberal Arts’ will be formally retained in institutional documentation, the undergraduate Liberal Arts vision at UCR has now been completely excised. UCR is now on its way, quite officially, to becoming a venue for Engineering, Science and Technology.

This change was already clearly announced in the Strategic Plan of 2017-2021.

The key element of this strategical shift has been to remove classical Liberal Arts classes as requirements, a shift that guarantees the attrition of student population for those classes.

Among the managerial steps taken yesterday were the following:

1) The Academic Core as a department was dissolved, and the remaining supported Core tracks are to be dispersed into either the departments of Arts & Humanities or the Social Sciences.

2) AC Foreign Language teaching faculty were either given notice of termination yesterday, or given the possibility of being retained on reduced and temporary contracts to allow the institution to get students presently in the language pipeline to the end of their course.

3) The UCR philosophy program is Humanities based, which is to say broadly conceived, and this is consistent with a Liberal Arts institutional model. The UCR philosophy instructor was informed yesterday, publicly, that he will not be offered the possibility to teach after retirement, but that he will be replaced by the current dean, a Social Sciences political philosopher.

4) Several other faculty teaching positions from Social Sciences, those which also have senior faculty with upcoming retirements, will not be staffed or replaced at their retirement.

The motivation for this shift away from classical liberal arts is, as always, money.

Liberal Arts is a challenging sale in the Netherlands. The crossroads-moment for UCR has now come and gone. The institution could have committed here to a Liberal Arts philosophy fully, thereby creating a distinctive market niche in the Netherlands. This would have meant creating or re-creating, and placing emphasis on, classical Liberal Arts programs such as Theatre and Media, Film, Foreign Languages and Literatures, and other Humanities-type subjects.

Instead of this, UCR has chosen for an Engineering, Science and Technology orientation, thereby aligning itself with the more normative social science philosophy of other Dutch institutions of higher learning.

Let it be clearly said, though, that this shift is not truly motivated by money. Money is a red herring in this game. Rather, this shift has been brought about because of a philosophical incompatibility: the tradition of the Liberal Arts is an uneasy fit in a market and society dedicated to the sciences and social sciences. A Liberal Arts institution ceases to be Liberal Arts when the administrative Powers-That-Be, not zealously persuaded by the goodness of the classical Liberal Arts model, fail to aggressively ‘move their product’; but instead follow the money that countries and provinces throw at Engineering and Technology programs, and the more useful “sciences.”

So, UCR is dismissing teaching faculty in Spanish, French, German and Dutch, and perhaps in Academic Writing; and it is reducing senior faculty in Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. Anywhere from 8-10 teachings colleagues are being shown the door.

The red herring dangled by UCR administration to justify this shift away from the Liberal Arts at UCR, is so the institution can increase its rainy-day savings. There is no urgency or financial crisis at UCR. This shift is simply about having a little extra pocket money—just in case. This was also clearly said in the Strategic Plan of 2017-2021:

“Over the past years, UCR as an organization has evolved towards a position of sound finances. (…) Our income consists of 60% state funding, 20% tuition fees and 20% from other revenues. Although the solvency rate has developed positively during the last eight years, the small-scale nature of UCR makes us vulnerable to financial setbacks. (…) A solvency rate (equity/total assets)*100%) of 30% is needed to secure a financially sound position (in 2017 the solvency rate is 11%).”