Editorial
Low-income students deserve the arts and humanities
February 20, 2024
The Student Voice advises the state of Wisconsin to keep its politics out of UW students’ education. Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is withholding $32 million from the UW System because he doesn’t like diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, efforts. The state of Wisconsin has a surplus of around $7 billion; $32 million is less than half a percent of this, and, as such, has a small impact on the surplus. In fact, many of the issues that the UW System is facing could be addressed if Wisconsin decided to invest more in higher education.
In response to the attack on DEI, UW System President Jay Rothman has developed a ‘solution’ to deal with the UW System’s financial issues. Rothman has hired Deloitte Consulting Inc. to gauge where the UW universities can make budget cuts.
Liam Beran, the Campus News Editor for the Daily Cardinal, obtained emails sent by President Rothman to the UW System chancellors that contained 16 suggestions on where to make budget cuts. Unlucky number 13 is raising concerns throughout the UWRF campus community and beyond. Suggestion 13 reads, “Consider shifting away from liberal arts programs to programs that are more career specific, particularly if the institution serves a large number of low-income students.” We want to make it clear: just because something has the word “liberal” in front of it does not mean that it’s about politics.
There are many things wrong with this line of thinking; the most glaringly obvious of which is the idea that low-income students don’t deserve liberal arts. Every economic class should have the opportunity to experience the arts and humanities, and the implication that these fields of study should be unattainable for those with lower income is inherently classist.
Cutting liberal arts would devalue the four-year degrees of low-income students because they would be able to get the same education at a trade school for less. This is not to say that those who go to trade school don’t get a good education, but, instead, to emphasize that trade schools and four-year colleges are serving different populations, each with their own expectations and objectives.
With this idea in mind, why would anybody attend a more expensive four-year college over a trade school when they would be receiving the same education? The appeal of a four-year institution is the idea that students are being prepared for a wide variety of jobs since many degrees, especially liberal arts degrees, are suitable for a variety of jobs, not just one.
A four-year degree is also intended to help students become more well-informed citizens and to enhance skills like communication, teamwork, adaptability, and critical thinking. Daniel Kontowski, author of “The Paradox of ‘Practical Liberal Arts:’ Lessons from the Wagner College Case for Liberal (Arts) Education in Eastern Europe” said, “Liberal [arts] education can be considered an innovation: promoting small scale, intensive and interdisciplinary education introducing students to all major fields of knowledge and developing their academic skills.”
If the UW System universities can only produce chemists, engineers, accountants, and other STEM positions, these job markets will likely become oversaturated and more competitive in Wisconsin, leaving new graduates less able to get jobs and with fewer skills to pivot into other fields. For UWRF specifically, the College of Arts and Sciences houses the most students, and the Marketing and Communications programs house most of the students who arrived at the university without a decided major.
Mialisa Moline, the Chair of the English, TESOL, and Modern Languages departments at UWRF, asked at a faculty meeting, “Are both the Wisconsin Idea and access to a liberal arts education destined for the refuse bin of Wisconsin’s public university system? Or will the Universities of Wisconsin once again shine as a beacon of equal access to higher education to the benefit of us all?” Without arts and humanities, four-year colleges, including UW universities and UWRF itself, will lose their appeal and uniqueness, which, in turn, creates lower enrollment numbers and an even bigger budget deficit.