Pennsylvania may get rid of a number of its Philosophy (and other useless) departments because they graduate fewer than 30 majors over five years.
Unless they justify their existence.
That's an ironically philosophical task. Scheherazadian (a word which justifies its existence as legitimate by having 1,410 occurrences on Google, despite the fact that there no Merriam Webster definition). I suggest department heads accept their fates and submit copies of Plato's Apology as their self-justifications: we're ready to drink the hemlock, philosophy is just a form of dying anyway! Or tell the powers that be that philosophy is merely a given. Or that foundationalism is bunk.
Crooked Timber takes the self-justificatory bait--which just seems to me to be very sad and very desperate:
Like most Philosophy departments we have an informal logic/critical reasoning course, which teaches students how to identify various kinds of fallacious reasoning, and targets instruction to contexts which the students are likely to find themselves in in the course of their lives. We teach aesthetics, environmental ethics, and philosophy of religion, all of which courses attract students with other majors who want to think at a higher level of abstraction than their regular courses allow about what they are doing in their major.
Sheherazade told beautiful stories, and Socrates said "fuck you." Today it's: "I really do think you'll be less inclined to stick it to me once I teach you about ad hominems."
Letier’s been tracking this:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/philosophy-departments-under-attack.html
As well as similar movements at institutions in the US, Canada and the UK. If it were me I would tell the regents they are conflating ‘educating’ students with ‘graduating’ them. What do the enrollments in the philosophy classes look like?
If the school exists to educate students and students are taking philosophy classes, then the department is contributing. If not, well… The graduating majors criteria seems not so arbitrarily designed to eliminate the kind of departments that make a school a real college of higher education instead of a technical training institute.
That said, if that’s the way they want to go, why not? Who’s going to get a degree in Philosophy at East Stroudsburg U. anyway?
Here’s a good post on the crisis in the UK: http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/437005501/britain-the-disgrace-of-the-universities
Seth & Wes,
Self justification for the humanities is a difficult but not impossible exercise. The humanities disciplines provide students with less tangible but certainly not less important graduate outcomes than other disciplines focused on vocational and technical skills such as economics and medicine. Placing an arbitrary quantitative value on a philosophy school’s graduate outputs is not very useful except for the university bean counters, who rarely recognize where comparisons between faculty/school/discipline outputs do not match like against like. e.g. a critically thinking citizen v an economic technocrat.
Here’s a post on the situation of funding for philosophy and humanities projects in Australia. Is a wealthy and progressive nation committing federal dollars to philosophical research ‘wasteful’ or showing sign of civic maturity? http://theconversation.com/a-farewell-to-arts-on-philosophy-arc-funding-and-waste-19064
Wes, thanks for the post on situation in the UK. The Warburg Institute Library conflict is now unfortunately with the courts. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/warburg-institute-library-saved-from-nazis-awaits-its-fate/2014023.article
Angela
Sorry, forgot one further point… philosophical studies are a great companion to other disciplines, vocational, technical and humanities. It would be interesting to see how different philosophy schools approach attracting students from other disciplines into taking a few classes. I admit to being a bit of a generalist having undertaken studies in both sciences and humanities areas. Astronomy and Australian history classes last semester were fantastic, more philosophy this term!
Angela, we’re in agreement. While I do believe that poorly run organizations that prey on their students deserve their decline into obscurity I don’t question the value of philosophical or humanities studies. In fact, I champion it.