Stanley Kurtz's modest proposal to transform higher education in America

Yesterday, in a post arguing that higher education is failing America’s students and the nation as a whole, I suggested that the solution, if there is one, lies with state legislatures. Specifically:

[State legislatures] need to establish a permanent structure within colleges and universities that bypasses the existing bureaucracy and professoriate. Such a structure, if it can be established legislatively, will bring about the necessary reform without continuous legislative supervision.

In this regard, I noted that Stanley Kurtz has developed model legislation to establish such a structure. The bold proposal that Stanley and two colleagues have put forth can be found here. Stanley discussed it here. Peter Berkowitz adds his thoughts here.

When Stanley told me about the proposal, I joked that “it’s so crazy it just might work.” Actually, the plan isn’t crazy and, if adopted, it probably would work. The problem is getting legislatures to enact the legislation.

Stanley’s plan consists of the following three related measures:

First:

Establish a robust set of course requirements that all students must take to graduate, putting American history, civics, and the story of Western civilization at the center of that program.

Second:

Establish an independent School of General Education within the university and grant it sole control over most of the new required courses. The [legislation] then authorizes the new and independent dean of the School of General Education to hire large numbers of faculty members expert in, and committed to, traditional general education.

Third:

Instruct the university board of trustees to reduce existing faculty to an extent that equals the number of new hires in the School of General Education, authorizing trustees to wholly, or partially, discontinue existing departments and programs, and to dismiss even tenured faculty if necessary.

Hey, I said this is a bold plan.

Stanley’s discussion of the plan addresses a number of concerns/objections. One is whether state legislatures have the power to mandate the subject, and even to a degree, the content of graduation requirements at public universities. Stanley’s answer is that they do.

For decades, Texas has had a statutory American history graduation requirement at its public universities. South Carolina’s 2021 Reinforcing College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage (REACH) Act establishes readings including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, five instructor-selected essays from The Federalist Papers, the Emancipation Proclamation, and select documents foundational to the African-American freedom struggle as graduation requirements at South Carolina’s public universities.

In opposition to such laws, professors sometimes claim, on grounds of academic expertise, that only university faculty can establish graduation requirements. Yet the choice between a graduation requirement in critical theory or in Western civilization is primarily a matter of values, not expertise.

Here the public rightly has a voice. Indeed, general education requirements at public universities are regularly submitted to boards of trustees for final approval. Those trustees are appointed by governors and legislatures and in some states popularly elected. So both the subject and the essential content of public university graduation requirements is properly within the authority of the public’s representatives. I made the case for this in an early 2023 piece defending legislatively mandated university graduation requirements in Florida.

Another question is whether reducing the number of professors by means that include dismissing those with tenure and closing entire departments is consistent with academic freedom. Stanley answers that one this way:

Department closures under [the circumstances created by this legislation] are consistent with the American Association of University Professors’ policy on “program discontinuance,” which permits the elimination of entire programs, and the dismissal of even tenured faculty, when that is occasioned by a fundamental change in the university’s “educational mission.”

There could be no more profound shift of educational mission than a return to traditional general education. In accordance with this, the [legislation] precedes its mandate for program discontinuance with the following formal declaration: “The adoption of a specific set of graduation requirements organized around the history, great works, and civic culture of the West as a whole, and the United States in particular, constitutes a long-term, fundamental shift in the educational mission and strategy” of the state’s public universities. [It] then assigns the university’s trustees responsibility for deciding which programs and departments to reduce or eliminate.

How might this process operate in practice?

Let’s say that a university’s programs in ethnic studies or gender studies have relatively few majors. Perhaps most students in these programs are minoring, or simply taking a single course. In that case, the new general education requirements will probably cause enrollment in these programs to drop precipitously. The board may also determine that, given the university’s new focus on traditional general education, including the mandatory course on non-Western cultures, ethnic studies and gender studies programs are either redundant or low-priority. The trustees may thus decide to discontinue these programs.

Traditional departments, such as English, may also be affected by the GEA. The new School of General Education will surely hire faculty to teach the newly required literature and humanities courses. Existing English faculty whom the dean finds particularly suited to teach the new required classes may receive joint appointments in the School of General Education. Others may not. Trustees may therefore decide to pare down the existing English faculty in light of the change in the university’s overall mission.

Rather than restricting reduction of existing faculty to the shuttering of entire departments, the Act allows for “substantial curtailment” of a program or department.

I can hear heads exploding over this, and that might be the problem with Stanley’s proposal. It’s so transformative that even the most conservative state legislatures might balk.

Then again, a few of them might adopt the proposal. Events on college campuses since October 7 might provide the extra impetus to make it happen.

I certainly don’t expect widespread passage of this legislation, which might be just as well. Given the current state of the academic profession, I doubt there are enough qualified teachers to staff independent schools of general education at state universities throughout much of America.

This would likely change if schools in a few states start the ball rolling. Graduates of these programs could staff schools of general studies in other states as momentum builds for this kind of reform.

It’s clear, in any case, that Stanley and his colleagues aim to move the football down the field via the long pass, rather than through “dink and dunk.” Given the current state of things, this seems like the only possible way to reach pay dirt.