Oh, the humanities....

Biochemist Gregory Petsko wants your help. He wants you and me to help save the humanities from the growing "spectre [that] is haunting higher education: the spectre of the market", where significant sectors of university education are being reduced, or cut entirely. In this one page commentary in Nature (2010, vol. 468, p. 1003) he observes "the humanities are a victim of two pernicious trends that have crept into the management of universities in the past decade or two, based on the idea that market forces should control what happens in education...". First, it is the running of universities as a business. "Nothing could so undermine the mission of a university as the misguided principle that all parts of it must make a profit" he says. The second "damaging trend is the growing mantra of student choice." He pounds hard by emphasising that "students have neither the wisdom nor the experience to know that they need to know." Petsko, to who I heartily agree with, understands that depth and breadth of education is the most rewarding, and students nor business minded bureaucrats appreciate.
"There is only one market that has any place in higher education: the marketplace of ideas". For if not, universities, the lobby for all the doors to unimaginable breadth of knowledge, are simply closed, making room for the myopic technical schools.