Sophia Nicholls

When I first considered applying to Bowdoin as a high school junior, then bright-eyed and with hopes of becoming a judge or even entering national politics, I did so acknowledging some judgment from my peers and family members. If I was interested in public service or a legal career, they believed I’d be better off attaining a degree at a “name-brand” school like Penn, Michigan or Berkeley for their alumni networks and nationwide recognition. There is a common trope of the prospective Bowdoin student who justifies his decision to apply early to Dartmouth, because it constitutes “the best of both worlds”: He is attracted to a small college in New England with the prestige and career prospects afforded by its membership in the Ivy League athletic conference.

I do not mean to say that Bowdoin is so different from these other schools. After all, many students are rejected from Dartmouth and admitted to Bowdoin Early Decision Round II. But there are nevertheless important differences between Bowdoin and other similar institutions of higher learning (say, the attention and priority given to undergraduate students, the difference in student population size and the presence or absence of Greek life), which made Bowdoin an appealing place at which to spend my formative years.

Nevertheless, I matriculated in the fall and discovered that my peers were right, though not for the reasons they thought. Even within the bounds of a college that offered a liberal arts education, its contents had become quietly scrutinized. As an underclassman, most of my friends felt they had to meet the demand of an arbitrary specialization early in their collegiate careers. To not fall victim to this trend requires a conscious choice to look outside the demands of practical life in search of an education that is intrinsically worthwhile. This student has to be willing to contemplate the whole of societal problems with the knowledge that they may not be solved by any one policy. This has required that areas of study previously considered neutral take an aggressive moral posture, leaving those who want to study them for their own sake with a bad conscience for doing mental play irrelevant to “the real world.”

Lodged within these conflicts are more fundamental debates about the character and aims of a liberal arts education in the 21st century. That discontent is rooted in the sentiment that we should measure the success of the university by its utility, which is conceived of in the narrowest sense. The purpose of the modern university is to solve the problems of the day by employing trained professionals to research questions relevant to the perfection of established institutions. It must equally graduate students who will perfect them, often without critical reflection.

This has birthed more superficial problems within the bounds of our campus (say, qualms regarding the legitimacy of Bowdoin Student Government’s constitutional reform or grievances against one’s colleagues in the math department). Remedying these peripheral questions would not solve the pervasive discontent with the character of the liberal arts at Bowdoin College. I will provide two examples.

First, the Orient published an article in December noting how the chair of the computer science department suggested faculty lines in under-enrolled humanities departments not be renewed when professors retire. I question what differentiates Bowdoin, a liberal arts college, from a trade or research institution if we too decide what to teach based on societal demand. I think many readers of this article would be sympathetic to the suggestion that the world demands serious and thoughtful citizens more than it demands vocational hyper-specialization. Why is this not found on any of the endless lists of “learning objectives” on course syllabi?

Second, just last summer, Bowdoin News published a series of articles exploring why Bowdoin faculty are committed to teaching the humanities. The titles of these articles read:

1. “The High Value of Low-Tech Classes.”

2. “Why Studying the Humanities Is Essential for Designing Artificial Intelligence Systems.”

3. “Why the Humanities Are Good for Getting Ahead.”

I encourage serious students of the humanities to read these articles and ask themselves whether Bowdoin has mounted a successful defense of their study. My hunch is that they will be dissatisfied. If the function of the university becomes increasingly beholden to the demand for vocational practice, then the humanities stand on much shakier ground than the physical or social sciences. Their proponents will never win an argument for the perpetuation of the humanities by assembling, as Bowdoin did in these articles, a defense of their value for practical life and career advancement.

Similarly, if more Bowdoin departments were committed to excellence within scholarly fields for their own sake, we would be more successful in graduating students equipped to navigate an increasingly complex world, for the study of the humanities is a constant exercise in discrimination, in the classical sense of the term. In this way, Bowdoin will not capitulate to the demands of the modern world characterized by economistic and technological advancement, but instead serve as a counterweight to it.

However, as long as learning itself remains instrumentalized, we will never graduate rigorous and thoughtful critics of society where the question of the common good sits at the forefront of their minds. The College’s present status as one of the elite institutions of higher education solely devoted to undergraduate students makes it uniquely poised to fulfill this role. But what I hope is that we do not attempt to simply implant the best parts of larger research universities onto our small campus. I am not sure how long that compromise will hold.

Mark Mateo is a member of the Class of 2026.