Like many people, I’ve spent the past six months criticizing Gov. Mike Braun for a term marked by war on education, especially higher education. When Braun signed the state budget in May, eleventh-hour provisions slipped in after limited debate and no public input allowed him to commandeer Indiana University’s board of trustees, curbed faculty power statewide, and, as of July 1, ended more than 400 academic programs — 116 of them at IU Bloomington.
“This is really a sweeping takeover of higher education in Indiana,” Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus of education at IU, told Inside Higher Ed.
And yet I share something with Braun that cuts deeper than politics. Like him, I am Catholic.
In principle, this should bind us to a common cause. However, as I observed his recent actions, I felt that Braun overlooked two key pillars of Catholic thought, especially relevant when higher education is at stake: the concept of subsidiarity and the primacy of the contemplative.
In practice, Braun’s “freedom and opportunity” agenda opposes both items.
While the plan proposes “a leaner, more responsive government … that provides excellent constituent services,” it results in leaner constituent services that are choked by a fatter government coiled around them. Degree offerings trimmed by state intervention exemplify this. Rather than being freed to pursue a wider array of opportunities, current and future students are being shepherded by Big Brother State toward the outcomes that it desires.
“Our state institutions have taken bold, proactive steps to increase the value of higher education ... by beginning the process to streamline degree offerings,” Braun said in a release from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. “This will help students make more informed decisions about the degree they want to pursue and ensure there is a direct connection between the skills students are gaining through higher education and the skills they need most.”
Mr. Governor, where is freedom? Where are the opportunities?
On one hand, students are told the government will help us make more informed decisions about which degrees we wish to pursue. On the other hand, our options shrink, and those that remain must be tied to the skills they deem important for us.
I know fellow students who attend IU for the variety of languages that it offers or who possess specific interests, such as statistics. Despite their value, these fields may never reach a sufficient number of students to safeguard their degrees. Now, these degrees face elimination or, at best, combination. Speaking for myself, however, I would not want to graduate with a degree in “Modern European Languages” or “General Mathematics” if I came to pursue one in French or stats.
Many targeted degrees will be “taught out,” but as a prospective Hoosier, I would set my eyes on out-of-state universities whose governors do not “streamline” my interests. Outside Indiana, I would have the opportunity to make my education my own. Part of the “entrepreneurial approach” to education that Braun commends to students involves treading our own paths, determining our own skills and converting these skills to market success without the interference of a paternalistic government. Unfortunately, the bill attached to academic exodus renders this option impossible for many soon-to-be Hoosiers whose degrees sit on the chopping block.
In Catholic social teaching, the principle of subsidiarity states that decisions should be made by the lowest capable and relevant entities. Departmental faculty and university administrators should decide which degrees to offer. Based on these, students can decide which degrees offer value to them. Strong-arming boards of trustees breaches this dictum — one that is consistent with Trump’s executive theory, which I’ve written on before — and so does academic takeover.
Among the degrees targeted, most belong to the humanities. This represents a broader trend of belittling the liberal arts for a “more practical” kind of education, whether in STEM or business. Indeed, the American political class increasingly comprises business-educated men and women, including Gov. Braun and Lt.-Gov. Micah Beckwith. Traditionally, it included men and women educated in the liberal arts: at Harvard, John F. Kennedy and both Presidents Roosevelt studied subjects from philosophy to Latin and fine arts to complete their degrees. Mirroring this shift, Braun’s actions treat degrees as marketable commodities, but this thwarts a second Catholic principle: “The contemplative life is more excellent than the active.”
Before we are producing beings, we are knowing and loving ones. In a time such as this, the implications of one’s anthropology could not be greater. AI will take our practical jobs. The automation of production — and service — is a rule to which the lone exception is offshoring. For that, we may thank business leaders’ attitude of commodification. But as robots threaten the practical, we cannot give up what is truly human, the contemplative: knowing and loving.
In the Catholic Middle Ages, universities were established around the liberal arts, the disciplines that form the mind to know and love. If love of pure knowledge does not drive education, but only the market value of specified skills, AI will carve out this human space for itself as well.
Education is at risk in Indiana, but Indiana is not unique. Since January, the universities that made America great have lost faculty to other countries. They have lost students from other countries too. This is because the two principles that made universities great in America — freedom from interference and love of knowledge for itself — are being weakened by politicians who are advancing a father-knows-best state.
In this country’s youth, President John Adams said, “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy … to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
To fulfill Adams’ words and accomplish these two Catholic principles, Braun must return the power of education to students and educators. He must leave degree programs alone.
And, yes, that includes gender studies and underwater basket weaving.
Eric Cannon (he/him) is a sophomore studying philosophy and political science and currently serves as a member of IU Student Government.
