Ursinus College - private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania where author Jonathan Marks is a professor of politics
There
are about 300 liberal arts colleges in the US. What if this number
dwindles down to 50 in the next ten years? Would anything of value
really be lost? Jonathan Marks certainly thinks so and articulates his
position in Let's Be Reasonable – A Conservative Case for Liberal Education.
However,
Professor Marks knows he's fighting an uphill battle as he makes a case
for liberal education and a conservative case at that. Reading through
he well articulated lines of thinking and arguments where he draws on
such thinkers as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de
Tocqueville, and Allan Bloom, any reasonable reader will discern the
great benefits for a student studying at a liberal arts college.
But, oh, the obstacles one must contend with as a conservative on campus, among their number:
Generalizations
– Many Americans outside academia making a living grinding it out in
the business world look upon anybody who spends a career as a professor
of literature, philosophy, classics, art history, music or political
science as a wifty liberal egghead. The future for small liberal arts
colleges actually paying these people? The fewer the better.
Liberal
Voices on Campus – As Jonathan Marks notes, the far left-wing profs and
administrators might be a small minority, but their voices frequently
have an outsized influence on many campuses. Somewhat ironically, most
professors “don't want no trouble” and simply desire to continue their
day to day lives teaching students and engaging in their own research.
But when those on the far-left enter the political sphere and/or make
radical mission statements, everyone on campus bears the brunt. And one
can only imagine how these leftist pronouncements are received by
individuals who have historically given large sums of money to the
college.
Cultural Cesspool - Back in 1978, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard University,
where he observed that the West was drowning in commercialism, TV
stupor, and intolerable music. Here we are in 2023, forty-five years
later, and the situation is even more dire. In many respects, the
almighty boob tube, pop culture, and pop music have completely
prevailed. Many students coming to college have spent the vast majority
of their "free time" in front of a screen—not only TV but also social media, tweets, cell phones—all the while listening to pop music. A
studious, clearheaded life devoted to books and ideas can come as
something of a shock.
Cost – The average cost for tuition (after
aid), room & board for one year at a private liberal arts college is
$50,000. The cost for a year of college at an online school like
Southern New Hampshire University is $10,000. For students from lower
and middle-income families this is a big issue, a very big issue.
Religion
– After witnessing the rise and popularity of George W. Bush, a US
president who actually brought evangelical religion into the political
sphere, author Robert Coover knew the time was right to set to work on
his novel, The Brunist Day of Wrath. Herein, Coover writes about
the current social climate in the US. Huge swaths of the population
would rather whip up emotions around the Book of Revelation and
the impending rapture than discuss works of classical literature and
philosophy in any reasonable way. Reading books and liberal education?
Ha! The enemy. The playpen of the devil.
Approaching the Great
Books – Jonathan Marks states emphatically that a proper approach sees
“reason is not only an authority but also the kind of authority that is
an honor to obey and a disgrace to betray, the sense that there's such a
thing as conduct unbecoming a reasoner.” His book makes a case for
liberal education, whose aim is becoming reasonable in this sense. None
of that using reason as a tool to score points or insist on one's views
or impress. Further on, the author writes the goal is “to cultivate in
our students an experience of and a taste for reflecting on fundamental
questions, for following arguments where they lead, and for shaping
their thoughts and actions in accordance with what they can learn from
those authorities.”
Jonathan Marks has written about a vitally important subject. I encourage you to give his book a careful read. 
Jonathan Marks
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