To the editor:

Land grant universities across the country scramble for TV dollars, forming super-conferences offering coast-to-coast TV coverage. Here at KU, we’re planning a $300 million stadium renovation. We don’t lack money.

But last week money drove fellow Big 12 Conference member, West Virginia University, reacting to legislative budget cuts, to announce elimination of 169 faculty positions and more than 30 degree-programs, eviscerating humanities at WVU.

KU and WVU have more in common than the Big 12. Both have Republican supermajorities who complain elites (read “humanities faculty”) teach anti-conservative bias, and continually cut state funding. The consulting firm that helped WVU solve the problem by sacrificing humanities is also advising KU.

For the masses, practical, technical education has always been available. Every society needs workers and service people. Before World War II, education at liberal arts universities was reserved for “better” people, the children of social and business leaders.

Sixteen million served in WWII. More than 400,000 died, roughly 3 out of every 100. More than half of those who made it home got educations from the GI Bill; 2.3 million going to liberal arts colleges and universities, swelling the Harvard class of 1950 to 1,645. Where did the rest go? To land grant universities like KU and West Virginia, where they received educations every bit as good as the Harvard class of 1950.

With West Virginia abandoning liberal arts, should Kansans tamely fall into line?

Social equality depends upon education. With liberal arts becoming available to only a few of us, democracy will slide back to whence it came, into aristocracy.

William Skepnek,

Lawrence