The university in my home town — Stevens Point, Wisconsin — made the front page of a recent Sunday New York Times. The title of the article is unfortunate: “At Struggling Rural Colleges, No Future for History Degrees.” Several problems with this headline.
First, this university is by no measure a “rural” college. It is part of the prestigious and progressive University of Wisconsin, which is a collection of 26 campuses and extensions with a total enrollment of 173,000 students, making it one of the largest systems of public higher education in the USA. Nearly 8,000 students attend on campus at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point — one of the largest campuses in the UW system outside of the Madison campus where more than 40,000 students attend classes.
Second, although it is located in the heart of expansive agri-business, the city of Stevens Point is by no means rural. The population within its borders is nearly 27,000, and the population more than doubles when residents of adjacent communities are counted. The local public high school has the largest 9th through 12th grade enrollment of any high school in the entire state of Wisconsin. Stevens Point is the world headquarters for Sentry Insurance, and its location smack-dab in the center of the state has made “Point” the home of several of Wisconsin’s most important corporate entities and non-profit organizations.
What also makes the Times headline unfortunate is the dire prediction for degrees in history, which is the featured discipline of programs now being threatened by budget shortfalls in a state where citizens are now discovering that the path of right-wing conservative politicians has not been paved with silver and gold…..in fact, it hasn’t been paved at all, and the potholes in public services are expanding.
Any institution of higher education that is not grounded and steeped in history is as useless to its students’ preparation for work and life as a college or university that would fail to infuse technology throughout its curriculum.
Never has it been more important than in today’s complex and contentious world that the unvarnished lessons of US and World history accompany the delivery of all other information imparted in the name of higher education.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 
I say AMEN to your blog on Stevens’s Point. NO college or university can exist as an educational institution without the humanities. Otherwise they are a business school or a tech institute. We need fully educated people in this country and the world.
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