Perhaps, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that Oberlin is changing. In 2024, Oberlin announced the addition of five new majors to the College — Business, Financial Economics, Data Science, Communication Studies, and Environmental Science. Notably, the April 2024 announcement of the first of these majors, Communication Studies, was also the first new major to be added at Oberlin in over 20 years. For 2024 to boast not one, but five new majors in the College feels substantial, like change.
And it’s not just the quantity of new majors that has struck me as “change.” What sticks out to me the most is the kind of majors being added and why. The new majors are what I would categorize as “professional” or “technical.” They provide students with the technical skills necessary to enter a certain professional occupation; for example, a student majoring in Financial Economics probably would like to work in the financial services industry and is taking classes in preparation for the rigorous application and interview process that accompanies many entry-level positions in this field. The same can be said for Communication Studies: most job applications for positions in communications require that you have obtained a degree in business, marketing, public relations, communications, journalism, or “a related field.” Prior to last April, Oberlin only offered two of these disciplines as integrative concentrations, an arguably unrecognizable label to your typical hiring manager.
Oberlin’s concern for relevance, in my opinion, stems from the belief held by Oberlin administrators — as well as the general American public — that the small liberal arts college is no longer a sustainable business model. Maybe the administration wouldn’t phrase it so bluntly, but the sentiment remains the same. This is because enrollment for the incoming class of 2029 will reflect a nationwide “demographic cliff” among current high school seniors. This demographic cliff, caused by the 2007 Great Financial Crisis, means that colleges and universities across the country will be competing this year to fill their enrollment quotas with the smallest pool of undergraduate degree-seeking students in recent history. With its bicentennial fast approaching, these new majors project an institutional anxiety about Oberlin’s relevance and financial sustainability.
It seems to me that Oberlin’s decision-makers believe that majors with technical and professional grounding hold the key to Oberlin’s financial future. These new majors are marketable to parents and students who are looking for a return on their investment. They don’t want to spend $347,504 — assuming Oberlin doesn’t raise its tuition within the next four years — without some confidence that Oberlin will provide the resources to ensure professional opportunities post graduation. These parents and students want a major that has a profession attached to it and offers mastery of technical skills to prove their candidacy for those positions. Because, at the end of the day, we all have to work, right? And with Oberlin’s U.S. News & World Report ranking falling 16 positions in the two years since the report introduced a new ranking methodology that, among other things, increased the weight of alumni income four years after graduation, prospective parents and students should be wondering what Oberlin can do for them. Perhaps 50 years ago, Oberlin may have been valued for its outstanding placement of its alumni into graduate programs and PhDs, creating the next generation of American academics and researchers. Today, however, while Oberlin still leads among colleges and universities in its production of PhD candidates and Fulbright scholars, I have not once been told at Oberlin by its professors or its career advisors that becoming a professor is a good idea, and I believe them.
I am not here to argue about the ethical or institution implications of Oberlin alumni on Wall Street or in corporate America at large; in fact, I have no qualms with this endeavor, and I am of the belief that the world needs Oberlin graduates everywhere, in all sectors and industries. I believe it is a good thing that Oberlin has launched these new majors: for context, I’m an English major, and I’m finally taking a Communications Studies course this semester — something I can actually put under the “relevant coursework” section of my resume — and I plan to take a business class in the fall, motivated by my own rendezvous with corporate America this Winter Term through the Ashby Business Scholars program. I am also not here to argue against this notion that students and parents should expect professional support and placement after their graduation from the college or university of their choosing. I agree that college is a medium for professional development. But, more importantly, college is about learning: unequivocal, unencumbered learning.
Just because Oberlin has launched this slew of professional majors does not mean that every Oberlin student needs to tether themselves to technical training. I chose Oberlin for its breadth, for its long history with the humanities. I wanted to go to a school where I could major in something that I would never get to do again, at least at this scale. For the past four years, I have lived in a utopia of being everything and anything that I felt like being: a singer, a journalist, a writer, a performer, a businesswoman. Of course, college is nothing like the real world, and in my opinion, it’s not supposed to be. I wouldn’t pay any money to do only one thing everyday; I’ll get paid to do that later. Right now, my only occupation is to be curious. I take classes that laugh at the label “relevant coursework,” and yet, the experiences I have taken advantage of at Oberlin have filled my resume to the brim. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t need to be a business major to be a good business leader, and you don’t need a degree in communications to get an internship or job in communications. Current and prospective students shouldn’t question the value of a degree in the humanities because of the addition of these new majors.
College isn’t supposed to be a manufacturer of professionals, of working people who become mindless cogs in our capitalist society. And if our capitalist society values college only if it cranks out professionals, Oberlin is wrong to conform. I understand the paradox of this situation, the inherent discontinuity between relevance and thus financial sustainability and — what I am arguing is the principle function of higher education — the humanities, the liberal arts, learning, and critical thinking. But if this is really the crux, Oberlin should charge forward, championing the pursuit of learning, championing the humanities, championing critical thinking. I believe our democracy depends on this righteousness.
Oberlin should embrace, value, invest in, and advertise its humanities. Perhaps I’ll never need to quote Shakespeare in my professional life, but I’m all the better for knowing him, all the smarter, all the more engaged and curious, all the more excited about humanity and what we can create and how we can feel. I’m a better writer, a better speaker, a better thinker, a better leader, a better teacher, a better person. Because at the end of the day, we are much, much more than our professions.
