"On the Uses of a Liberal Education" By Mark Edmundson

Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education,” was, yes, quite long when I printed it out to read, but as I began reading I was intrigued by what he began describing.  It was the end of the semester evaluation day in his class. He had clearly been through this multiple times and would usually get a similar outcome each time. The consensus amongst a vast majority of his students is that the class was “enjoyable.”  This frustrates him because he takes this as almost degrading.  He believes his purpose, as a professor, is to change people from the course; to challenge his students to “measure themselves against what they’ve read.”  Edmundson uses the rest of the article to explain how professors can no longer do what they want in their classes, or teach how they would like because of criticism of the students.  If the students complain the university cares because they are ultimately the “consumers” they are targeting.  When colleges target their “consumers” they gloat on the superficial things, gyms with fancy exercise equipment, new dorms, and improved student unions.  With the focus on things that truly don’t matter to education, the learning that is supposed to be going on in universities has suffered.  Edmundson believes because universities are competing for their students it caused an easing grading and relaxing of major requirements instead of giving students the challenge of thinking.