College students at Xavier Excessive Faculty in New York Metropolis, a Jesuit Catholic college-preparatory highschool, got a enjoyable project: write their favourite authors, asking them to go to their college. Solely 84-year-old Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., creator of the 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse 5,” responded. Too previous to make a private look, he wrote the scholars an attractive letter encouraging them to pursue artistic arts as a part of their schooling.
“Apply any artwork … regardless of how effectively or badly…. to seek out out what’s inside you, to make your soul develop,” he mentioned.
He ended the letter by giving the scholars a homework project: “Write a six-line poem about something … Make it nearly as good as you presumably can … Don’t present it or recite it to anyone … Then tear it up into teeny-weeny items and discard them into broadly separated trash receptacles. One can find that you’ve already been gloriously rewarded.”
Would college students in 2026 settle for the problem? Or would they merely lower and paste Vonnegut’s project into ChatGPT or Google Gemini?
When computerized Synthetic Intelligence was the stuff of science fiction, mathematician Alan Turing developed a question-and-answer sport to judge a machine’s potential to imitate human intelligence. At the moment, computerized AI is a actuality, however I’m much less frightened about machines changing into aware than I’m about people changing into incapable of creativity or impartial thought.
A 2025 research by Microsoft concluded that repeated use of AI can result in “cognitive atrophy,” the weakening of vital pondering, reminiscence, and creativity. One other research at MIT demonstrated decreased mind exercise amongst school college students utilizing AI for finishing essay assignments. However it’s disingenuous guilty the decline of upper schooling on the appearance of AI. The issue began with the corporatization of upper schooling.
For over a decade, directors warned about the demographic drop — a 15% decline within the quantity of highschool graduates — and their proposed answer: eradicate under-enrolled packages no matter their academic or missional significance. The newest instance is Syracuse College, which is closing 84 tutorial packages, together with classical civilizations, a number of overseas languages, and Center Japanese research. The humanities are below assault on the mistaken assumption that these disciplines don’t put together college students for at this time’s job market. At SLU we’re listening to the identical company rhetoric used at Syracuse — an educational portfolio assessment helps SLU turn out to be “extra targeted, extra distinctive and extra aligned with scholar demand.” A query left unanswered: What sort of human beings do we wish working the world sooner or later? Do we wish automatons who merely do as they’re informed? Or do we wish people with problem-solving expertise, who can establish and predict potential issues, and act independently earlier than issues come up?
This week at SLU, groups convened by President Feser will likely be internet hosting focus teams the place choose school, participation was restricted to 12 per group on a primary come foundation, will present suggestions on the strategic planning course of. Unable to attend, I put pen to paper to document my issues about this course of. It’s my hope that SLU, following the classical liberal arts mannequin of Jesuit larger schooling, will defend under-enrolled packages that assist our college students turn out to be well-rounded, compassionate people.
If the cost-benefit evaluation directors sometimes make use of prolonged past a two-year window and checked out the advantages of a conventional liberal arts curriculum over a graduate’s lifetime, they’ll uncover that fantastic arts, philosophy, and overseas languages are integral components of a tried and examined five-hundred-year Jesuit pedagogy that develops vital pondering expertise, nurtures a lifetime love of studying, and creates accountable residents devoted to the frequent good. At Syracuse college, if a scholar desires to take a ceramics class to— within the phrases of Kurt Vonnegut – “make their soul develop” or just to blow off some steam amid a demanding semester courseload, they’re out of luck. Let’s pray that’s by no means the case at Saint Louis College.
