Have We Stopped Believing in Students -and the Humanities? Or, The One Where I Call Out My Alma Mater.
How Indiana University-Bloomington’s degree reductions reflect a broader crisis of expectation, equity, and educational purpose
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A few years ago, I re-entered the classroom as a graduate instructor to teach an applied experience course to rising seniors. When I handed back the first round of essays with detailed feedback, one student lingered a few moments after the class. “I’ve never had a teacher write this much on a paper before,” she said. “It’s a lot!” Her tone was a mix of gratitude and confusion. Then she asked me a question, barely above a whisper, that I still remember all too well: “Do you think I can really do this?”
What I took her to mean was: Do you expect something from me because you believe I can deliver? Or are you setting me up to fail?
In that moment, I had to catch myself. I paused because I quickly realized something I had long suspected: too often across higher education, we confuse kindness with leniency, and rigor with elitism. But neither is true. At its best, high expectations are a form of trust.
And that trust (whether it’s in our students, our disciplines, or in our democracy itself) is precisely what’s under threat in American higher education right now.
The Myth of Low-Value Degrees
As a proud 2011 graduate of Indiana University-Bloomington (IU), I am disheartened to learn that the state’s Commission for Higher Education recently oversaw the elimination, suspension, or merging of more than 400 degree programs across Indiana’s public colleges and universities. That is almost 19 percent of all programs statewide. Indiana University alone is slated to lose almost 222 programs across its flagship and regional campuses. Among them are the very programs that shaped my intellectual foundation and professional life: Latin and Classical Civilization. (Slight sidebar: I was a triple major at IU in English, Latin, and Classical Civilizations.)
These cuts were prompted not by faculty recommendation or public deliberation, but by a legislative mandate quietly inserted into the state budget bill without public comment. Programs with fewer than 15 graduates at the bachelor’s level or seven at the master’s level were automatically deemed unworthy. According to Governor Mike Braun, the focus is on “streamlining” higher education statewide to ensure a “direct connection between the skills students are gaining and the skills they need most.”
But what happens when the skills we need most can’t be easily measured?
Expectations as a Mirror of Values
Unlike K–12 educators, most college professors never receive formal training in pedagogy. They are subject-matter experts first (i.e., historians, physicists, linguists, economists) who enter the classroom with deep disciplinary knowledge, but often little preparation in instructional design or learning science. As a result, the “hidden curriculum” of higher education - the unspoken norms, behaviors, and expectations that shape student success - often remains just that: hidden.
Recent research confirms this disconnect. In an analysis of college syllabi and faculty grading practices, Canning et al. (2019) found that students performed better and were more motivated when faculty communicated both high standards and expressed confidence that students could meet them. In other words, it wasn’t the standards alone that mattered, but the belief in students’ ability to rise to them. When deployed wisely, standards can transform a classroom. When ignored, those same standards can reproduce inequality.
Similarly, a large-scale study by Kuh et al. (2010) on High-Impact Educational Practices found that engagement-intensive activities, like writing-intensive courses and undergraduate research, yielded substantial learning gains, but only when paired with clear, challenging expectations and sustained feedback.
Expectations function as both a compass and a mirror. They orient students toward what is valued and possible, and they reflect what we believe they’re capable of. When professors set high expectations, backed by transparent criteria, thoughtful and intentional scaffolding, and equitable grading standards, they actually communicate something more than content mastery. They say: I believe in your potential and I believe you can grow.
Here’s the problem, though: when our state policymakers treat programs like foreign languages, history, or education as expendable, they are telling students (implicitly and explicitly) what is worth knowing. They replace the pursuit of wisdom with the efficiency of training.
The Danger of Demand-Driven Education
The argument for cutting “low-enrollment” programs often hinges on efficiency and market alignment: why fund programs with few students, primarily if they don’t directly feed into high-wage jobs?
It’s a compelling question. That is, until we flip it around.
Why do fewer students enroll in these programs? Could it be because the cultural and financial signals around them have grown dim? Because states have defunded public institutions, reducing faculty lines and course offerings? Because high school students rarely hear that studying ancient philosophy, art history, or linguistics is a valuable and viable path?
Declining enrollment in liberal arts and education programs is not a failure of interest; rather, it reflects shifting priorities and changing expectations. It’s a policy failure, a consequence of decades of disinvestment, narrow accountability metrics, and the steady erosion of the humanities as a public good.
As Menand (2010) argues in The Marketplace of Ideas, higher education has increasingly become a mechanism for credentialing and stratification, rather than cultivation and growth. We’ve replaced the goal of becoming a citizen with the goal of becoming a worker. And in doing so, we’ve allowed short-term job trends to dictate the long-term architecture of knowledge.
Rigor as Relationship
There’s a dangerous myth in higher education that students either “have it” or they don’t. That effort reveals weakness. That toughness, not support, builds resilience. But what if we understood rigor not as an obstacle, but as a relationship?
“Warm demander” pedagogy, a term coined by Kleinfeld (1975) and further developed by Delpit (2013), describes teachers who combine high academic expectations with genuine care and support. They reject deficit thinking and embrace the idea that all students are capable of excellence, given the right conditions.
Unfortunately, most college instructors are likely to have never heard of this model, let alone been trained in its implementation. As a result, we see two extremes: the well-meaning professor who lowers the bar in the name of compassion, and the rigid traditionalist who views accommodation as dilution. Both miss the point. They both fail to address the real issue: the absence of a relational, developmental approach to student learning.
Proper rigor demands both challenge and support. It means telling a student, “I see something in you, and I won’t let you settle for less.”
When students experience both high challenge and high support, they are more likely to persevere, internalize feedback, and achieve at higher levels (Conley, 2013). But when expectations are vague, inconsistent, or unaccompanied by guidance, students may interpret difficulty as a sign they don’t belong. For first-generation students, students of color, or those navigating impostor syndrome, this interpretation can be devastating.
The Syllabus as a Signal
What does this mean, practically speaking?
It means that a syllabus isn’t just a contract; it’s a signal. It tells students what matters, how they’ll be evaluated, and whether the journey will be navigable.
A syllabus that sets clear academic requirements, outlines rigorous grading criteria, and maps out weekly commitments is not punitive. It’s empowering. It demystifies the path forward. And when it is paired with regular check-ins, accessible office hours, and authentic encouragement, students are more likely to rise to the challenge.
In their meta-analysis, Freeman et al. (2014) found that active learning approaches that required more preparation and participation yielded significantly better learning outcomes in STEM fields compared to traditional lectures. Yet, these approaches often require more from students, more reading, more discussion, more grappling with complex problems. The takeaway isn’t to reduce the load. It’s to pair increased expectations with increased clarity and feedback.
Going Forward
At its core, this conversation isn’t just about syllabi or grading rubrics; it’s about what we believe higher education is for.
Is it a sorting mechanism, filtering students based on who can handle unclear expectations and sink-or-swim assignments? Or is it a developmental enterprise, cultivating intellectual growth and capacity in all students through straightforward, rigorous, and relationally grounded instruction?
In my own teaching, I’ve found that students don’t resent high expectations. They resent unreasonable ones. They resent being left to guess what “good” means. They resent silence after they’ve turned in work. But when I raise the bar and offer the tools to reach it, something remarkable happens: they stretch themselves. Raise the standards, and learners will rise to meet them.
Let me be clear: I don’t believe every degree program should be immune to rigorous evaluation. But the criteria we use – and the spirit in which we apply them – matter. A specific program with low current enrollment may be essential to our collective future. A discipline without immediate job placement rates may still teach students how to think critically, write persuasively, and understand the arc of human history.
I have come to appreciate my time studying Latin and Classics not because I enjoy curling up with Ovid’s Metamorphoses at the end of a long day, but because these programs do not merely transmit content; they transmit continuity. They remind us that today’s crises are remnants and echoes of older dilemmas. That democracy, justice, beauty, and truth are not just buzzwords, but are ancient struggles that have endured for centuries.
To eliminate these programs is to amputate part of our cultural memory.
Trust for Thought
What message does a university send when it cuts programs in the arts, humanities, or education? What does it suggest about what (and who) is valued?
As a learner (or an educator), how do you define “rigor” for yourself (or for others)? Do you associate it more with pressure or possibility?
What disciplines or ideas shaped you that might not survive this era of efficiency-driven education?
Where in your life have you lowered the bar out of fear that it might be “too much”? What might it mean to raise your expectations and believe someone will rise to meet them?
Further Reading
Canning, E., Muenks, K., Green, D., & Murphy, M. (2019). STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes. Science Advances, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau4734
Conley, D. (2013). Getting ready for college, careers, and the Common Core: What every educator needs to know. John Wiley & Sons.
Delpit, L. (2013). “Multiplication is for White People”: Raising expectations for other people’s children. The New Press.
Freeman, S., Eddy, S., McDonough, M., Smith, M., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111
Kuh, G., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J., & Whitt, E. (2010). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. Jossey-Bass.
Kleinfeld, J. (1975). Effective teachers of Eskimo and Indian students. School Review, 83(2), 301–344. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED068246.pdf.
Menand, L. (2010). The marketplace of ideas: Reform and resistance in the American university. W. W. Norton & Company.
Indiana Commission for Higher Education. (2025, July). Program elimination and suspension summary report. Retrieved from https://www.in.gov/che/files/Info-Item-Voluntary-Early-Actions-and-Future-Commitments-Before-HEA1001-2025-Implementation.pdf.
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