PORTLAND — Over the past 18 months, institutions of higher education across the country have decided that tough economic times call for tough academic measures, and many have responded to state budget crises by cutting humanities programs.

Letters and columns have recently lamented the prospective loss of the Latin major at the University of Maine in Orono, one example of such a cut.

I write this column to the president of the University of Maine in Orono, for our university system chancellor, and for anyone else who believes that “we can no longer afford” majors like Latin, German or philosophy in Maine.

Nothing worth saving was ever saved by cutting the humanities, least of all money.

I am a classics professor at the University of Southern Maine. I teach Latin and ancient Greek, languages lovingly referred to as “dead,” as well as ancient civilization, art, literature and history.

As I like to tell my dean, I am education on the cheap. All I need to do my job is a ramshackle classroom, a few old books and some chalk. We still have all of these at USM.

I exaggerate, of course. In fact, my students rely on my being available by email at all hours of the day and night, and every year USM’s classics program uses technology more and more deeply in its curriculum.

That said, classics, in particular, and the humanities, in general, are still terrific bargains for Maine. Humanities faculty are the lowest-paid faculty in the system. Our needs for technology, lab space and funding are the lowest of any academic division.

What is more, we deliver a high percentage of the general education courses that students in every major must take in order to graduate, courses in writing, speaking, critical reasoning and ethics.

Courses in Latin and Greek are in fact courses in English grammar and syntax. Philosophy teaches students logic and ethics. Foreign language courses offer students encounters with the diverse cultures they will meet in the global workplace.

The skills delivered by humanities programs are the skills all employers agree their employees must have, and humanities faculty deliver them for a song.

At USM, it is rare for a humanities program not to turn a profit, and even rarer for a humanities program not to cover its own expenses with the tuition dollars it generates. Maine faces tough economic times, but nickel-and-diming the humanities will not come close to solving our problems.

The programs that state and business leaders consider most important for economic growth – particularly disciplines like computer science and engineering – are the most expensive programs the system delivers, programs whose tuition dollars could never cover their costs.

Moreover, Maine takes great pride in its seven independent campuses that offer economic and cultural support to some of Maine’s most remote regions. Am I advocating cutting funding to engineering or computer science or closing system campuses? By no means. It would be laughable for me, an academic devoting my life to public education in Maine, to advocate for such things.

Instead, I offer a simple message: High-quality higher education is expensive. If we want education in the latest technology, and if the university system wants to continue to serve the state from seven different campuses, we must agree to pay for it.

Cutting the humanities is unlikely to save any money at all in the long term – in fact, cutting the humanities might cut into university revenues that help subsidize more expensive programs. Most important, cutting the humanities will do damage to the academic reputation of the system and the state, making Maine a much less attractive option for out-of-state students and their tuition dollars.

We all want high-quality higher education in Maine; indeed, many of us see high-quality higher education as the way out of our economic troubles.

Instead of killing the humanities by a thousand cuts, we as a state must decide that we truly value excellent education and put our money – our taxes – where our mouths are.

– Special to the Press Herald