How Many French-Literature Degrees Is Kentucky Really Paying For?

Timothy D. Easley, AP Images

Gov. Matthew G. Bevin has suggested that Kentucky’s public colleges and universities are overrun by liberal-arts majors, in particular students of French literature.

The newly elected governor, a Republican, has announced that he wants to change how the state appropriates money for higher education, based on performance and outcomes. And with that change, he has said, the state should be paying more for majors in science and technology fields than in the liberal arts.

“All the people in the world that want to study French literature can do so; they are just not going to be subsidized by the taxpayer like engineers,” the governor said on January 26 as he delivered his proposed budget to the state legislature, according to several news accounts.

But data from the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education show that relatively little state money supports students in any foreign-language field. In 2013 just 30 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in French language or literature, compared with more than 132 bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering. More broadly, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in any foreign language, 192, was a fraction of the 1,007 awarded in engineering-related fields, according to the council’s figures.

Mr. Bevin’s press secretary did not respond to requests for comment.

Neville G. Pinto, the interim provost and engineering dean at the University of Louisville, said the number of degrees awarded in the sciences has grown. Students and their parents are increasingly interested in degrees that will lead to successful careers, he said. And business leaders are pushing to align higher education more closely with the state’s economic needs.

There’s nothing new about either Governor Bevin’s comments questioning the value of a degree in the humanities or liberal arts, or his proposal to appropriate money to higher education based on specific performance outcomes.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, said his state had enough anthropology majors in 2011, though that was the field in which his daughter had earned her undergraduate degree.

In North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory, another Republican, said during a radio interview in 2013 that the state should not be paying for degrees that don’t lead directly to jobs.

“If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if it’s not going to get someone a job,” said Mr. McCrory, who has undergraduate degrees in education and political science from Catawba College, a private liberal-arts institution.

Mr. Bevin, too, attended a private liberal-arts college, Washington and Lee University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies. He is fluent in Japanese, according to news reports.

Money and Priorities

If the Kentucky legislature agrees with the governor’s proposal to appropriate some money for higher education based on colleges’ performance, the state will join a long list of others that already do so. In some cases, the state formulas reward the number or growth of degrees in particular fields, such as science and mathematics.

In fact, the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education has also called on the state to dole out money based on outcomes since 2012.

The challenge of such a system, for Kentucky, is whether the state will have enough money to reward success if the colleges achieve it. The state has cut spending on higher education nearly 16 percent over the past eight years, according to the council, while enrollment has increased by about 7 percent.

The council has asked the governor to restore about half of the cuts based on student outcomes such as improved retention and graduation rates.

But the governor has instead proposed a 4.5-percent cut for the remainder of the current budget, and a 9-percent cut for the following year, at the same time that he is asking for more graduates in engineering, which typically has higher costs for faculty members and facilities.

Mr. Pinto, however, is keeping a positive outlook about lawmakers’ expectations and the role of higher education in bolstering the economy.

“I think what both the governor and the legislature are responding to is positioning the state to be competitive in the knowledge economy,” he said. “We need to have a work force that attracts businesses here. It doesn’t mean we have too many liberal-arts majors and not enough engineers.”

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.