200 years ago Yale found itself at an educational crossroads not unlike today— and we should learn from it.
Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University (Credit: Owen Tilman).
Hannah Owens Pierre
Opinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon
It is often said that if the founding fathers were to be transported into the modern era, they would no longer recognize the nation they built. I, for one, am sympathetic to this view. The founders would certainly be shocked by the expansive bureaucracy and overarching reach of the executive branch that we see today.
Less widely pondered is how shocked the founders of our university would be if they were transported to Yale in 2026. A university which was built by religious clergy for the purpose of cultivating the souls and minds of young people is now a haven for finance recruiting, filled with students who increasingly care more about their post-graduate salary than anything they may learn in the classroom.
Nearly two hundred years ago, the faculty of Yale College released the Yale Report of 1828, directly rebuking the type of university that we see today. The report ardently defended teaching the classics at Yale against those who deemed the study of “dead languages” worthless. The points advanced by the authors of this report are astute, and ones worth revisiting today. This is especially true as we near the 200th anniversary of the document and as Yale recently released its Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education, condemning many of the same trends noted in this piece.
First, the university’s purpose is intellectual formation, not professional preparation. “The two great points to be gained in intellectual culture are the discipline and the furniture of the mind; expanding its powers, and storing it with knowledge,” they wrote. Notice what this doesn’t include: any mention of pre-professional training. Last year, President Maurie McInnis faced student criticism when she adapted Yale’s mission statement to be in line with this purpose.
Yet this mission makes perfect sense. The university exists to make us better thinkers. It ought to sharpen our critical thinking skills, challenge our values, and make us question the world around us. Fostering these traits changes the way we think about our careers and what we want to do with our lives. A university should make students capable of asking whether the life they are intent on pursuing is worth pursuing in the first place.
Absent this reflection process, many young people enter jobs that they grow to hate and contribute nothing of value to the world. The consequences of choosing a career without first considering what makes work meaningful are not merely philosophical. One survey found that investment bankers report a 22% decline in mental health compared to before starting their job, while another found that 60% of financial professionals planned to leave the industry over burnout.
Moreover, this purpose reflects a deeper fact: knowledge and truth and intrinsic goods that ought to be sought for their own sake. Well-paying jobs, though valuable, are a mere welcome side effect of growing one’s intellectual capacities and not to be the focus of our ambitions. As the authors of the report write, “Our object is not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the professions; but to lay the foundation which is common to them all.”
Second, intellectual formation requires rigor. The authors argue that the benefits of a sharpened intellect are “not to be affected by a light and hasty course of study; by reading a few books, hearing a few lectures, and spending some months at a literary institution.” In other words, learning must be difficult.
In today’s world, some professors instead opt to make the process as easy as possible. Many discard the great books of the past because they raise too many difficult questions. Readings are shortened, lectures are made optional, and students can sometimes complete courses without confronting demanding texts or defending difficult positions.
In doing so, they unintentionally harm their students. Just as the only way to grow a physical muscle is to exercise it, the only way to grow the intellectual muscle is to put it to the test. This process is uncomfortable by design, because changing one’s fundamental beliefs or viewing the world in a different light is never a comfortable process.
Finally, intellectual education requires preserving our cultural inheritance. I may be biased as a learner of Latin myself, but I believe that the authors of the 1828 report are correct to note that an appreciation of our nation’s history and literature requires looking back far in time. As schools increasingly abandon classics programs in favor of new interdisciplinary departments, it is important to reflect on what is being lost. The ideas found in Cicero and Aristotle are no less relevant today than they were 3,000 years ago.
Evidently, the Yale Report of 1828 shows that much is still to be learned by looking towards the past. At a time when Yale University, like so many around the nation, has become increasingly pre-professional and disdainful of its past, we ought to examine our university’s history and the wise words of its former faculty to guide us towards light and truth.