Mark Edmundson On The Uses Of A Liberal Education Analysis

Matthew Wallace

Emma Hendershot

English 2010

1/26/15

Consumerism and Education At many universities changes are happening every day for students. According to a 1997 article in Harper’s Magazine by Mark Edmundson titled On the Uses of a Liberal Education, universities are changing due to consumerism affecting the education system. A professor of English at the University of Virginia. In the article, Edmundson says his overall point is that the consumer ethos is winning (Edmundson 50). The setting of this discussion involves the academic setting of the classroom that Mark Edmundson teaches in. As a professor at the University of Virginia, Edmundson has published many scholarly articles on literary and cultural criticism. As part of his life

Over the past few years he describes the physical layout of his university as constantly changing and becoming more like “a retirement spread for the young.” (Edmundson 24) He describes the University like this:

We have a new aquatics center and ever-improving gyms, stocked with StairMasters and Nautilus machines. Engraved on the wall in the gleaming aquatics building is a line by our founder, Thomas Jefferson, declaring that everyone ought to get about two hours’ exercise a day. Clearly even the author of the Declaration of Independence endorses the turning of his university into a sports-and-fitness emporium. (Edmundson

As to how this point was reached, Edmundson traces it back to the time of the G.I. bill after World War II. (Edmundson 28) After the influx, colleges began turning their attention to the consumers needs. He says colleges tend to serve and not challenge the student at all anymore, saying students now have the ability to be able to add and drop classes in the first two weeks of the semester without making any commitments. Edmundson describes students today as happy consumers saying, “A happy consumer is, by definition, one with multiple options, one who can always have what he wants. And since a course is something the students and their parents have bought and paid for; why can’t they do with it pretty much as they please?” (Edmundson 31) An issue with this way of thinking is that a person will never be able to experience things that could be mind altering due to the fact that they don’t like something about the particular subject. A college financial officer told Edmundson that “colleges don’t have admissions offices anymore, they have marketing departments.” (Edmundson 27) According to Edmundson, these changed in universities were inevitable and the only way that they could manage to stay in business. Why is Edmundson concerned with consumerism affecting and changing