Homes are being foreclosed at a fearsome rate these days, and it begins to look as though academic departments and programs are a similarly endangered species. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the termination of the German Department at the University of Southern California, and on May 5, I noticed in The Chronicle that the University of Florida was terminating its doctoral program in Philosophy.

The university, confronting a substantial cutback in state appropriations, has announced that it will lay off 20 faculty members, among other steps, to reduce costs for FY2008-9. As part of this retrenchment, President Bernie Machen has also proposed reducing undergraduate enrollment and cutting back on research expenditures, as well as eliminating some degree programs.

I gather that other Florida universities are reacting similarly to dire state budgetary situations. Many states are experiencing exactly the same financial difficulties, and passing through their problems to public institutions of higher education. My own state, New Jersey, with the fourth largest state budget deficit, is certainly in a similar condition.

Institutions must, of course, adjust to these conditions. I do not know what other programs President Machen proposes to eliminate to balance his budget, but the Philosophy Ph.D. program is clearly one. I am not in a position to evaluate the quality of the Florida department, but I gather both that undergraduate enrollments are growing in the field (as they are nationally), and that the department is nationally well regarded. The Philosophy department website displays statements from a large number of philosophers and humanities scholars to the effect that no great university can exist without a doctoral program in philosophy. I suppose that is true, but I think it is even more certain that Daniel Garber, the chair of my university’s philosophy department, is right in saying that “This is a short-sighted move, one that sets back the cause of liberal education in one of the country’s most important state universities.”

My fear (please remember that even paranoids have enemies) is that actions like the ones at Florida and USC are harbingers of things to come — cutbacks in the humanities on the unspoken theory that the study of the humanities is less consequential than those in more preprofessional and “useful” fields. We humanists shall have, once again, to remind those who manage our universities of George Santayana’s wise words concerning “the utility of useless knowledge.” Liberal education is not about utility, it is about the cultivation of the mind. But Santayana (and I) think that is ultimately the most useful thing we can do in a university.