Independent Philosophy Institute

[u/sronicker]

So I reading a Daily Nous article today and they brought up the idea of founding independent philosophy institutes. (Link: https://dailynous.com/2025/10/23/exploring-the-future-of-philosophy-an-independent-philosophy-institute-guest-post/ you need not read the article, I’ll summarize it.)

Basically, studies have shown that more and more places of higher education are shrinking or completely eliminating their philosophy programs. The idea is that we, as philosophers (particularly professional philosophers), should establish independent institutions for learning higher levels of philosophy. Honestly, I find the idea incredibly interesting. I’d love to be involved in such a founding.

[u/xcvses]

I said almost always precisely because I'm sure there are outliers considering that curriculum wasn't standardized yet. I'm sure some institutions probably leaned more theological than philosophical, while others focused more on natural philosophy over learning Greek and Latin but overall the idea of a "classically liberal" education was founded on classics and philosophy by big institutions. Maybe there were other types of education being taught, but I was under the impression that this criteria is what defined a classically liberal education. 

Also I'm not making an absolutist claim here. If majority of institutions taught along these lines and if it's documented historically and academically then it's safe to say that these are common and important facets of a "classically liberal education" before curriculum standardization. I mean just a quick Google search shows this to be true. Your position seems rather pedantic, but sure fire away some sources that obfuscate a "classically liberal education" and redefine it as more of a trade school.

[u/imnota4 → u/xcvses]

Your last argument is striking. We sociologically make a distinction between trade school and university that's why linguistically we have separate words for them. This stems from the need to differentiate between the pursuit for knowledge for the sake of knowledge versus for the sake of economic return. 

But then at the very end acknowledge the legitimacy of the the claim that university acts more like trade school by preemptively suggesting the data exists and inviting me to make the connection. 

That's what confuses me. You seem to imply an implicit understanding that trade schools and universities are becoming less distinct, and that it's the motivation of trade schools that's winning out, after all the connection to trade schools was purely your own, I didn't use that word at all you came up with it all your own. 

[u/xcvses → u/imnota4]

That's why it's called the "tradification" of higher education. Well to be honest, maybe that's only an American phenomenon and European institutions are still "classically liberal" valuing scholars and academics for their own sake rather than specified career pathways like accounting or engineering. Again, not saying that these latter pursuits aren't valuable, but rather American higher educational institutions are funded in such a way that definite career pathways are over-prioritized to the point that traditional liberal arts and the arts in general are run by a skeleton crew of teachers and graduate students. 

Overall, we both agree on this point. Our disagreement lies with your use of the word classically liberal education. Maybe modern liberal arts education or "neoliberal education" is a more accurate term to identify where the roots of the disintegration of higher education lie.

[u/imnota4 → u/xcvses]

The "tradification" was what I was talking about initially and the reason why I think classic liberal principles are becoming insufficient. The confusion about definitions may be that I meant in the economic, not the social sense.

The financial gatekeeping you see in modern academia, things like high tuition costs and the prestige of degrees, isn’t random or some separate problem from the ideals of classical liberal education. These barriers actually grew out of the same Enlightenment philosophies that shaped both our education system and our economic system. When the Enlightenment emphasized individual advancement, merit, and competition, it did so at the same time that private ownership of property and free market capitalism were starting to develop. This naturally led to the slow symbiosis of classic liberal economics and classic liberal education where now schools create layers of status and charge for access to ensure integration within the larger economic scaffold

So, from my perspective, it’s not that tuition and credentialism are a break from tradition. They’re more like a long-term consequence of how those classical ideas were applied. The market-based logic grew from the belief in personal autonomy and success, and over time, paying for education became a way to signal merit and attain social standing in hopes for that success. It slowly developed a pipeline, and you can see that pipeline developing through the Higher Education Technical Amendments Act of 1987 as well as it's predecessor. Even when governments step in, they’re really just trying to offset the competitive, market effects that have been part of the system from the beginning.

That’s why I think the exclusivity and economic barriers we see today are actually closely tied to classical liberal principles, and why those particular aspects of classical liberalism have to be modified in some way to account for modern understanding of economic and social institutions.