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The big trend in education, she said, was the rising cost of higher education; meanwhile, Classics was “not in growth mode.” Classicists needed to teach more students.

Do you know why classics is "not in growth mode"? Because, in any university there are going to be only about 70 students studying classics. That is it. And, that number has remained the same at almost any time in history since the 1700s.

I have looked at the numbers of students studying the classics in the early American colonial colleges and compared them to the numbers of students studying the classics today. Right now, at Harvard University, there are today about 70 students in the Philology PhD program. That is roughly same number of students who studied the same subject throughout the 1700s.

So, what really needs to happen is that more universities need to emphasize Western Civilization in general. But these ladies don't think that teaching about dead white men is important.

Connolly seemed hostile to the study of classical Greek and Latin. She said that the ancient languages could not be taught anymore by Classics departments. She did not say why, besides cost. Instead, she thought that “we” should not require all classicists to teach Greek and Latin. “I think the field would be better served by training a next generation of faculty free and empowered to focus on teaching topics of broader interest.” Not Latin or Greek, in other words.

But that is why colleges began to teach more topics like accounting and nursing. Originally, you could only get a bachelors in philosophy, but as time went on more degrees were added. Some degrees are more popular than others, but the classics are the basic reason for the teaching.

But the abandonment of philology, the heart of our discipline, means that there can be no true research in the field. We can have no new editions of texts, no new translations, no work on ancient history, no scholarly work on ancient authors, without knowledge of the languages. What Connolly seemed to be advocating is that classicists should discard the heart and soul of their discipline to make it more popular.

Connolly needs to get out of the classics if she is that unhappy.

But as a percent of total students, then vs now?

Isnt 70 students now a much much lower percentage of students than 70 students in the 1700’s?

Do you know why classics is "not in growth mode"? Because, in any university there are going to be only about 70 students studying classics. That is it. And, that number has remained the same at almost any time in history since the 1700s.

I suspect that what it really boils down to is this: only a small percentage of any population is intellectually capable of this sort of study. The vast majority of people want jobs that involve a skill (one that doesn't require deep thought) and make money. For entertainment, they want games, sex, and stimulants. That's why they were always called "the masses."