Talia Cutler ’27 & Alex Gervais ’28
Editor in Chief & Managing Editor
The Elting Center for Entrepreneurship, the Tuck Business Program, and the ever-expanding use of AI in class curricula: It is clear that Trinity is building a durable future. This is good news; more alumni in finance or entrepreneurship roles have more money to donate, which funds scholarships, new buildings, and campus infrastructure. On paper, this is a virtuous cycle. But there is an uncomfortable question that the cycle itself makes increasingly difficult to ignore: does the approach of pouring money into business and entrepreneurship alienate the very values of the liberal arts? In this precarious age of distrust in higher education and slowing college enrollment nationwide, what happens when financial survival becomes an institution’s organizing principle?
The liberal arts model has always rested on an unusually ambitious proposition: that an education should be well-rounded and interdisciplinary across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts. This is an outlook that is lost at larger schools and specialized vocational programs. Its intrinsic value is in its breadth — the ability to develop an intellectual framework that extends beyond the immediate demands of the labor market. That philosophy becomes harder to defend institutionally when students, parents and administrators increasingly view college through the language of return on investment.
Only 12% of the class of 2030 has expressed an interest in majoring in the arts and humanities. This is a concerningly low percentage for a Northeast liberal arts school when compared with approximately 20% at comparable NESCAC institutions such as Wesleyan, Bates and Colby. The numbers do not prove that Trinity has abandoned the humanities. They do, however, suggest a creeping cultural shift in Trinity’s academic focus that is the predictable result of an incentive structure built around deliberate financial planning instead of a true liberal arts ethos.
At least financially, this shift makes sense for Trinity. On May 1, 2025, President Emerita Joanne Berger Sweeny announced “operating budget deficits exceeding $10 million in FY26 unless [Trinity] take[s] corrective measures.” President Dan Lugo arrived only two months later, bringing with him a background in higher education financial literacy, having increased his previous institution’s undergraduate applications by 50%. Thus, our administration is not irrational for taking a business and entrepreneurship-focused approach to branding and academics — in true economic fashion, Trinity is simply adapting to what students and the market demand. The problem is that its rational response to financial pressure may produce an irrational outcome for the institution’s educational mission. Trinity may be discovering how to become financially successful as a liberal arts college. The uncomfortable question is whether, in doing so, it is becoming less of a liberal arts college?
To acknowledge this hypocrisy would be akin to breaking kayfabe; Trinity can simultaneously describe itself as a liberal arts college and embrace the very careerism that the liberal arts are supposed to transcend. Questioning the tension between those two identities can feel almost impolite and unspeakable. If something brings money to Trinity, improves its facilities, strengthens its alumni network or gives graduates better employment prospects, then it is difficult to argue that these programs are bad for Trinity in any capacity. Yet, this insular perspective fails to account for the loss of values that comes with marginalizing flagship liberal arts programs for flash and monetary gain.
This flash is easy to point at on campus — the composite Trinity student is an easy caricature: He loves his school-store Peter Millar polo, working out in our 30 million dollar gym, his Econ classes, and very little else. He uses ChatGPT on his assignments because, increasingly, his professors allow him to. He has not read a novel since his prep school days. There is nothing inherently wrong with this lifestyle through the lens of practicality. The problem arises when those things cease to be parts of a college education and become substitutes for one. One must beg the question: If you don’t care about what you’re learning and how you’re learning it, then why not attend a trade school? Why not forgo the formality of college altogether?
The truth of the matter is that the modern liberal arts college has no choice but to become more vocational if it wants to survive. Trinity continues to market the economic transformation of the liberal arts as an expansion of the curriculum, when in reality it finds itself in a dilemma à la the Ship of Theseus — at what point during these necessary changes does the identity of Trinity change so fundamentally that it is no longer Trinity at all? When we replace green space with Centers for Innovation, are we still really ‘neath the elms?
Trinity does not have to choose between financial sustainability and the liberal arts, but it does have to remember which is the means and which is the end. We live in an age where the future of higher education is at odds with the original intent of higher education. Thus, Trinity’s challenge is not to resist change. It is to decide what cannot be changed without changing the institution itself. If the end-goal of innovation is to preserve Trinity, we ought to be honest about what, exactly, we are trying to preserve.