Earlier this month, the often insightful Ian Bogost wrote this convincing piece in the Atlantic, entitled The Accidental Winners of the War on Higher Ed. As politics tore top-tier universities apart — Columbia, Northwestern, Harvard, even our besieged sequel in Charlottesville among them — Bogost argues that “elite liberal-arts colleges” are uniquely able to weather our turbulent times.

For Bogost (himself a professor at a fellow university with a slightly confusing name), this means adopting “a broad and flexible approach to education that values developing the person over professional training.” He takes a look at Amherst, Davidson, Smith and Vassar: big private liberal-arts names that are less dependent on federal research funding than their Ivy brethren. Without the federal dollars that pay for doctoral students and big-money research, the faculty focuses on undergrads and research aims are worthy but modest.

This is how W&M used to showcase itself: a campus that values teaching and research alike. Keeping tenured faculty close to undergrads helped those students get involved in research at an earlier stage and in bigger ways. One faculty member told the Gale recently “this is why I came.” But today, there’s little to see besides “preeminent public research university.” Our little campus, with our wonderful community, is playing dress-up with a bigger kid’s clothes.

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Meanwhile, in other corners of the internet, we find The Misuses of the University by François Furstenberg of Johns Hopkins University. This one is not Bogost’s thoughtful romp around New England and North Carolina. This one is a punch in the gut through a funhouse mirror.

Read it. Furstenberg paints a picture of Hopkins leaning on its history as “America’s First Research University!” as private equity and misguided leadership disfigure the campus. It’s a sorrowful walk around Baltimore as the unnamed narrator laments the unfunded monuments to philanthropy that increasingly dominate the landscape. A couple highlights:

• “[the narrator] sometimes wonders why the university would need more applicants, given that its admissions rate now overs under 6 percent”
• ”Decisions about new faculty hiring no longer come from the divisions… instead, they are made in the president’s office, in line with priorities developed by his senior advisors, with help from the development team”
• ”To him, it looks like the president has mortgaged the university’s future in a desperate quest to get Hopkins into the top 10… then again, if the editors at US News decide to tweak their algorithm, [Hopkins et al] could slip in the ratings tomorrow”
• ”[He] is curious if anyone on the board of trustees worries about this abrupt shift in strategic orientation, on which the future of the engineering school now rests”

Seriously, read it.

This spring, W&M will begin its next strategic planning process, to follow Vision 2026 and focus on — you guessed it — national preeminence. They’ve already decided that the process is “anchored by five opportunity statements”: student demand, define preparation for citizenship, leadership in W&M’s distinguishing areas, plain old regular leadership, and a culture of professional well-being.

We encourage you to participate in this process as much as you can, or as much as they’ll have you — there’s a link at the bottom of the page. Tell them what matters to you, and look here if you need something to talk about.

Hopefully nobody had their heart set on discussing anchors or opportunity statements.

The first article had a simple and powerful subtitle: “Go to a small liberal arts college if you can.” That was a huge part of what William & Mary was for many of us. Maybe it can be again.