EDITORS' CORNER
New statement aims to remove ‘things that benefit students and benefit the world,’ senior says
Graduating seniors at Yale University are criticizing the school’s newly revised mission statement, which now centers on “knowledge” and removes previous language about improving the world.
“On April 30, in accordance with recommendations from the Committee on Trust in Higher Education’s report, Yale removed from its mission statement the language of ‘improving the world today,’ educating ‘aspiring leaders worldwide’ and fostering ‘an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community,’” Yale Daily News reported.
The mission statement now reads, “Yale’s core mission is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.”
Senior Jenny Jiang told the school newspaper, “The new mission statement is very much intellectualism for intellectualism’s sake,” adding that it’s “directionless.”
“Yale has not necessarily accomplished what I think it should be doing as a university, and I think that the change in the mission statement reflects that,” she said.
Another senior, Cleber Redondo, said the new mission statement is very basic and could apply to almost any university. He also argued that Yale’s version lacks a greater sense of purpose.
Sahana Kaur was also disappointed by the changes. She said that she was originally drawn to Yale because of its emphasis on using knowledge for public benefit. She feels that this focus has been scaled back, citing Yale’s decision to downsize its Sustainable Food Program.
Similarly, Charlie Karner said the university’s priorities have changed over his time at Yale. He pointed to reductions in summer funding and the administration’s habit of offering vague responses to student activism.
He also said he believes the school changed its mission statement to “keep silently removing things that benefit students and benefit the world while saying, this is not what we do here.”
American Studies professor Daniel HoSang also criticized the new statement adopted from the Committee on Trust in Higher Education’s report.
“Now it has concluded that improving the world is extraneous to its purpose,” HoSang stated. “The Trust Report offered no explanation as to why a commitment to improve the world was driving public mistrust.”
In addition to recommending that Yale revise its mission statement, the report calls for the university to reform its policies on grading, admissions, and other key areas.
“It suggested that for Yale to restore public trust, it should rethink its approach to financial aid, clarify and change admissions policies, promote more intellectual diversity, restrict technological devices in classrooms and address grade inflation, floating that Yale College should have around a 3.0 mean grade-point-average,” The Yale Daily News reported.
The school has recently faced even more scrutiny.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that its investigation found that Yale School of Medicine intentionally used racial criteria in its admissions process, favoring black and Hispanic applicants, The College Fix reported.
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