It was April of 2024 when I chose to attend Pomona College — a choice that, at that point, bore immense symbolism for me. I thought that in choosing Pomona, a lesser-known liberal arts college that advertised a holistic approach to academics and tight-knit classes, I was rejecting the freneticism and self-importance of most other elite colleges.
Instead, I hoped to find something grander: something I hadn’t yet comprehended, but something I thought Pomona could help me define.
That idealism lasted for about two weeks, until my first ID-1 essay — drafted in a single night and lacking anything close to good writing — was handed back with an A. I realized then that if I skimmed just enough of the class text and invoked just enough buzzwords and politically correct platitudes, I could get an A regardless of what I actually wrote. Little did I know, this philosophy of doing the least and accomplishing the most would continue past my first-year classes to define the bulk of my first two years.
All this to say: Pomona has an easiness problem, one that has been the subject of multiple TSL articles over the past decade, in light of national increases in grade inflation since 2005. And Pomona isn’t alone — other schools, like the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University, have recently gained national attention for their high distribution of “A” grades, with faculty at the latter voting to institute a cap on the letter in May.
In the midst of this trend, I propose my own present-day reading of the issue: I believe that Pomona’s easiness problem is one that actively works against the theory of a liberal arts education heralded in Pomona’s own mission statement. Let me explain.
Often secondary in grade inflation discourse is the fundamental question of what academia is for and why its relationship to rigor is important. This is where the theory of a liberal arts education becomes useful. There are several traditions to discuss here — the Aristotelian position is a beautiful one. It argues that education isn’t just about pre-professionalism, but rather self-cultivation. An Aristotelian education thus encompasses several things at once: freedom from desire and from subservience to others, and the practical capacity to live well in the society you’re a part of.
Adopting the Aristotelian position, college becomes not just a preparation for work, but also a preparation for life: an experience that should be as formative as one’s upbringing. When classes are made easy, however, this relationship is destroyed. William Schumacher PO ’18 addresses this best in their 2015 TSL article. Schumacher writes that an aspiring student journalist’s time “is probably best spent working for TSL,” but if their “academic work is too arduous,” they “wouldn’t have the time to do that.”
What Schumacher overlooks is that time devoted to pre-professional, resume-bolstering activities diverts time away from the critical academic study that helps students contextualize what any of the things they do mean to them in the first place. According to Pomona’s mission statement, the college both works to identify and address the intellectual passions of its students. A departure from classwork, I’d argue, does not provide sufficient time to address.
To continue Schumacher’s hypothetical, a journalism student could devote most of their time to TSL, but TSL is by itself not sufficient to answer the more fundamental questions that should precede, or at least accompany, such devotion: Why is journalism important? What kind of journalism is important? And is journalism itself my true vocation, or merely an expression of a much broader passion?
The student interested in journalism also needs, in the course of their life, to grapple with other non-pre-professional questions, like: Why is life important? What is my relation to the world, and how do I participate?
Pomona has the intellectual resources to help this type of student answer these questions — courses from media studies to political philosophy and ethics — with brilliant professors. However, it lacks the ability to attach real consequences to ignoring these resources.
This kind of failure at academic institutions can be detrimental to one’s life both during and after college. A 2024 study concerning the factors that contribute to a quarter-life crisis posits that “75% of adults between the ages of 25 and 33 experienced a quarter-life crisis,” induced by “uncertainty in their career choices, love relationships, and life accomplishments.” These uncertainties are ones that academics could have helped individuals prepare for, or at least consider, early on.
That is not to say Pomona doesn’t have challenging classes. For example, Professor Julie Tannenbaum’s Wellbeing and Autonomy, an introductory ethics course, was very difficult for me and fundamentally changed the way I think. Additionally, as an underclassman, my Pomona experience has largely taken place in introductory courses within a particular set of departments. My perspective on this issue is relatively limited.
This, however, should not excuse the fact that such an experience is possible in the first place. Academic rigor should be systemic, not partial, intro class or not. If Pomona boasts itself as an institution that advocates for the liberal arts, it should reflect that commitment with unequivocal academic rigor.