DEAR EDITOR:

The idea of closing universities across Ohio isn’t bold reform; it’s intellectual disarmament.

When Vivek Ramaswamy proposes dismantling public institutions like Youngstown State University, it’s framed as an efficiency or a necessary correction. But beneath that language is something more troubling: a willingness to strip communities of the very infrastructure that makes civic life, economic mobility and human creativity possible.

In places like Youngstown, a university is not a burden; it is a lifeline. It trains nurses who staff local hospitals, teachers who anchor school systems, and engineers who help rebuild regional industry. It supports small businesses, fuels research, and offers first-generation students a path into stability. To close, it is not to “optimize” Ohio, it is to hollow it out.

There’s a deeper cultural current driving these ideas, one that aligns with a broader MAGA-era skepticism, if not outright hostility, toward higher education, especially the arts and humanities. These disciplines are often dismissed as expendable, impractical, or even subversive. But that critique misunderstands their role entirely.

The arts and humanities are not luxuries. They are how we make meaning. They teach us how to interpret the world, question power, understand histories that shape present inequalities, and imagine futures that don’t yet exist. They cultivate empathy, the ability to see someone else’s experience as real and worthy of consideration. Without that, what remains of our humanity?

A society that devalues these fields doesn’t become more efficient; it becomes more brittle. It loses its capacity for reflection, for nuance and for dialogue. It trades depth for immediacy, and inquiry for ideology.

In regions like the Mahoning Valley, this loss would be especially acute. Youngstown has already endured the consequences of disinvestment: industrial collapse, population decline and decades of being told its best days are behind it. Youngstown State University has been part of the region’s response, not its problem. It represents adaptation, resilience, and the belief that reinvention is still possible through education.

Closing universities in the name of progress misunderstands what progress actually requires. It is not achieved by contraction, but by investment, especially in people. And people are not commodities or economic units. They are thinkers, creators and engineers who need education that prepares them not only to earn a living but to live with purpose, awareness, and connection.

If we dismantle institutions that nurture those capacities, we are not streamlining the future; we are shrinking it.

Ohio doesn’t need fewer universities. We need stronger, more accessible ones and a renewed commitment to the full spectrum of education, including the disciplines some are quickest to discard. Because in the end, this isn’t just about budgets or policy frameworks. It’s about whether we still believe that being human, curious, expressive and reflective is something worth investing in.

EMILY WIRE

Youngstown