The University Professors Program is important in both its structure and culture within Boston University. Structurally, UNI provides the means by which selected students can receive a proper humanities-based education through a series of core courses as well as close interaction with top faculty who not only teach classes but also provide guidance to the student in the courses he takes, fields he focuses on and subjects he writes and thinks about.

And it is this structure which lends itself to what I am going to call the “UNI special expectation.” There is an expectation in UNI that you do not find elsewhere, even at so-called “elite” institutions, an expectation that the student is there to do more than take classes and choose a program of study which logically reflects his interests, eventually culminating in some form of reasonable meaning. More than that, a UNI student is expected to synthesize his classes and the content of each in his mind, relate one to the others and make sense into a cohesive whole the many parts of his education. Contemplate not just what all the great authors or philosophers thought, but what he thinks about them and where the next step in the progression of thinking goes. And beyond that, it’s where you’re expected to add something yourself to whatever field you’re studying. Add a translation, add a poem. Add a new interpretation of the dialectical imperative, or apply it to sub-prime mortgage lending.

 At UNI there’s that added expectation that you will be the next contributor to the field you are studying, and even if this doesn’t end up happening, it’s that expectation that makes UNI structurally important. If you remove this structure, you remove BU’s most promising incubator for humanities-centered innovation, as well as its most exceptional promise to provide students with the tools to innovate beyond the humanities.

 UNI is also important culturally. It is a small school in a large, impersonal university. Simply as a function of its size, it lends some badly needed academic elitism (if that word can be used in a positive light) to the university. Historically, it has been used as a means to attract renowned faculty who might otherwise not be inclined to come to BU, and I see no reason why UNI has outlived its usefulness in this regard. Not only do you have the attraction of being part of a specialized school within the university, but potential professors also like the fact that UNI tends to attract more ambitious, rigorous students, which is probably why it frequently gets confused with an honors program. But honors program or not, UNI students are a draw for most professors, particularly for those who only teach reluctantly.

And this cultural importance helps the university broadly. Contrary to an earlier letter to the editor that claimed that only 0.7 percent of the student body had access to UNI resources (“New honors program needs time,” Oct. 31, p. 4), students in other schools may take nearly all UNI non-core courses. Also, the renown of the faculty raises the standards and profile of everyone at the university, with prospective graduate students all the more attracted to study at BU, in some cases even foregoing opportunities to study at graduate programs with far greater resources than BU simply to work with these University Professors. Better graduate students attract better professors, and so on in an upward spiral.

 You see, what UNI provides is some badly-needed acknowledgement of academia itself and its value as milieu and zeitgeist. Every institution serious about its place not just as a provider of quality general education but also as an elite academic center must make some contribution to academia as such to signal to other elite institutions that the concept of intellectualism and thought as their own ends is not ignored. And indeed, to that end, UNI is relatively well-known and well-respected in academic circles, the more so through time as more of its alumni make their mark in other institutions’ graduate programs. To pull the rug from under this growing achievement, to pull the rug from under this establishment of academic reputation, is a miscalculation, I believe. I don’t think the fallout from “phasing out” what essentially represents the crown jewel of the university’s demonstrated commitment to undergraduate education, to the attraction of top students and faculty, has been fully considered.

 I can’t imagine that, in particular now, with the university surely desirous of maintaining its reputation as an academically rigorous and serious institution, we would really want to dismantle the school which brought so much — far more than its fair burden — of the university’s overall quality reputation in the first place. If the school’s overall reputation suffers, all of us — CAS students, COM students, GRS students — will suffer, holding degrees that will be worth that much less in the marketplace.