One hopes the recently televised remarks of Sen. Jane Amero regarding the value of a University of Maine education are not reflective of the majority of our lawmakers.

She suggests the success — and ultimate “value” to the state — of the university be judged “by the number of graduates who actually find a job in the field they majored in.” Meeting some magic formula — some standardized quota, I suppose — earns greater state funding. (Among some, there is reasonable thought that even now the university’s current lack of respect and support may have resulted from its own lowered sights.)

When Sen. Amero’s narrowly fashioned criteria gain predominance, the Legislature will be able to save millions! Close the campus libraries, the arts, music and dance centers, the museums, the gymnasiums; fire the faculty who teach ethics, morality, philosophy, art, theater, logic, theoretical math, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Thoreau, Socrates and ancient theologies. Close the classrooms where debate, pure science, writing, reasoning, drawing, sculpting and ballet are taught. Eliminate all classes that waste time and our state’s limited resources on nonvocational trivia like critical thinking, foreign languages and cultural contrasts. Fire the nonrelevant staff who tutor and mentor. Fire the administrators who cultivate desperately needed private funding sources, organize and energize alumni and advise hundreds of outreaching student organizations.

We can save even more: Forget the other two requirements of higher education’s land-grant mission of public service and research. Do we really need a cooperative extension service to help farmers be more productive? Do we really need graduate programs that sensitize our concerns over the quality of the air or the purity of the Penobscot? Heck no. Learn a trade, get a job.

Voc-ed has its place and Maine has made great achievements here, thanks to significant support from the state, but there are separate and very distinct missions for each of Maine’s educational institutions and their very diversity deserves respect and support from the people we elect.

To narrowly appraise the value of an education from the University of Maine or any of its higher education affiliates solely on its ability to get a graduate an immediate job in his or her area of study ignores the reality that for generations, individuals with well- rounded, diverse and nonspecific educations have held a number of different jobs, have changed careers an average of five times in a lifetime and have survived, indeed succeeded, in a variety of fields. Further, because of — not in spite of — their diversity of experiences and broadly based interests, they have contributed substantial talents, energies and resources to the well-being of our communities, our state and our own neighborhoods.

If we are only to paint by the numbers, who will differentiate the work of the great masters for us to marvel?

James H. Goff lives in Bangor.