Merrimack College’s new approach (“Giving it the new college try,’’ Page A1, July 18) is neither new nor laudatory. I taught there from 1965 to 1985. During earlier years the school’s mission was to introduce, to educate its blue-collar constituency in the liberal arts and sciences. As a professor in a developing English department dedicated to writing and literary study, and in a humanities division offering team-taught courses, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, in history, fine arts, classical literature, philosophy, and theology, I taught students who continued their education in law school, medical school, social services, broadcasting, even politics, as well as in graduate work and teaching in English.

By the 1980s the school’s mission became “pragmatic,’’ catering to those equating college with vocational training. Our English majors dropped from about 50 graduates to 10, our department declining toward a service department. Because of my scholarly publications, which were of little consequence at Merrimack, I was invited to Brigham Young University and spent the next 22 years where the liberal arts were still valued.

It is lamentable that a college identifying as Catholic has in fact a history of moving away from the traditional liberal arts. The drift, national really, has much to do with our loss of ideals.

John J. Murphy

Newton Centre