The Humanities Are in Crisis
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
For decades in the US we have largely avoided the debate over whether college should be primarily vocational (income securing) or educational. We avoided the debate because for a long time having any degree served both purposes. Just going to college set you apart and raised your income regardless of what you studied (it still does statistically, but not as significantly as before).
The middle class was sold on college in the US largely on the promise of more income. Even if students in the 60s and 70s said income wasn’t important to them personally, certainly very few of their WWII generation parents would have ponied up the money without the promise of more income or security for their kids.
I don’t necessarily see this is as a crisis, kids really passionate about humanities will always pursue the humanities. The net effect of this is those classes will have fewer kids just there for their degree. This isn’t a bad thing. Better to graduate 100 kids really interested their fields than 1000 just there in hopes of landing a higher paying job.
If you time traveled back to 1980, when nurses were underpaid, but advertising, magazines, and newspapers were hot industries, and told them in fifteen years you’d make more money as a nurse than you would with an English degree they wouldn’t believe you. That’s not the world we live in anymore.
In principle I agree with this, but the economic reality of North American universities is that programs that don't draw a large enough income will lose to those that do. New programs are introduced based on how many people they can attract (the Market), not based on how necessary they are for the generation, preservation and transmission of knowledge.
Also, the idea that you can preserve anything from your armchair is laughable. If you knew the resources that go into preserving even one collection or digitizing a small set of works, you would be shocked. There have been a few people who have meaningfully preserved works outside of an institution of higher learning or a library system, but they are far outliers.
Now if the number of programs drops to such a degree that those actually excited and engaged in the humanities have nowhere to go, then it becomes a problem.
The original purpose of adjuncts were to evaluate academics for future positions, find the right fit for your department. Today those future positions aren’t there in most cases they are just cheap labor.
>The only bright spot is linguistics, the rare field that directly bridges the humanities and the sciences directly.
In my experience, the fact that linguistics is a humanity is just a historical quirk, and the fact that it does not pattern with the other humanities just shows that students are not blindly following the collages org. charts.
When I was in college, I added a linguistics minor because I wanted to have a science in addition to my math and computer science majors. I (and most of my class) was surprised when we learned that the linguistics was part of the College of Arts and Humanities. The linguistics classes I took in college were the clearest examples of what science looks like that I have had in my academic career.
I believe that's only a part of the equation: a number of students are starting to realize that the quality of what is being taught in US college humanities department is so bad and so politicized to the left that they're better off picking other subjects.
In other words, it's not just about bad economic value, it's about bad value overall.
There was a strong socialist strain across all my professors, more so in India than in the US. There was almost a disdain for regular employment. There was zero talk of how to actually go about finding work, or how the education could be applied to a regular job.
I was pretty entrepreneurial and managed to build a small business. But most of my classmates are still struggling, either eking out a living in poorly paid writing gigs, or working in academia in the hopes of landing a tenured position someday.
Humanities education is vital, but it really needs a long hard look at itself if it wants to remain viable.
Edit: As an aside, the positive part about my humanities education in India was that it was effectively free (tuition was $100/year). And my professors mostly had PhDs from top colleges like Oxbridge, Berkeley, etc.
The fact that I graduated debt free is one reason why I would still recommend people to go through with it if they have an interest in the humanities
Thank you for picking this word, made my day :)
I think this (more than even perhaps the Great Recession itself) is the determining factor in the 'crisis'... And probably a socioeconomic time-bomb to boot (from [1, caveat lector]):
> [...] Both "solutions" to the higher education crisis from the conservatives and the mainstream liberal consensus are in fact not solutions at all. The right wants to give up on educating the working and poor classes after high school, whereas the liberal position has become increasingly dangerous to the economic future of the younger generation via student debt.
I'm betting the next global recession will be student-loan driven. And with serious, non-trivial sociopolitical consequences (at least in the US).
--
[1] Creston Davis, "The Education Impasse in the USA". Counterpunch. August 21, 2018.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/21/the-education-impass...
Two exceptions, in theory, are History and Philosophy, because knowledge in these areas has the potential to improve the quality of thought and discourse. However, the views of most people on these subjects seem to be so guided by partisan identities that it's not clear that mere education can overcome that. People refuse to reason well because they want to fit in with their friends and family.
Like it or not we need excellent educators in ALL the humanities. That requires people with deep and diverse ways of being able to teach HOW to do it in as many different ways as possible. That means we need more exposure to more people. Discourse is hard and demanding.
Hell, being able to communicate and know without a doubt your message has been received is hard and demanding, but most people can't be bothered to admit it.
Without naming names, there are certain fields within the academic humanities that I think worthy of this die off (insert rant on postmodernism) to both free up resources and let the good parts be absorbed into adjacent fields.
The cultural/gender studies I tend to lump in as subsets of those major subjects. I used to laugh at them coming from a Sciences background only to find that any advancement I could make filled me with doubt that the world was ready to use it responsibly.
These fields are critical. We have no chance of being able to really breakthrough our major problems as a species without being able to understand what it means to be human, or even what the same damn mundane things look like from another culture or person's point of view.
Trying to hand off something so portentous as something like halfway successful ubiquitous facial recognition to a society so poor in the humanities as our society today is like letting an infant learn to walk in a minefield. If we can't even coexist with the people around us without trying to strip everyone of civil rights, or getting into pissing matches about borders, we've got a long way to go before we start messing around with massively disruptive technologies with high social impacts. The recent social media fiascos and trends toward weaponized disinformation causing panic and hysteria should be evidence enough that we as people need to pull back and shore up the basics so we can at least ATTEMPT to try to reconcile the new avenues of life opened up by global interconnectivity of data and logistics with some of our more basic fears and prejudices to which we are ALL still subject.
For heaven sake, with enough attention to detail, and a convincing enough Facebook profile, you can influence the sentiments of MASSES of people. It doesn't matter whether truth or lies... It gets said all the same. During Lincoln's time as President, he said something very poignant during the lead up to the Gettysburg address when he was staying at the Wills House, composing the Gettysburg Address.
>"In my position, it is important that I should not say foolish things...[If you can help it! Is exclaimed from the audience]...It very often happens the only way to help it is to say nothing at all!"
Imagine the horror he would experience to find out that we as a people have devised a technology that forces EVERYONE, not just one in a position of power to have to express the same torturous care in crafting our communications lest our "foolishthings" exact a cost through bloodshed or imprisonment?
None of that can be done without good communication, understanding, and empathy for your fellow man. We all don't have to agree, and war will always happen, but Goddamnit, we should be able to formulate a better excuse than "It's the war on <insert nebulous concept here>". That can only be done with a thorough understanding of the ways we communicate as people, cultures, artisans, polities, etc.
And EVERYONE has a duty to know this stuff, or at least be aware enough of it to keep themselves safe from those who would use it against them.
It isn't easy, but it is the only way.
I would agree with that.
But, we can do with 10x less humanities majors. Even if we start that process now though, it'll be decades before it's reasonable again.
> to reconcile the new avenues of life opened up by global interconnectivity of data and logistics with some of our more basic fears and prejudices to which we are ALL still subject.
I have actually studies Philosophy, and uh. I found it disappointing. It sounds good. We should be able to just reason our way to the next great paradigm shift, and adapt to it intentionally, in a controlled fashion. In order to do that we should study the past.
Except, when it comes to mathematical philosophy, there's 2 kinds of humanities majors:
Humanities majors that first got a PhD in mathematics (or some other scientific field). These have large contributions, but ... mostly to failed mathematical endeavors, like the axiom of choice and proving Turing wrong. But ... great contributions, it would be very wrong to say people like this didn't contribute. Note that pretty much every last antiquity philosopher we know falls in this category. I would also like to point out that it takes pretty exceptional people to achieve this. Most math professors can't do it. Most philosophy professors can't do this.
Pure humanities majors ... these have had many theories about math, physics even machine learning. Almost without exception, they were wrong. And worse, some of these people were great impediments to progress because they managed to get high positions in important universities ... and used them to sabotage advances, so there is an argument to be made that their sum total contributions are actually negative.
Studying the past doesn't work because of the same reason that a lot of statistical models fail. If you have data points A and B, "predicting" anything between A and B can work pretty well. However, what you want to do in the humanities, when you have A, B, C, D and then predict E ... that fails spectacularly more often than not. Again, same in statistics as in philosophy.
If the idea is for people to pull back from seeking credible opportunities and shore up "the basics" of History, English, Philosophy, Art, Art History, ... -- this is elitist and unrealistic. History provides little support for the idea, that societies pro-actively prepare themselves in this way. For most people, "the basics" are and always will be about working for a living.
The question of whether it's worth studying the humanities is orthogonal to the question of how many people we graduate into them.
Philosophy is a good test case. How many people should leave college each year to be philosophers, or even philosophy professors? Probably not very many (though I would be interested if you have a different answer); but that doesn't mean lots of people should not study philosophy.
Many people play golf. Yet few are professional golfers or golf instructors.
Now, in 2018, we have unthinkable prosperity compared to the feudal era. And yet, there is now this constant political pressure to get rid of the middle-class and have most people dedicate their lives to survival (a.k.a. "employability"). Don't take a year off work or it will look weird on your CV! Don't let the kids play freely, they must prepare for their Ivy League admissions! Etc, etc.
Isn't it the main purpose of technology to free humanity of labor, so that we can pursue higher interests? And yet, technology seems to demand that everyone works for technology now. Must have a fucking STEM degree! (I do, btw). Weird, no?
> But there’s an extremely important caveat: Students aren’t fleeing degrees with poor job prospects. They’re fleeing humanities and related fields specifically because they think they have poor job prospects. If the whole story were a market response to student debt and the Great Recession, students would have read the 2011 census report numbering psychology and communications among the fields with the lowest median earnings and fled from them.
IME Psychology and Communications attract students who are looking for an easy degree. Humanities majors are typically more rigorous than the Psych or Comm majors.
Psych/Comm attracts a lot of students who hate reading/writing and math equally.
> Or they would have noticed that biology majors make less than the average college graduate, and favored the physical sciences.
Again, IME, most of those bio majors are planning on med school, nursing, grad school, or teaching.
By the way the snobbery can run both ways: when I decided to go to MIT several of my high school classmates sneered that I'd chosen a "trade school" instead of a "real school". And indeed I got a degree in...humanities, like most of my HS classmates.
What? Did you attend high school in the fifties?
Not the 50s the 80s in Boston when it was pretty common to go to schools close by (New England/New York). And MIT didn't have the rep it has now (except among SF readers like I was) -- because engineering wasn't as worshipped.
Nowadays with the common app and common essay it’s easy to apply to lot s of schools. In those days every school had a unique application and needed different essays.
A friend of mine who works in the Harvard admissions office said to me once that things haven’t really changed: lots of people now apply just in case as it’s so easy, so once they toss the egregiously unqualified they end up picking through around the same number of applicants as they used to in the 80s. This was a convo at a bar so take it with whatever sized grain of salt you think appropriate.
I haven’t really bought the propaganda that the humanities provides unique value, beyond a general education.
I have to admit now though, when I observe the appalling lack of reasoning and critical thinking skills in the general public, that perhaps there is more value than I thought in having members of society educated in these apparently impractical areas of knowledge.
Just anecdotally speaking.
As a simple example of the kind of perspective I think we need more of, in the field of politics, having more citizens with backgrounds in sociology, history, psychology, government, philosophy might provide more sophisticated populace, who could bring helpful perspective to everyday political discourse.
Just a thought.
Less people with a strong sense of history?
Less people with a strong sense of words / communication?
While I hate to feel like I'm parroting MSM hyperbole, it's not the humanities that are in crisis. It's the culture's socio-political foundation that's faultering. Perhaps this is why (faux) outrage has replaced discourse?
Fewer.
Sorry, too easy. :)
(Compare the related http://fine.me.uk/emonds)
Sure, just choose to ignore that this "crisis" occurred at peak humanities.
We get just enormous access to so many things, all in the palm of our hand from almost anywhere. We can read, engage in meaty debate, watch movies, etc. all on a smart phone. Even a super cheap one.
Online forums allow for rigorous debate that previously was only found in colloquium at extremely elite colleges, like the tiny humanities school I wanted to attend but never applied because I didn't have enough foreign language to qualify.
On Hacker News, people routinely demand that you cite your sources. There are other forums with similar practices.
Meanwhile, that mostly doesn't seem to suffice for STEM subjects. I was one of the top three math students in my graduating high school class. I don't bother to identify as one of the mathy people on HN. Math discussions seem to be harder to have here than other subjects.
I don't know why that is. That's just my impression and I can't prove it.
Some subjects seem easier to soak up via online resources than others. And the STEM subjects are increasingly critical to making our internet infrastructure function and that infrastructure is increasingly part and parcel of other infrastructure. Department stores are dying as we increasingly shop online. You can't ignore the internet for most businesses these days.
Math discussion is harder because people cannot penetrate the language, while discussions in history or sociology is done in English, so people think they can participate by reading wikipedia or recalling some anecdotes from their high school teacher.
Also, STEM should really pay more attention to the humanities not only for ethical considerations of the science and technology they're working on, but also to learn how to communicate clearly. And to get them to understand that no, you do not understand history and what historians do simply because you can solve differential equations.
I did not declare a major my first year in college. My second year, the college was pressuring me to declare a major and I went with History because I had taken a bunch of history classes out of interest and it just so happened that my advisor was in the history department. I liked her and didn't want to change advisors. Declaring a history major was the easy answer.
I won some kind of award as, I guess, one of the top three sophomore history majors at the college. Then I dropped out of school. I later wrapped up an AA in Humanities because that was the easy answer for trying to lock in my old credits so I could go back to school some day without starting over completely from scratch. If you don't have any kind of degree, credits that are from too many years ago will not be accepted as transfer credit.
If you have a certain level of interest in the humanities, but no real desire to make a career of it, it is possible to slake that thirst these days without enrolling in an undergrad program to do it. This wasn't really possible a few decades back.
These days, you can "go down the rabbit hole" on the internet. You read an article and you find it interesting and you click on the links it contains to read more related material or you google up related info. Pretty soon, you can have 30 tabs open in your browser.
When I was a kid, the only way to do something akin to that was to spend hours and hours at a good library. (And you probably only had access to a good library and a good excuse to hang there all day if you were a college student.) The additional background info was not just a click away, with the author having handily provided you the link so you are absolutely sure he meant this use of the term and not some other use of it.
All I'm saying is that maybe the financial crisis alone is not the driving factor here. Maybe people feel freed up to prioritize getting an education that leads to well-paid work (or that they think will do so) because it is possible to get their hunger for other types of information met without pursuing a formal degree in it.
I want to be an urban planner or do similar work. Most Urban Planning degrees are Masters degrees. There are relatively few of them available at the undergrad level. So most professional planners have an undergrad degree in something else and humanities is fairly popular.
I'm a fan of the humanities and I currently pay my bills in part by doing freelance writing. I really enjoy writing and I do a lot of blogging. I am probably not the next J.K. Rowling. That's probably not the direction I will go.
But the reality is that if you have a certain level of interest, yes, you absolutely can get your need met by doing things like hanging out on Hacker News. For my purposes, Hacker News is better than going to a university. Most college classes do not provide the opportunity for vigorous debate.
I wanted to attend St. Johns in New Mexico.* It does a Great Books curriculum and has colloquiums. Most colleges don't have colloquiums. I have about six years of college education and have never taken part in one. But I can debate people on Hacker News and learn lots of valuable things from people who are well-read and knowledgeable on any number of subjects.
If I didn't have the internet, I would have to keep taking college classes to try to get my intellectual needs met. Given my medical handicap and other life details, that would be a problem. I would basically be losing my marbles from lack of ability to meet my intellectual needs.
I have good reason to believe this is true for a lot of people. For one thing, I was involved for a time in the online gifted community and it was a pretty common story.
If you have two needs -- one for a job that pays your bills and another more intrinsic need, such as intellectual hunger -- and a single path to meet either of them, the intellectual hunger may win out over the job aspirations. This is part of why we have the expression "starving artist." Never mind Maslow's Hierarchy, some people have a tremendous need to pursue certain things, and to hell with things deemed to be basic material needs.
If things change where a new path opens up to meet that intrinsic need, then it becomes easier to say "Oh, well, yeah, given the high cost of college and yadda, it only makes sense to pursue a degree that supports my desire to make an income that will allow me to live comfortably and I can pursue this other interest as more like a hobby."
I've known too many engineers who did just enough to get buy. They're always the first to get laid off, outsourced, etc.
There's a ton of work to be done in STEM fields, much of it fairly inglorious and grungy and therefore a good fit for that type of folks.
And I don't see this diminishing, quite the contrary: the complexity of the technical infrastructure of our modern societies grows exponentially over time.
Look at the perspectives and quality of discussion on the other. These are complex human societies with a rich history and context for their current reality just like any other country or region. And without a study of history, philosophy, sociology, a lot of the humanizing factors and a huge chunk of human societies and their evolution gets lost.
Things like the the change from feudalism to capitalism, the experiments with communism all have massive historical context and without at least a slight familiarity with that context its nearly impossible to have informed discussion.