Robert VerBruggen has a marvelous one paragraph summary of the current state of the study of the humanities in the modern university, summarizing Christopher Orlet's review of Anthony Kronman's book Education's End (got that?):
He makes the case that humanities are trending down for three reasons. One, in a tougher economy, it's not really worthwhile to spend a ton of money learning about the meaning of life instead of preparing for a career. Two, PC has taken away whatever value such moral studies used to have. Three, rather than grapple with big questions, the humanities have been focusing on minutiae.
I read Tony's book this past fall and thought it very good and very insightful. Kronman's analysis of the crippling effects of political correctness on the humanities is especially powerful. Kronman also presented the inaugural Janus Lecture this spring for the Daniel Webster Program at Dartmouth. I recommend the book for those interested in higher education today.
I don't recall Tony actually making point one above (that it is not worthwhile to spend a ton of money learning about the meaning of life) and it doesn't seem consistent with my take away from the book. The point itself, however, seems quite valid whether it is Kronman's or Orlet's. The three factors, of course, are mutually reinforcing--the triviality and PC'ness of much of the humanities contributes to the perception that they are a waste of time compared to the task of human capital development.
I remember hearing the same thing about a good economy in the late 90s - no one wanted to go into the humanities because there was so much money to be made with a "real" degree.
So, which is it? Or both - people are only interested in the humanities when the economy is in the middle: neither booming nor busting. Has anybody ever done any research on this?
Haven't read the book, so I'm sorry if he covers this.
I'm not sure I buy this particular point. Our current economy is "tougher" relative to what? The economy of the mid-nineties? If that's the comparison, the implication is that the humanities were booming along with the economy back then. But I've never heard anyone argue that the 1990s were especially prosperous for the humanities.
If the toughness is that the percentage of the population landing college degrees has skyrocketed over the last several decades, and the result has been increased competition for post-collegiate jobs, the point may stand. But Prof. Zywicki's wording seems to indicate a much more general claim: "it is not worthwhile to spend a ton of money learning about the meaning of life". If that's true now why wasn't it in the past?
I don't know much about the humanities in general, so I can't really discuss whether the other factors supposedly leading to the humanities' decline. They sound reasonable enough to me.
Interestingly, a recent play by Alan Bennett entitled The History Boys is set in the early 80s and raises the same issues. I suspect these issues have been with us for a long time, and well before PCness crept into college campuses.
", it's not really worthwhile to spend a ton of money learning about the meaning of life instead of preparing for a career."
Anyone who thinks that the liberal arts are about learning the meaning of life shouldn't be teaching them anyway. The best teachers always taught about art, literature, music, poetry, history, languages and so on NOT because they have any practical value (although they might have some), but because of its worth knowing for it's own sake.
That these subjects teaches one critical analysis and better thinking is a great value as well, but if one studies these subjects only for that reason, one is bound to not do terribly well in any case.
I think that what is happening is even broader than this. As our economy turns more technological and quantitative partially because of globalization and the tech boom. It seems like someone coming out of the humanities starts out further and further behind the curve. Kind of a "World is Flat" phenomenon.
Heck, look at the Sokal affair. Not even tenured critical studies scholars could tell they were reading nonsense.
Anyone suffering through freshman Race, the World, and American Evil is going to realize that any humanities class is going to be about evil middle class Americans and why they need to be punished-- without any shred of facts or logic.
I don't think it was som much the case in the past. The cost of a college education has outstripped inflation so badly over the course of the last 25 years that the decision to study business, pre-med, or engineering makes sense. And I have three Humanities degrees.
Porlock has it right, at least when it comes to elite universities: They want to run-up the endowment, so they chanre 7% more every year. (Plus "fees.") Faculty can bitch and moan about the lack of interest in Classical Languages or Art History. But the full- and chaired- faculty are NOT volunteering to teach an exxtra calss to save money. Nor to take a pay cut in order to hold tuition in check. So why should the students care if the professors don't?
In the end, we don't really have a good, working definition of what it is that an American goes to college FOR, other than "to get a better job" than he'd have if he didn't. This has driven supply of degree programs, while watering-down the academic component of the curriculum. But why not? Again, there is no sense that a person with a baccalaureate will have any common set of abilities, skills, or knowledge. What is required is the credential. (Ed. programs should be sufficient evidence of this fact.)
I don't want my children to major in a trade. But I also don't want them to starve. So when my oldest--he's 10--tells me that science is his favorite subject, I sleep better at night.
Looking back, I also am glad I took Shakespeare and Plato. Somewhat for what those classes taught and somewhat for learning why our America is the way it is.
Seriously, though, those were the professors I admired most. It always seemed to me that my Eastern European profs knew every language in the world, though this was cleary a type of hero-worship.
Those types of courses were my favorite as well. But now one of the universities I attended doesn't even offer first year Latin anymore. And my Classicist father-in-law was bought-out in an early retirement scheme some eyars ago, sonce they didn't want a Latin teacher at his school. If the admin. have decided not to offer Latin, what would you DO with your Latinist? Gotta get rid of him.
The way he tells it, that once upon a time, College was about learning, about gaining a well-rounded education that exposed you to different ways of thinking. Critical thinking skills.
When you went to apply for a job, it didn't so much matter what your degree was, only that you had one. Liberal Arts/Humanities were important and valued.
Post WWII, colleges began specialize more. Employers began looking for specific degrees/majors. It has accelerated even more in the past 30 years.
An ex-girlfriend once tried to defend her choice of a Bachelors in English saying "it used to be a really good degree for a lot of different jobs". That may have been true, but now it is a gateway for a graduate degree in your specialty or to teach high school english classes.
The marketplace is demphasizing liberal arts degrees, are we suprised that students follow suit?
Perhaps this is true. But I can assure you as an engineering Ph.D. student that at either the baccalaureate or Ph.D. level, what people do after they graduate is only tenuously connected to what they are trained to do in school. Most B.S. chemical engineers do not design petrochemical plants. (Despite reform efforts, the idea still permeates the curriculum that the design of a petrochemical plant is the apotheosis of chemical engineering.)
At the Ph.D. level, my experience is that one's education and one's career are even more likely to be disconnected. Many of my chemical engineering Ph.D. classmates are interested in banking, finance, management, or computing. (And here I was thinking that the Ph.D.'s primary purpose was to train you for career in scholarly research!)
So in short I agree that post-WWII employers started to look for certain skills more than in the past, but it seems to me that the skills in demand are not quite so specialized. Mathematical skill, be it algorithmic reasoning (think computer programming) or computational ability, seems to be the kernel of it.
I can't think of a more secure position in a company than diversity officer. They often pull down a decent salary, too.
Think of them as the "Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice", but now atheists can play too.
Ryan Waxx says: "I can't think of a more secure position in a company than diversity officer. They often pull down a decent salary, too."
This is very true. Michelle Obama got over $300K to be a diversity liason at a Chicago Hospital. How stupid is that?
BUT, and this is very important, the grievance-based programs train students only for winner-take-all jobs. The end game is to be a tenured professor or professional diversicrat, but if you fall short it is truly rough going. It would be as if the only job available to law students was tenured law professor; 1% of graduates would end up employed. Oh, and don't even bother applying to be a diversity officer if you aren't black or hispanic.
Mark my words, this phenomenon will be the end of the ultra left-wing academic industry. This group is impervious to crticism from those outside it's ranks. However, they will have to face up to a whole bunch of jaded former pupils who once had dreams of getting paid to tell people what is good and what isn't but are now manning a coffee grinder. The full effect will be seen in 5-10 years (if that) when their children go to college. Under no circumstances will the parent allow their kids to repeat their mistakes. Even if the kids don't listen, the parents will still turn on the professors and the programs in the public arena.
There are certain characteristics among the members of my generation that will will lead to huge sociological change across America. First and foremost is the gap between where young people want to end up in life and the path on which they are headed. Almost everyone seems to think they are a star, and it is axiomatic that most are headed for dissapointment. In this sense, I really think the contentless programs and left-wing educators will cause their own demise.
If you are attending college to learn a trade (and have some drunken fun), then what trade would you associate with the humanities? Academia and politics/law. No wonder students who are looking for career track stay away in droves.
Employers have bought into this mindset as well by thinking that they must hire grads with a background in the field in which they will be working rather than looking at the college education as an indication that the grad has an able mind and will be able to be trained to do job tasks well.
Of course this is a mistaken apprehension. History grad students are much sought after by intelligence agencies as analysts because of the skills their discipline has taught them. It seems to me that those skills would also be valuable in strategic business management. Philosophy also prepares students for decision-making positions. Anthropology and sociology can prepare students to operate in other cultures and be a real asset to a global company.
Even as an ardent supporter of the liberal arts, however, I have to admit that "angry studies" (woman, black, hispanic, gay) seem nearly as useless to me as schools of education.
That is because most low level philosophy courses are either logic or history of philosophy. Even if your area of research is in some trendy PC field, ethics (as one example) is still going to be Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Mill, and Rawls. What they wrote hasn't changed.
Besides, if you've gotten a PhD in philosophy, you've been exposed to so much skepticism that it's like an immunization. Epistemologists aren't even sure knowledge exists so why get excited over your belief in some loony idea from the left?