<p>Interesting article in today's NY Times</p>
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<p>People like Delbanco are part of the problem. At the university level, the humanities have been corrupted by excessive ideological consciousness and identity politics. They have been carved into little intellectual ghettoes in a misguided attempt to ape the research structure of the sciences, with poor results. No wonder many students are bored with the humanities and don’t see their relevance. Many professors were trained in the era of continental theory, for which the very category of “humanities” as a general study of world literary cultures and human nature was labeled a bourgeois myth. Now we are reaping what we have sown.</p>
<p>Not dead, just resting.</p>
<p>The loss of a canon (diversity is good but causes chaos in humanities if taken too far), the cost of college/loans, and recession are, I think, all factors.</p>
<p>But there are still students passionate about literature, theater, art history, music, philosophy…who are able to get jobs due to the discipline and skills gained, or go on to grad or professional school just fine.</p>
<p>The culture of the current generation seems practical and success oriented (I do get tired of the word “career,” how about “job”?). But there are good reasons for that. I am just glad that some still follow humanities as majors; those four years may be the only time to explore them.</p>
<p>Our society now looks at college as trade school. Ten minutes on this forum will show that most parents and kids use job prospects as a primary criteria for determining which college to attend and which subject to major in. So long as this mindset prevails, the humanities will suffer.</p>
<p>And oddly enough, the huge corporations I’ve worked for seem to be taking the opposite tack. Give me an entry level professional hire who can read critically, write a coherent three paragraph memo, can understand why China’s economic development differs from India (without reading Wikipedia)… boy, are these skills prized!</p>
<p>The best finance person I ever hired had a PhD in history. (We have a finance bootcamp where we teach the basics in two weeks). The best investor relations person I ever hired had a BA in psychology. Ah, the good old days…</p>
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<p>Humanities is a HOOK! Mini-stampede of CC kids to apply to Princeton as Classical Lit majors?</p>
<p>No. Next question?</p>
<p>Choatiemom, I agree we now have a trade school mindset prevailing about college for the student. However, I would say that as long as so many students are graduating with so much debt into such a difficult economy, this can only be expected to continue and to intensify.</p>
<p>The kids have to PAY for this education, and education is so expensive these days it is actually almost necessary for many students to think this way in order to be able to justify the cost to themselves.</p>
<p>The other mindset, while, to me, preferable, can only stand as long as college is affordable. College is no longer affordable, even at the state university level, in many/most states, these days.</p>
<p>Wow, finance bootcamp in 2 weeks. Very interesting.</p>
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<p>This is not new. Most bachelor’s degrees were granted in pre-professional majors even decades ago, although the share of liberal arts majors declined from 49.9% to 41.0% from 1971 to 2010. The share of humanities majors has remained roughly the same at around 17% over the years, except for a dip in the 1980s. The decline in percentage of liberal arts majors at the bachelor’s degree level has mainly been in the social studies and sciences.</p>
<p>[Bachelor’s</a>, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_289.asp]Bachelor’s”>Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10)</p>
<p>At an even higher level, if “college is not job training” (a common mantra around these forums), how many people would spend any money to attend college? Even liberal arts major bachelor’s degrees without major-specific job prospects are seen as being an upgrade in job prospects over a high school diploma.</p>
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<p>I like post #2 by NJSue. I think she hit upon the issue in the quote. The research structure of the sciences pays off, bottom line, and the humanities are trying to follow suit in a quest for money and relevance. The humanities used to produce Renaissance folk, as in people with broad interests. Thats a difficult task these days because of specialization. I wonder how much Humanities students feel like they have a grasp of the bigger picture now, as their profs and course material are so specialized. Departments are engaged in an arms race to out-number the competition with subject matter specialists and courses. Its the antithesis of what the humanities are supposed to be about.</p>
<p>Degree inflation and declining job prospects certainly doesnt help. A bachelors degree isnt worth what it used to be; a Humanities BA even less. So kids are looking for value, and more and more that means STEM. Back to the quote, the whole field needs to do a much better job at defining the payoff. In fact, they need to use that term as much as possible, the payoff, because at 50K+ how can you blame anyone for looking at a bachelors degree in financial terms?</p>
<p>But I had to laugh at the plight of Anthony Grafton, Princeton history professor, who sometimes feels like a newspaper comic strip character whose face is getting smaller and smaller.</p>
<p>rualum ,</p>
<p>There is no miracle in “2 week finance bootcamp”. They do exist and they are successful. The devil is in detail, as usual.</p>
<p>I saw such hiring many-man years ago. They hire Ph.D. students, mainly foreigners, with strong backgrounds in math. Many foreigners have very solid math skills. Keep in mind that economics is placed in Humanities dept in many universities. Couple it with the fact, that it is easier to get Ph.D. position in humanities than in math. Universities may have bright Ph.Ds in Economics (Humanities, by definition of some universities), that excel in math.</p>
<p>^ I legit looked up what phycology was.</p>
<p>No. Humanities is not dead.</p>
<p>I think humanities shall adopt an open policy, when they teach a la carte, not for a major. They should open courses just for fun, as pass/non pass. This way many students (and professional adults) may enjoy taking a class or two. </p>
<p>For example, I would love an opportunity to take class in Phycology. However, I won’t suggest my D. to major in Phycology.</p>
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<p>(As far as major-specific job prospects go, more like TEM, not STEM…)</p>
<p>[Bachelor’s</a>, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_289.asp]Bachelor’s”>Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10) indicates that the percentage of bachelor’s degrees in science has been slowly declining, while CS and engineering became much more popular in the 1980s but have been slowly declining since then.</p>
<p>Other pre-professional majors increased in popularity greatly in the 1980s and have held steady (business) or slowly increased (other majors) since then.</p>
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<p>This has been going on since before the Wilamowitz/Nietzsche fallout. What’s new now?</p>
<p>Not to mention, the demand for wissenschaftliche rigor is the main thing holding back the ideological and political trends you don’t like. It might surprise you, but continental theory classes are fairly popular with undergrads. For some departments it’s the biggest enrollment they get outside of intro language or writing classes.</p>
<p>It might also surprise you that faculty hiring committees seldom care one way or the other about it. New hires in every field I’m familiar with get made based on meticulous published research, ideally with original archival work.</p>
<p>Deleuze-Guattari obsessives in grad school often don’t make it out of ABD. If they do it’s for work independent of Deleuze-Guattari obsession.</p>
<p>My major concern with humanities is PC. They try to be controversial and discuss controversial material. Thus they are limited to students that agree with Profs. political views (often extreme left). </p>
<p>Unfortunately for humanities, </p>
<ol>
<li>Immigrant kids often don’t care about particular issues that are dear to Profs.</li>
<li>Many kids from poor families want to get job skills and don’t have a luxury of spending time on demagogues.</li>
<li>Kids from religious families don’t feel comfortable discussing some issues. </li>
<li>many students from wealthy families don’t like progressive view.</li>
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<p>Humanities, trying to serve humanity, diminished their own base. They preach “war on rich”, and they want rich folks to sponsor them? Is it sane?</p>
<p>Hand-wringing humanities professors are not good at math – duh!! As Nate Silver and others point out, humanities really has not declined much if at all.</p>
<p>The number of kids attending college has grown as a 4 year college degree has become an expanded/diluted credential. Many of the new kids coming to the college party are not so focused on academics as on career. In previous generations, they would not have attended college at all. Now they attend college but opt for nursing, accounting or criminal justice (not english).</p>
<p>But a nice story to tell (which is what english majors like me do). Just not supported by the numbers.</p>
<p>“There’s only one problem with those insistent accounts of the decline of the humanities in undergraduate education: They are wrong. Factually, stubbornly, determinedly wrong.”</p>
<p>[The</a> Humanities, Declining? Not According to the Numbers. - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“The Humanities, Declining? Not According to the Numbers.”>The Humanities, Declining? Not According to the Numbers.)</p>
<p>California- I’ve lived in a lot of places and have never lived near a university which did not allow local adults to audit classes, attend lectures or symposia, or participate in art openings, musical performances, etc.</p>
<p>Which university doesn’t allow for that?</p>