Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Hibush]

This thread continues the discussion inspired by an article in Chronicle of Higher Education.  The title always brings me back because I know the answer is no, but I want to see how the puzzle will be solved.


It was started by Wahoo last summer:
Link

There have been a series of articles in the CHE about this (editorials about marketing and job placement, even one with this very title), some behind paywalls.  This has also been discussed elsewhere and for various reasons.

I'm just wondering what peeps think.

Are the humanities doomed?

(PS---now's the time to vent, Polly)

The accompanying poll gave the following response:
Question:   Are the Humanities Doomed?

Yes.  Order the flowers.   -	18 (23.1%)
No.  I'm girding for battle.  Now where's my shield of rhetoric...?	31 (39.7%)
Maybe.  If they would only (insert below)	12 (15.4%)
I don't care.  The humanities were never important in the first place.	4 (5.1%)
Impossible to tell.  My crystal ball went offline.	13 (16.7%)

[/font]Total Voters: 78

The most recent contribution was from Tanit
Link

I imagine the other humanities would change to look more like mine, which is not a book field. Books get published, of course, and lots of people on the TT at R1s publish one towards the end of their tenure clock, but they're neither necessary nor expected for tenure. ....

It would be different, but I don't think it would be such a big deal. Then again, there's probably loads I'm not thinking about.

I think that a book, ideally, allows for the development of a longer argument, a deeper archive, a more far-reaching arc, than an article would. That is, in my field, people publish articles, and they also publish books, not (just) because books are required for advancement, but because these two forms do two different things. There are bad books that are simply a few articles stitched together, but they're bad precisely because they don't do the kind of work that a book, at its best, allows.

Some presses are experimenting with open-access electronic books - Cambridge, which is the top press in my field, has done so, for example. But as others have pointed out, e-books aren't free.

A good press adds value to a book, through activities that cost money, from things like editorial interventions, copy-editing, design... There are plenty of bad presses, and it may be that the model of the good university press is going to be harder and harder to sustain financially, but it's important to recognize what we'd lose, as well as what we might gain, when thinking about moving away from current traditional modes of publication.

Exactly this.

Related note: some top university presses are doing less and less of the value-added work.

[Hibush]

CHE now has a series on the humanities crisis. The latest installment criticizes an earlier piece that suggests infighting is the solution to the crisis. The original article criticized humanities faculty for excessive navel gazing in the face of extinction.

Engaging with the public (or a segment thereof) on its own terms does not seem to be part of the plan. I know many individual humanists who get that, so the idea's absence from the internal debate is conspicuous.

[Hegemony]

I'm at a loss for how to counteract the public perception that humanities majors are left jobless and in despair.  I see humanities majors with excellent jobs all around me, and our university websites are bristling with pages about all the career paths humanities majors choose.  And yet just today I read on a public forum, "But if you're an English major, you're stuck with teaching high school English, and there aren't enough jobs even for those people."  It's like a juggernaut of overly narrow and inaccurate perceptions.  Dunno how to combat it more effectively.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'm at a loss for how to counteract the public perception that humanities majors are left jobless and in despair.  I see humanities majors with excellent jobs all around me, and our university websites are bristling with pages about all the career paths humanities majors choose.  And yet just today I read on a public forum, "But if you're an English major, you're stuck with teaching high school English, and there aren't enough jobs even for those people."  It's like a juggernaut of overly narrow and inaccurate perceptions.  Dunno how to combat it more effectively.

Yeah, me too. That kind of talk is so pervasive that it's hard to know where to even start. I can think of plenty of things that might make small, local differences (among current students) but I can't see those measures resonating much more broadly. Even if we all implemented them, I'm not optimistic.

[Tenured_Feminist]

It's really frustrating. The pressure on high school students to go STEM is ridiculous, and from where I sit, it looks like at least some with little aptitude for math and science are heading that direction because they are getting a firehose of information that this is The Way to successful, lucrative careers.

[marshwiggle]

I'm at a loss for how to counteract the public perception that humanities majors are left jobless and in despair.  I see humanities majors with excellent jobs all around me, and our university websites are bristling with pages about all the career paths humanities majors choose.  And yet just today I read on a public forum, "But if you're an English major, you're stuck with teaching high school English, and there aren't enough jobs even for those people."  It's like a juggernaut of overly narrow and inaccurate perceptions.  Dunno how to combat it more effectively.

Yeah, me too. That kind of talk is so pervasive that it's hard to know where to even start. I can think of plenty of things that might make small, local differences (among current students) but I can't see those measures resonating much more broadly. Even if we all implemented them, I'm not optimistic.

Well, countering "adjunct porn" would be a start. If the public hear of (apparently) lots of people with PhDs in English living out of their cars, then it's natural to assume that people with only BAs in English must be worse off.

So if good career choices are readily available they need to be pointed out and contrasted with the bad ones that the public hears about.

[aside]

The pressure to go STEM has had a definite effect on recruiting in my field, as there are fewer parents wanting their students to major in music versus something they "can make a living doing."   At my research university, we get more and more requests for double majors or minors.  In the minds of parents, this will allow students to pursue what they love on the side while being trained for a career that will allow them to make a living.  Our graduates with music degrees do not become homeless street musicians!  Will they all land a plum job in professional performing organizations?  No, of course not.  Many will (I'm at a good music school), about half will become teachers in public schools (having been music education majors, for which our placement rate is near perfect), many others will set up their own private teaching studios while being "gig" musicians, others will land in music industry or other business jobs, others will become church musicians, others will pursue graduate degrees and fight the tough academic job market to become professors themselves, and not a few graduates from my school have gone on to law or medical school.  It has always been thus, but perceptions have changed.

[mamselle]

I blame Drug Discovery (lab science, not street drugs) for this.

The money supports those dedicated lab rats diligently searching for the means to combat this or that disease, or find the DNA transport mechanism for fixing this or that congenital condition (CF was a poster child for this...).

A dramatic narrative that has supplanted the Elixir of Youth with the OneTrue Cure has taken over, leading to funding pipelines with huge boluses of private as well as public money throbbing through them.

(However, parents should also be reminded, thst, as I saw, after working in several labs as an EA, the one consistent theme was, "Don't get too settled in, within three years there'll be lay-offs" so the steady income thing only works if you figure on living on half that income and saving the rest for the next job search...)

Instead of improving the quality of life as it is lived, with excellent music, well-constructed plays, absorbing visual arts and film, and motivating dance, the focus has skittered off to simply lengthening it (or, maybe we won't even all die, anyway?)

The parental drive to discourage musicians and keep them making steadier, more "honest" money has long been around (Plato saw us as "illiberal" because we have to practice to keep our careers alive...Leonard Bernstein's dad wanted him to take over the family mercantile business...) but it's become more pronounced of late, I think.

After years of lessons, majoring in independent programs focused on the arts, and playing jobs once out of high school, my dad, when asked a few years later what he'd thought I should do, still said, "I always thought you'd end up working in a lab somwwhere..."

M.

[SLAC_Prof]

It's really frustrating. The pressure on high school students to go STEM is ridiculous, and from where I sit, it looks like at least some with little aptitude for math and science are heading that direction because they are getting a firehose of information that this is The Way to successful, lucrative careers.

This is exactly what I've seen happen since 2009: cultural, familial, and peer pressures have combined to convince too many 17-year-olds that a STEM major is the only way to avoid poverty, which is both patently ridiculous and a gross misdirection of the interests and talents of a great many students. I frequently teach in our first year seminar program so am advising incoming students each fall...close to 2/3 now start out as pre-med or pre-engineering or comp sci, only to find 4-6 weeks in that they hate math, or can't grasp college-level chemistry, or that programming is not all about playing games, or are bored with biology, etc. Then they have these mini-crises about what to do with their lives, feel like they can't tell their parents, and almost reflexively decide to become business majors-- because that's the only other field they can imagine that will "guarantee" an income.

Meanwhile, several of our humanities departments have 99-100% placement in real jobs or graduate programs within three months of graduation, and if you look at the data on mid-career median salaries there are a lot of STEM fields that lag well below several humanities/SS disciplines (philosophy and economics, for example, are way above biology). But it's very hard to counter the combined lack of awareness and cultural pressure to follow the limited number of paths the general public assumes to be safe, which sets students up for failure or at least positions them to slog through a degree rather than pursuing something that actually interests them on a personal level (and might have better outcomes to boot).

[marshwiggle]

This is exactly what I've seen happen since 2009: cultural, familial, and peer pressures have combined to convince too many 17-year-olds that a STEM major is the only way to avoid poverty, which is both patently ridiculous and a gross misdirection of the interests and talents of a great many students.

Honest question: Are the media stories about humanities graduates being baristas and UBER drivers part of the problem, for perpetuating the poverty myth, or are they part of the solution for suggesting employment options that don't directly depend on a specific degree? Since most journalists probably have some sort of humanities background, they ought to be sympathetic.

[Hibush]

It's really frustrating. The pressure on high school students to go STEM is ridiculous, and from where I sit, it looks like at least some with little aptitude for math and science are heading that direction because they are getting a firehose of information that this is The Way to successful, lucrative careers.

This is exactly what I've seen happen since 2009: cultural, familial, and peer pressures have combined to convince too many 17-year-olds that a STEM major is the only way to avoid poverty, which is both patently ridiculous and a gross misdirection of the interests and talents of a great many students. I frequently teach in our first year seminar program so am advising incoming students each fall...close to 2/3 now start out as pre-med or pre-engineering or comp sci, only to find 4-6 weeks in that they hate math, or can't grasp college-level chemistry, or that programming is not all about playing games, or are bored with biology, etc. Then they have these mini-crises about what to do with their lives, feel like they can't tell their parents, and almost reflexively decide to become business majors-- because that's the only other field they can imagine that will "guarantee" an income.

Meanwhile, several of our humanities departments have 99-100% placement in real jobs or graduate programs within three months of graduation, and if you look at the data on mid-career median salaries there are a lot of STEM fields that lag well below several humanities/SS disciplines (philosophy and economics, for example, are way above biology). But it's very hard to counter the combined lack of awareness and cultural pressure to follow the limited number of paths the general public assumes to be safe, which sets students up for failure or at least positions them to slog through a degree rather than pursuing something that actually interests them on a personal level (and might have better outcomes to boot).

That first semester provides such a rich opportunity to make a sale. You have put your finger right on the solution. Students come in with a limited understanding of their options, they find that they are mismatched with with their first guess, and they now have some autonomy in deciding about their lives. That's when to market your program.

I'm in a field that grabs those who realize they are not going to be doctors. They usually have a great biology background and can do math. But they want to do something more creative and be among more humane people that the leading pre-meds. Having our student club do demonstrations in the quad about mid-semester gets them dreaming how cool it would be to major in our field. A couple intro courses that pander to non-majors (or would-be-majors) also brings in a good number.

This is also a field where there is a lot of low-pay work, so the median salary is in the barista range, but our alumni do very well because they are not filling the below-median slots.

I bet a lot of the comp sci majors are not that interested in programming theory. They like the games, or the structure, or being able to be your nerdy self among friends. Ripe for the picking!

What is cool about what's covered in philosophy or history or English to a reasonably smart 18-year old? From their perspective! Forget what the faculty thinks is cool. Show a huge mind-expanding contrast between what humanists actually do and what they know: memorizing dates and figuring out where to put a comma.

[spork]

The response to the third question in this author interview is relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/24/authors-discuss-their-new-book-moral-mess-higher-education. I have not read the book, and reader comments imply that the authors are ignorant of much of the research on higher ed, but on the ground I can tell you that requiring students to take an adjunct-taught, 100-level, lecture-based section of American History (for example) only reinforces the notion among U.S. undergrads that humanities are a nothing but a series of boxes to check.

[Tenured_Feminist]

The response to the third question in this author interview is relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/24/authors-discuss-their-new-book-moral-mess-higher-education. I have not read the book, and reader comments imply that the authors are ignorant of much of the research on higher ed, but on the ground I can tell you that requiring students to take an adjunct-taught, 100-level, lecture-based section of American History (for example) only reinforces the notion among U.S. undergrads that humanities are a nothing but a series of boxes to check.

Yup. We have tenured faculty do our 100s that count for gen ed. Our small number of adjuncts, mostly our own grad students, teach mostly at the 300 level and never gen ed. Every few years, we get crap from the admin because our faculty-per-student cost ratio is worse than our comparators, and we dust off the "yo, dudes, get a f*cking clue" memo.

[spork]

The response to the third question in this author interview is relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/24/authors-discuss-their-new-book-moral-mess-higher-education. I have not read the book, and reader comments imply that the authors are ignorant of much of the research on higher ed, but on the ground I can tell you that requiring students to take an adjunct-taught, 100-level, lecture-based section of American History (for example) only reinforces the notion among U.S. undergrads that humanities are a nothing but a series of boxes to check.

Yup. We have tenured faculty do our 100s that count for gen ed. Our small number of adjuncts, mostly our own grad students, teach mostly at the 300 level and never gen ed. Every few years, we get crap from the admin because our faculty-per-student cost ratio is worse than our comparators, and we dust off the "yo, dudes, get a f*cking clue" memo.

This is something I still do not understand. Putting highly-paid tenure-stream faculty in front of huge lecture sections  and the lowly paid adjuncts in classes with enrollments of one to two dozen students creates a lower average compensation per instructor per student cost ratio than the reverse.

[ciao_yall]

The response to the third question in this author interview is relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/24/authors-discuss-their-new-book-moral-mess-higher-education. I have not read the book, and reader comments imply that the authors are ignorant of much of the research on higher ed, but on the ground I can tell you that requiring students to take an adjunct-taught, 100-level, lecture-based section of American History (for example) only reinforces the notion among U.S. undergrads that humanities are a nothing but a series of boxes to check.

Yup. We have tenured faculty do our 100s that count for gen ed. Our small number of adjuncts, mostly our own grad students, teach mostly at the 300 level and never gen ed. Every few years, we get crap from the admin because our faculty-per-student cost ratio is worse than our comparators, and we dust off the "yo, dudes, get a f*cking clue" memo.

This is something I still do not understand. Putting highly-paid tenure-stream faculty in front of huge lecture sections  and the lowly paid adjuncts in classes with enrollments of one to two dozen students creates a lower average compensation per instructor per student cost ratio than the reverse.

I don't get it. If I were an upper-division or grad student I would be very annoyed if I were being taught by an adjunct. For my Master's I wasn't paying much attention, but for my EdD I was searching for dissertation advisors mentors.