Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Hibush]

The other issue that will confound with Polly's fabulous humanities sequences is the push for AP/IB/dual enrollment in HS. We are seeing more and more students arriving on campus with most of the Gen Ed courses already completed. If you are some sort of STEM major, those Gen Eds ARE your opportunity to explore the humanities. So these students lose out on that opportunity because they "completed" the Gen Eds before arriving. And of course today's financial aid won't let you take an extra class "for fun".
   As an FYI, this also causes downstream problems as well. These STEM students can't space out humanities courses among their science courses. Which is how we end up with first year students enrolled simultaneously in Intro Chem, Intro Bio, Intro Physics, and Calculus all in the same semester. I've seen it happen.

That was my first-term schedule exactly. I loved it. Spring term, I signed up for a poetry class. The first day the TA read a poem...while leaping about and using some really odd meter. I dropped it immediately out of fear, and signed up for something where I could just sit safely and take notes.

Having to get at least a couple breadth requirement in, I realized that the interesting liberal-arts classes were all full of liberal arts majors. There was no way I was going to be able to compete against them gradewise. I couldn't take that kind of risk with my GPA! (Thank you community college summer classes for getting me out of that one.)

My wish for current students is that they don't need to follow the line of reasoning I used as an undergrad.

[Parasaurolophus]

Having to get at least a couple breadth requirement in, I realized that the interesting liberal-arts classes were all full of liberal arts majors. There was no way I was going to be able to compete against them gradewise. I couldn't take that kind of risk with my GPA! (Thank you community college summer classes for getting me out of that one.)

My wish for current students is that they don't need to follow the line of reasoning I used as an undergrad.

That can be a real problem, yeah. I think it's especially important for those of us teaching in discovery majors to realize that they're discovery majors, and that we shouldn't be chasing students away. The goal of these courses is to drive interest, not to keep the barbarians behind the gates. Besides, at least in my field, nobody does especially well at first. The liberal arts majors don't do appreciably better than the science majors.

To my mind, we should be rethinking the structure of our assignments to reflect the fact that so many of our students come to us very differently prepared. So, e.g., for classes I teach where I can expect significant non-major enrollment, one thing I do is offer scaffolded assignments that build up to one longer term paper, and I allow my students to rewrite their work for a better grade. The result, in those classes, has been overwhelmingly positive. Even in very large classes, it hasn't actually translated to much more work for me, either.

But we also need to do a better job advertising our offerings to students who might otherwise be intimidated. For pretty much any X, there's a philosophy of X course which the philosophy department could be teaching to students majoring in X; for those who are afraid of writing but are mathematically inclined and need the humanities credit, logic could be a real option. But nobody is going to take those classes if they don't know about them. Just putting up posters in the relevant departments can make a huge difference, as can preparing a departmental cheat sheet for academic advisors.

[apl68]

The other issue that will confound with Polly's fabulous humanities sequences is the push for AP/IB/dual enrollment in HS. We are seeing more and more students arriving on campus with most of the Gen Ed courses already completed. If you are some sort of STEM major, those Gen Eds ARE your opportunity to explore the humanities. So these students lose out on that opportunity because they "completed" the Gen Eds before arriving. And of course today's financial aid won't let you take an extra class "for fun".
   As an FYI, this also causes downstream problems as well. These STEM students can't space out humanities courses among their science courses. Which is how we end up with first year students enrolled simultaneously in Intro Chem, Intro Bio, Intro Physics, and Calculus all in the same semester. I've seen it happen.

This reminds me of what happened to me when I was an undergrad in the 1980s.  Only there it was the other way around--I tested out of all of our school's (evidently rather limited) math and science GED requirements and never took a STEM course in college.  Something I've regretted since.  That said, I COULD have taken a couple of such courses for fun if I'd chosen to.  I just didn't think at the time that any of that looked like fun.

I guess in today's climate STEM fields don't have to worry too much about recruitment, as opposed to retention.

[polly_mer]

I guess in today's climate STEM fields don't have to worry too much about recruitment, as opposed to retention.

Actually, we have a very frustrating recruitment problem in that people who are very curious and capable often will settle on a humanities major very early in life and say nice things about science fan activities, but not then continue on the path to be, say, highly specialized engineers or engineering faculty.  Many of the people who could do very well in those areas are also very capable people in many other areas.  Even the very capable people who pick the broad category of STEM often go the medical route instead of an engineering route.

Instead, we have droves of folks who like the idea of a lot of money right out of college, but don't have either the passion to do something interesting or the diligence to plod along.  Thus, the retention problem we have at the college level isn't trying to keep people who never should have been in certain majors in the first place through graduation.  After all, even with huge attritions, we graduate many engineers every year.

The biggest retention problem discussed in areas I frequent is the women who complete an engineering BS and then go do something completely unrelated to engineering for their entire careers.  After all, if college major doesn't matter to the job, then someone who has a solid math background, some computer skills, and some work experience (not just a good GPA) is a great candidate for all kinds of jobs that rely more on personal interest, diligence, and willing to learn new things that often have liberal arts majors, but don't rely on in-depth specific knowledge.

One very readable article: https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field

[Hibush]

I guess in today's climate STEM fields don't have to worry too much about recruitment, as opposed to retention.

The biggest retention problem discussed in areas I frequent is the women who complete an engineering BS and then go do something completely unrelated to engineering for their entire careers.  After all, if college major doesn't matter to the job, then someone who has a solid math background, some computer skills, and some work experience (not just a good GPA) is a great candidate for all kinds of jobs that rely more on personal interest, diligence, and willing to learn new things that often have liberal arts majors, but don't rely on in-depth specific knowledge.

This phenomenon may yet be good for society. Having women with engineering training in many pursuits makes a lot of things work better.

I run into former engineers in many places, and really enjoy working with them. For instance, I am on a civic board on which the chair has an engineering BS, and worked for an engineering firm for some time. Now she's in finance (where they could use more engineers, BTW.) I find that the engineering mindset and training are helpful in thinking through problems of all kinds logically, gathering relevant data, and being relatively predictable. Those attributes result in good policy, as well as power and influence.

In thinking about the effectiveness of an engineering program, it could be worthwhile to investigate the value of the training for the "no longer in engineering" demographic.

[polly_mer]

I'm interested in the question of whether the humanities are doomed and what needs to be done partly because we have some similar aspects in engineering and the parts of STEM that are highly dependent on people spending years learning the math, then learning the textbook parts that rely on the math, and then tackling the real-world problems that require teams of diverse people where the solutions can't be found in textbooks and won't be found in just one discipline.

A huge similarity is having people who had a life plan and are now significantly off that plan along with whether being off that plan is a joyful contribution to society or a very painful retreat upon being crushed by parts of an uncaring system.

I guess in today's climate STEM fields don't have to worry too much about recruitment, as opposed to retention.

The biggest retention problem discussed in areas I frequent is the women who complete an engineering BS and then go do something completely unrelated to engineering for their entire careers.  After all, if college major doesn't matter to the job, then someone who has a solid math background, some computer skills, and some work experience (not just a good GPA) is a great candidate for all kinds of jobs that rely more on personal interest, diligence, and willing to learn new things that often have liberal arts majors, but don't rely on in-depth specific knowledge.

This phenomenon may yet be good for society. Having women with engineering training in many pursuits makes a lot of things work better.

I run into former engineers in many places, and really enjoy working with them. For instance, I am on a civic board on which the chair has an engineering BS, and worked for an engineering firm for some time. Now she's in finance (where they could use more engineers, BTW.) I find that the engineering mindset and training are helpful in thinking through problems of all kinds logically, gathering relevant data, and being relatively predictable. Those attributes result in good policy, as well as power and influence.

In thinking about the effectiveness of an engineering program, it could be worthwhile to investigate the value of the training for the "no longer in engineering" demographic.

I agree as long as:

a) the individual situation is such that the person making the individual choice is going towards something good instead of away from something bad.
b) we're still left with enough engineers doing engineering things in depth instead of only having novices passing through on their way to something else good in society.

In my tiny area of employment, we're really, really, really worried about situation b as the Baby Boomers start retiring in droves and it turns out we don't have enough Gen Xers or enough front-wave Millennials in mid-career positions ready to step up and replace.  We're also really worried about a lack of diversity in people who stay as engineers because a good technological solution that will be adopted by large numbers of people is better than the absolute best technological solution that is adopted by practically no one for humanistic reasons.  SPADFY is huge and a handful of humanities, fine arts, and social science college classes is no substitute from different lived experiences as perspective on what should be done with what is in accord with physical reality and feasibleness with resources.

For decades, we had diversity of lived experience through international students and now that's changing as well.  In some STEM specialties including CS and computational engineering/physical science, we're short on graduate degree holders period, but very worrying is the shortage who want to teach.  In some instances, we're even short on graduate degree holders who want to do research in academic settings and are willing to teach.  Again, we used to have international students who came and stayed so they often took academic jobs, but that's changing and we're now short.


Thus, while we have a lot of bachelor degrees awarded, we don't have a lot of practitioners nor are we doing great at moving folks from initial interest through to deep knowledge that only comes after decades invested in study.

[polly_mer]

A larger question, perhaps also not yet addressed, is 'Are institutional structures the best or only places for learning some/much/all of what the humanities teach?

I just read "The Anti-College is on the Rise" (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/college-anti-college-mainstream-universities.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage) and wondered if that's a viable path or if the demand for that kind of education is so small that a handful of programs will cover it.

[marshwiggle]

One very readable article: https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field

One very interesting point from the article:

Women were also much more likely to look to others—teaching assistants, professors, and advisors—to affirm, and reaffirm, their confidence. Men did talk about doubting themselves, but they did not necessarily seek reassurance from others. We found that this search for positive cues carried over into expectations for feedback from supervisors in internships and jobs.

This raises an interesting paradox: if women have more of a need to be affirmed, in order to build their confidence, then putting programs in place to provide them that sort of affirmation confirms and continues the situation. (I say this as someone with a daughter in engineering, and as someone who encourages all kinds of female students in STEM.) The only way around this I can see is if programs equally provide affirmation for both men and women, so that the differences are not perpetuated.

[apl68]

The article about the closing of Newbury College that Polly linked to on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread had an interesting couple of paragraphs about history and the other liberal arts disciplines.  They're good at training students for leadership.  And access to them is now increasingly being limited to children of rich families at Ivy League schools.

[pgher]

The article about the closing of Newbury College that Polly linked to on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread had an interesting couple of paragraphs about history and the other liberal arts disciplines.  They're good at training students for leadership.  And access to them is now increasingly being limited to children of rich families at Ivy League schools.

I think your last sentence is the key. Whenever I see this thread, I think, "No: we're ALL doomed." I believe we will look back on the latter half of the 20th century as an aberration. Used to be that only the rich received education, and soon that may once again be the case.

I'm an engineer, and as stated elsewhere, engineering curricula are weird. Until my son went to an Ivy, I didn't realize how weird. I suspect, though, that other disciplines will start to resemble engineering in structure. "Guided pathways," that sort of thing.

[apl68]

I guess in today's climate STEM fields don't have to worry too much about recruitment, as opposed to retention.

The biggest retention problem discussed in areas I frequent is the women who complete an engineering BS and then go do something completely unrelated to engineering for their entire careers.  After all, if college major doesn't matter to the job, then someone who has a solid math background, some computer skills, and some work experience (not just a good GPA) is a great candidate for all kinds of jobs that rely more on personal interest, diligence, and willing to learn new things that often have liberal arts majors, but don't rely on in-depth specific knowledge.

This phenomenon may yet be good for society. Having women with engineering training in many pursuits makes a lot of things work better.

I run into former engineers in many places, and really enjoy working with them. For instance, I am on a civic board on which the chair has an engineering BS, and worked for an engineering firm for some time. Now she's in finance (where they could use more engineers, BTW.) I find that the engineering mindset and training are helpful in thinking through problems of all kinds logically, gathering relevant data, and being relatively predictable. Those attributes result in good policy, as well as power and influence.

In thinking about the effectiveness of an engineering program, it could be worthwhile to investigate the value of the training for the "no longer in engineering" demographic.

For some years the president of our library's Board of Trustees was a retired engineer.  He was instrumental in getting our current library facility (An uncommonly good one for a town our size) built, and was in charge of the committee that hired me.  He had such a commanding role on the Board that I spent years thinking of him personally, rather than the Board as a whole, as my boss.

His detail-oriented engineering mindset was indeed a great asset to us, especially in the earlier years of my tenure when I was learning my job on the job (I was seriously underqualified for my job when hired--our town is so small and isolated that I was the best hire they could manage!  They patiently let me take a few years to grow into the role).  Though he was a good guy, I found him intimidating and challenging to work for.  He had some blind spots when it came to working with the public, and especially with younger patrons.  At the same time, he recognized the limitations of his area of expertise, and trusted others to know best in their fields, once he felt they had earned his trust.  He was sometimes needlessly inflexible on certain matters.  For example, today is the first day we're offering coffee at the library--something other libraries have been doing for years, but which was impossible for us even to suggest while this Trustee was still living!  The inflexibility may have been due more to age than to his engineering background.

His role in getting the library built was somewhat mixed.  On the one hand, his skills were probably the number one factor in getting the project successfully approved by voters and ramrodded through on time and on budget.  On the other hand, the building ended up with some seriously over-engineered HVAC systems that have been a money pit to maintain ever since.  There was also insufficient consultation with library professionals on aspects of the library's layout.  Despite the building's size, we lack sufficient programming space for childrens' and youth activities. 

Overall, I believe he was a great example of the sort of former-engineer-benefiting-society you're talking about.  He always seemed to have a strong appreciation of the value of "softer" subjects in the humanities.  Of course, he came of age when humanities education at the high school and undergrad levels was much stronger than it usually is now.

[Scotia]

The article about the closing of Newbury College that Polly linked to on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread had an interesting couple of paragraphs about history and the other liberal arts disciplines.  They're good at training students for leadership.  And access to them is now increasingly being limited to children of rich families at Ivy League schools.

Where is the evidence that humanities subjects are good for training students for leadership (and are better say than science/engineering/....)? I am not saying that I don't regard the humanities as important - I have been supportive of the need for my own subject to cross-subsidise some areas of the humanities to ensure that they are retained as part of ScotiaU - but no-one I have challenged has yet been able to provide me with any evidence that of the superior leadership skills of humanities graduates. We have a lot of really poor leadership in the political classes in the UK at the moment, and too many of them have a humanities or liberal arts background for me to blindly accept that there is something inherently superior about the training for leadership of those who study these subjects.

[marshwiggle]

The article about the closing of Newbury College that Polly linked to on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread had an interesting couple of paragraphs about history and the other liberal arts disciplines.  They're good at training students for leadership.  And access to them is now increasingly being limited to children of rich families at Ivy League schools.

Where is the evidence that humanities subjects are good for training students for leadership (and are better say than science/engineering/....)? I am not saying that I don't regard the humanities as important - I have been supportive of the need for my own subject to cross-subsidise some areas of the humanities to ensure that they are retained as part of ScotiaU - but no-one I have challenged has yet been able to provide me with any evidence that of the superior leadership skills of humanities graduates. We have a lot of really poor leadership in the political classes in the UK at the moment, and too many of them have a humanities or liberal arts background for me to blindly accept that there is something inherently superior about the training for leadership of those who study these subjects.

I'd be glad to see such evidence as well.

[polly_mer]

The article about the closing of Newbury College that Polly linked to on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread had an interesting couple of paragraphs about history and the other liberal arts disciplines.  They're good at training students for leadership.  And access to them is now increasingly being limited to children of rich families at Ivy League schools.

Where is the evidence that humanities subjects are good for training students for leadership (and are better say than science/engineering/....)? I am not saying that I don't regard the humanities as important - I have been supportive of the need for my own subject to cross-subsidise some areas of the humanities to ensure that they are retained as part of ScotiaU - but no-one I have challenged has yet been able to provide me with any evidence that of the superior leadership skills of humanities graduates. We have a lot of really poor leadership in the political classes in the UK at the moment, and too many of them have a humanities or liberal arts background for me to blindly accept that there is something inherently superior about the training for leadership of those who study these subjects.

I think of the counter evidence: people who have zero appreciation for humans as humans tend to be very poor leaders. 

The question again comes back to the distinction between the value of all areas of human knowledge versus taking specific courses in a formal educational setting.  For example, history is important and my current job goes much more smoothly with a solid background in a very specific era with knowledge that includes all sides of the countries involved from the mid-1800s to now.  However, my one college history class (the history of Spain in North America) did not prepare me for the history that I need for my current job; a lifetime of reading non-fiction and the relevant literature from countries that aren't the US as well as hanging out with someone who happens to have a hobby in that area have been much more useful.  I am not a historian and I can't play one on TV, but I absolutely use perspective of what happened, the various why's of what happened (doesn't matter if they are true if current political classes are acting as though they are true), and what all that means for current actions now to help with ongoing discussions of what we should be planning to have best effect.

Likewise, knowing multiple languages to the point that thinking is shaped by the language chosen can be very useful.  However, a couple semesters of a college language is much less useful than having lived in various places and having enough substantive interactions that one can think in multiple ways.  I read some reports from the MLA and sigh heavily about missing the point of what would be valuable in the current world instead of focusing so heavily on the past.

Thus, I again answer: no, the humanities are not doomed.  However, it's entirely possible that some humanities subjects will continue be reduced at the university level through demonstrating that required classes are not leading to the desired education, even if we leave the first-job-after-college metric off the table.  We can add leadership to the list of critical thinking, communication, and other soft skills that are helped by a solid university education, but aren't limited to the humanities-version of a university education.

[marshwiggle]

However, it's entirely possible that some humanities subjects will continue be reduced at the university level through demonstrating that required classes are not leading to the desired education, even if we leave the first-job-after-college metric off the table.  We can add leadership to the list of critical thinking, communication, and other soft skills that are helped by a solid university education, but aren't limited to the humanities-version of a university education.

This is where I sense a difference in attitude; for instance, in STEM subjects it is much more common to acknowledge to students that the classes themselves are not essential to learning the material. If they can pick up the knowledge on their own, then it's perfectly fine. However, it seems in many humanities disciplines there is a strong feeling that participation in the class itself is vital. It's not uncommon for 20 or 30% of the final grade to be based on it, which would be extremely unusual in STEM.  If one starts with the assumption that participation in the class is assumed fundamental to learning, then it's a simple step to concluding that only those specific classes can produce an "'educated" person.