Are the Humanities Doomed?

[kaysixteen]

Obviously, but the presence of the occasional 30+ nontrad undergrad does not obviate my point-- 18yos really do not, educationally, know what their best interests are, nor are they wise enough to properly plan and execute an educational pathway.

[FishProf]

What does "guide" mean here?  Advise?  We already do that,

"Irrespective of their wants" is remarkably condescending and paternalistic.  Would you decide their majors and career paths FOR them?

The wisdom you speak of is acquired by experiences (more so the bad than the good).  Would you deny them that because "you know better"?

No thanks, Comrade.

[Langue_doc]

Obviously, but the presence of the occasional 30+ nontrad undergrad does not obviate my point-- 18yos really do not, educationally, know what their best interests are, nor are they wise enough to properly plan and execute an educational pathway.

Many 18 year olds know what they want when they start applying to colleges. I knew exactly what I didn't want as early as 16--I was terrible at math and also hated physics, so knew that I did not want to major in any of the stem fields other than probably biology. I recall having very decided opinions when I started applying to college about what I wanted.

[apl68]

What does "guide" mean here?  Advise?  We already do that,

That really does seem like the best that can be done to move students in an appropriate direction.  Of course, parents who are footing the bill can refuse to pay for particular majors or insist that they will only pay for something specific.  Anecdotally, some students who'd like to major in humanities fields are forced into STEM or business majors instead by parents who are convinced that a humanities education would be worthless.  This isn't exactly new thinking--I recall that we had a Fora member whose parents made her go into the field that ended up becoming her career.  It does seem to be more prevalent thinking now.  I'm sure most of these parents mean well, but they're sometimes guilty of needlessly forcing square pegs into round holes.

[ciao_yall]

Obviously, but the presence of the occasional 30+ nontrad undergrad does not obviate my point-- 18yos really do not, educationally, know what their best interests are, nor are they wise enough to properly plan and execute an educational pathway.

Many 18 year olds know what they want when they start applying to colleges. I knew exactly what I didn't want as early as 16--I was terrible at math and also hated physics, so knew that I did not want to major in any of the stem fields other than probably biology. I recall having very decided opinions when I started applying to college about what I wanted.

I thought I wanted to be pre-med, then realized I didn't want to look at ugly naked people. Didn't mind blood, though. I really had no sense of what one could major in or what the possibilities were.

I realized what I naturally enjoyed was politics and government-type things, so I decided to major in Political Economy like some of my sorority sisters because it sounded cool. And the rest is history.

[Wahoo Redux]

Isn't it possible that students, in their immaturity and ignorance, should be guided towards what is in their best educational interests, irrespective of their 'wants'?

You kids get off my lawn!!!

[kaysixteen]

This demonstrates a different but related problem-- namely that *parents* may well be almost as ignorant as their 18yos, and they should be encouraged to realize this, and not to believe that their knowledge of what is best academically for their children is the equal of, let alone superior to, those of credentialed experts.   We would *probably* recognize that it would be wrong for said parents to approach the advice of their children's *physicians* this same way; why would we shy away from saying the same about the professors'?

[Hibush]

In search of original thought on this topic, I read the latest op-ed in IHE by an English Department chair (William Major, U of Hartford).  He has had an epiphany--or reverse epiphany in that he has seen the dark. But also some metaphorical light.

Several of his recommendations are to engage more with society on a human-to-human basis, and to mostly listen. Hang out with neighbors, teach freshmen non-majors, pariciapat in campus-wide faculty committees. Those things will provide context for making your knowledge more relevant to the world and to yourself.

Some of the sector's woes strike me as a consequence of insufficient listening to other voices, resulting in being left out of the plans.

Overall the tone is a defeated one, which one might best wade through looking for the optimistic bits.

[Wahoo Redux]

Oh geeze.

Some of the sector's woes strike me as a consequence of insufficient listening to other voices, resulting in being left out of the plans.

Since I am the only one who tends to routinely defend English and humanities in general (often the only one), I will say Hibush that I do not understand your comment.  I'm a little inclined to nasty snark, but that solves nothing.  The author's comments do not represent the humanities departments or faculty that I have know.

I mean, WTF?  We have been listening.  We keep trying to respond.  People simply want to pile on when we do respond.  We have been in our capacities generally good citizens of academia, or at least as good as any discipline in the system.  Everywhere I've studied or taught the English faculty have been in senate, on committees, taking part in campus programs, giving public lectures, etc.  William Majors maybe has a dull bunch under him, but what the hell is he talking about?

And I don't know much about William Major, but his English colleagues do not at all sound like the kind of people I've known, people who are, perhaps, overly cerebral (as are most college faculty) but pretty normal otherwise.  His metaphoric "mulching leaves, planting a small garden or sitting on the porch with your neighbor" is silly, to begin with, and not at all reflective of people who are average middleclass people for the most part.

I utterly agree that this is an author memorializing defeat.  Virtually everybody in the humanities is feeling defeated (note the lack of response here).  People with commentary like Hibush's----ostensively another academic----simply drive that point home.  Hibush, do you mean to tell me that you have never met or worked with anyone from an English department?

Major's article is ridiculous.  I would write a letter to the editor, but what would be the point?  People are attracted to messages they already agree with, and Major just delivered one.

We know that English majors do fine on the job market.  We know that they are one of the harder working majors (Google "What majors spend the most time studying"----data is from the NSSE [engineering is at the top, business is at the bottom]).  We know that literacy and literature are some of the oldest forms of education.

We are simply losing our hold on American educational values.  And English is only good for writing well and studying literature.  Unless you want to be a technical / business / grant writer (which is tedious but does pay very well), a creative writer (which is really only a paying career for a very few), or a reader of good stuff (which pays nothing), there is no way to justify English, or the humanities in general.  We just study cool stuff because college gives us that opportunity.  That's it.  For most majors who do not go on to grad school, undergrad is probably the only time in their lives they can immerse themselves in what they really love.  That is the only justification for the major over any other major (and these undergrads will do just fine on the job market).

The fault of the apologists for the humanities is that they fell into the trap of trying to make a cogent argument about the "value" or the humanities.  The value is only that some people really like what we study.  And for most people this is not impressive or convincing.

The irony is that I no longer work in academia and do not plan to again (or perhaps a class or two someday) as I was downsized along with a number of faculty from across my former university.  I look at teaching English as a dying career and I am a bit relieved to be out of that rat race.  I simply find my brain still stuck in academia.  I would think that faculty would be smarter than this, however.

[Wahoo Redux]

The English Major, After the End

Heller is one of many to spot the four horsemen—call them defunding, recession, self-sabotage and artificial intelligence—on the humanities' horizon.

[Stockmann]

The English Major, After the End

Heller is one of many to spot the four horsemen—call them defunding, recession, self-sabotage and artificial intelligence—on the humanities' horizon.

I'm in STEM, and not in the US, but can't help nod at these two items in particular. As in probably a lot of places, the humanities and social sciences side of campus seems to have a disproportionately high number of certain SJW types that seem to harm the institution for personal gain (think, at their worst, pseudo-Maoist types hostile to any kind of rigor and completely uncritical of their own political positions and more interested in activism than in academic endeavors, including in some cases actually teaching their courses). Yes, we have such people in STEM too, of course (and people who are self-serving at the expense of the institution in other ways), but they do seem more concentrated elsewhere, and seem much more harmful than folks who merely avoid service and outreach work like the plague and/or are apathetic about anything not directly, immediately affecting their classes or research. I've also met my share of humanities folks with a sneering contempt for STEM - who seem to think (and some will basically say it outright) STEM folks are soulless automatons. I'm someone who's fairly extensively read literary fiction and watched arthouse cinema for pleasure and I've had artistic hobbies - I should be one of the most natural allies of humanities academics as a fellow academic with an interest in the humanities yet I've encountered these attitudes. So yeah, I'm inclined to say there's been a lot of self-sabotage, particularly in terms of alienating natural allies (and don´t get me started on overproduction of PhDs - and yes, STEM has done the same, it's academia as a whole doing this to itself). Yes, equivalent bad attitudes, hostility, etc are not uncommon among STEM folks and it's also unhelpful - but the humanities are perhaps in greater need of allies.

As for AI, let me start by saying that it's also a threat on the horizon for STEM - when I was an undergraduate an instructor told us that if all we did was memorize stuff, then we'd better raise our game as hard drives were cheaper than us. I've had some students seemingly unwilling and possibly unable to do much more than plug in numbers they're given into formulas they're given - forget AI, that's something Excel and can do faster, much cheaper and more reliably than a person. I have little hope that our weaker graduates can outperform AI, let alone our dropouts. Having said that, on top of the humanities' other problems, it's a bit like the joke with the punchline "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you." I don't know if anyone can ultimately truly outrun the AI bear, and it might eat us all eventually - but CS and engineering at least have running shoes on, some fields in the natural sciences at least have shoes, and so on.

[Wahoo Redux]

That's interesting, Stockman.  My experience has been the opposite of yours, although I will concede that the humanities types tend to run toward zealous leftist beliefs which do no one any good.  That we can agree upon.

But I am a big fan of science, particularly astronomy and geology, and really appreciate what engineers and bio-scientists do for us.  I have yet to meet a humanities person who "sneers" at science----I can't imagine anyone who would unless politically motivated (ex. COVID and climate science) who are not generally humanities types.  By and large, humanities types are big believes in global climate change and the dangers of viruses.  We support these scientists.

On the other hand, I have been insulted to my face a number of times by STEM folks, sometimes accidentally, and a number of times on these boards.  This is not hyperbole.  As example, I was once told by a slightly drunk engineering grad student, who did not teach, that I was lucky that I had so much time on my hands being an English graduate student after one of my sixty-hour weeks. My neighbor is a very nice STEM professor; I won't discuss some of the things hu's actually said to me because I am writing this person into an essay, but hu has accidentally/on-purpose insulted my profession a number of times with misinformation about the discipline and what we do.  Hu is always abashed when I respond angrily, so I suspect hu does not think hu is being insulting.  I encourage this person to look up data online...I doubt that hu does.

Your commentary sounds just like your typical fight among family members: it's always the other side's fault.  Someone once described academia as "crabs in a barrel."  We each see the other has opposition. 

[marshwiggle]

That's interesting, Stockman.  My experience has been the opposite of yours, although I will concede that the humanities types tend to run toward zealous leftist beliefs which do no one any good.  That we can agree upon.

But I am a big fan of science, particularly astronomy and geology, and really appreciate what engineers and bio-scientists do for us.  I have yet to meet a humanities person who "sneers" at science----I can't imagine anyone who would unless politically motivated (ex. COVID and climate science) who are not generally humanities types.  By and large, humanities types are big believes in global climate change and the dangers of viruses.  We support these scientists.

What about some of those other fringe things, like physics and chemistry? It would seem the kind of "science" you "support" isn't determined so much by how much evidence it has behind it as whether it has some sort of warm fuzzy connection for non-scientists.
The whole idea of science is that what matters is whether it fits with reality, not how much (or even if) people like it.

Seriously, science doesn't care how many "fans" it has, but whether it helps explain (and more importantly, predict) the way the world works.

[Wahoo Redux]

What about some of those other fringe things, like physics and chemistry? It would seem the kind of "science" you "support" isn't determined so much by how much evidence it has behind it as whether it has some sort of warm fuzzy connection for non-scientists.
The whole idea of science is that what matters is whether it fits with reality, not how much (or even if) people like it.

Seriously, science doesn't care how many "fans" it has, but whether it helps explain (and more importantly, predict) the way the world works.

Are you trying to be a jerk, Marshy?

[marshwiggle]

What about some of those other fringe things, like physics and chemistry? It would seem the kind of "science" you "support" isn't determined so much by how much evidence it has behind it as whether it has some sort of warm fuzzy connection for non-scientists.
The whole idea of science is that what matters is whether it fits with reality, not how much (or even if) people like it.

Seriously, science doesn't care how many "fans" it has, but whether it helps explain (and more importantly, predict) the way the world works.

Are you trying to be a jerk, Marshy?

I just found it really weird to identify branches of science by some sort of "likes". Especially when the focus seemed to be on a lot of observational science. A hundred doctors telling me I have cancer isn't as useful as one who can actually treat it.