Are the Humanities Doomed?

[marshwiggle]

Random observations:
2) I saw an interview on CSPAN this weekend with former St. John's Albuquerque president John Agresto, who, amongst other things, explicitly argues that humanities students should just not be asked to pay the same tuition rates as STEM students-- thoughts?

Hey!!!  I already posted this article!!!!  It has been discussed.  You at the back of the auditorium, pay attention!!!

The author (I forget who) argued that charging less for a humanities degree would encourage poor people whose purpose is to rise in the socioeconomic ranks to consider a lib arts degree over business or STEM.  The justification for this change is that STEM degrees in particular are much more expensive to the university than your lib arts degrees.

How is a lib arts degree cheaper to provide than a business degree? Labs are the main extra cost of STEM degrees. And business classes are often very large. Small seminar-type courses aren't so common. So the faculty-student ratio is potentially higher in the humanities.

One possible unfortunate consequence of a tuition differential is that it could reinforce the idea that liberal arts degrees don't lead to financially rewarding careers. It's hardly rocket science for people to conclude that the "price" for the degree is lower because the "payoff" is assumed to be lower. It doesn't matter if it's true or not; if people perceive it to be true they will act accordingly.

[Parasaurolophus]

Business faculty tend to have much higher salaries than faculty in n the liberal arts. So that's one extra cost. And the department tends to be larger, so there are more of them.

That might be offset by enrollment. Or not.

[Wahoo Redux]

Random observations:
2) I saw an interview on CSPAN this weekend with former St. John's Albuquerque president John Agresto, who, amongst other things, explicitly argues that humanities students should just not be asked to pay the same tuition rates as STEM students-- thoughts?

Hey!!!  I already posted this article!!!!  It has been discussed.  You at the back of the auditorium, pay attention!!!

The author (I forget who) argued that charging less for a humanities degree would encourage poor people whose purpose is to rise in the socioeconomic ranks to consider a lib arts degree over business or STEM.  The justification for this change is that STEM degrees in particular are much more expensive to the university than your lib arts degrees.

How is a lib arts degree cheaper to provide than a business degree? Labs are the main extra cost of STEM degrees. And business classes are often very large. Small seminar-type courses aren't so common. So the faculty-student ratio is potentially higher in the humanities.

Just do your homework, Marshy.  I already posted this article on this very thread.

[dismalist]

Business faculty tend to have much higher salaries than faculty in n the liberal arts. So that's one extra cost. And the department tends to be larger, so there are more of them.

That might be offset by enrollment. Or not.

Economists at the better B-schools get paid about 20% more than economists at the better liberal arts schools. The reason is that B-school students are PITA's.

[Wahoo Redux]

IHE: Rewriting the English Curriculum

Lower Deck:

With numbers of humanities majors declining, English departments are on the hunt for new strategies to attract students. Can a walk in Ishmael's footsteps do the trick?

[Wahoo Redux]

IHE: Humanities Majors Should Pay Lower Tuition (Opinion)

[marshwiggle]

IHE: Humanities Majors Should Pay Lower Tuition (Opinion)

Unfortunately, the author never does any analysis of the actual cost differences between disciplines. It's interesting that the example he uses of Economics probably has bigger classes but no labs like STEM, so it would be really useful to figure out what it costs to educate an Economics student compared to a History student, for instance. (In principle, the idea of making tuition proportional to the cost of the specific degree isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure it would always work out the way he envisions. Small programs of any sort would be prohibitively expensive.)

One comment from the article:

The most convincing perspective I have seen so far was put forward by historian Benjamin Schmidt, who suggested that "the plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market."

First of all, the students who are enrolling and paying are the only ones to decide what they "should" be studying; it's their life and their nickel.

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The author's thesis is worth considering, but it's not at all clear that it would work the way he thinks.

[MarathonRunner]

IHE: Humanities Majors Should Pay Lower Tuition (Opinion)

Unfortunately, the author never does any analysis of the actual cost differences between disciplines. It's interesting that the example he uses of Economics probably has bigger classes but no labs like STEM, so it would be really useful to figure out what it costs to educate an Economics student compared to a History student, for instance. (In principle, the idea of making tuition proportional to the cost of the specific degree isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure it would always work out the way he envisions. Small programs of any sort would be prohibitively expensive.)

One comment from the article:

The most convincing perspective I have seen so far was put forward by historian Benjamin Schmidt, who suggested that "the plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market."

First of all, the students who are enrolling and paying are the only ones to decide what they "should" be studying; it's their life and their nickel.

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The author's thesis is worth considering, but it's not at all clear that it would work the way he thinks.

In my experience, students don't get to decide what they should be studying. Especially for competitive programs, only the top students (however it is define by a particular program) get to choose what they "should" be studying. At least in Canada, programs like nursing, engineering, dietetics, etc. are extremely competitive. Students don't get to decide if they will enroll in such programs, the programs decide if the students can enroll.

[dismalist]

IHE: Humanities Majors Should Pay Lower Tuition (Opinion)

Unfortunately, the author never does any analysis of the actual cost differences between disciplines. It's interesting that the example he uses of Economics probably has bigger classes but no labs like STEM, so it would be really useful to figure out what it costs to educate an Economics student compared to a History student, for instance. (In principle, the idea of making tuition proportional to the cost of the specific degree isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure it would always work out the way he envisions. Small programs of any sort would be prohibitively expensive.)

One comment from the article:

The most convincing perspective I have seen so far was put forward by historian Benjamin Schmidt, who suggested that "the plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market."

First of all, the students who are enrolling and paying are the only ones to decide what they "should" be studying; it's their life and their nickel.

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The author's thesis is worth considering, but it's not at all clear that it would work the way he thinks.

In my experience, students don't get to decide what they should be studying. Especially for competitive programs, only the top students (however it is define by a particular program) get to choose what they "should" be studying. At least in Canada, programs like nursing, engineering, dietetics, etc. are extremely competitive. Students don't get to decide if they will enroll in such programs, the programs decide if the students can enroll.

Students get to decide to which programs they wish to apply. Yes, the powers that be select the winners, but from pools constituted by everybody.

I only got to choose my spouse with her permission. :-)

[Wahoo Redux]

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

You, Marshman, just want to gloat in from your STEMy world. 

People like you are why the perception of the humanities is so bad right now.  And you are obdurate.

[FishProf]

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

At the local level, that isn't necessarily so.  At my Uni, the STEM majors have been doing outreach to regional schools (elementary and secondary) to help recruit to our programs.  That has worked, apparently, because our numbers haven't dropped off as precipitously as the Uni's have, and we get crops of students every year that mention that "presentation during sophomore year" that changed their mind about major/school.

STEM isn't some monolithic thing.  It's still people.

[marshwiggle]

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

You, Marshman, just want to gloat in from your STEMy world. 

People like you are why the perception of the humanities is so bad right now.  And you are obdurate.

I have 3 kids. One did pure STEM, one did a mix of STEM and humanities, one did pure humanities. I've never tried to talk any student out of anything they were passionate about. And I've always said good students will do fine in whatever they choose.
The one thing I have consistently criticized is the recruiting of academically mediocre students into things that they're not really passionate about for the sake of keeping enrollment up. Those students are highly unlikely to have great job prospects. As MarathonRunner said, competitive programs don't have that problem because those students would never make it in.

I don't see how it counts as "gloating" to say that recruiting students who do not have great prospects for *success is not in their best interests.

(*And if "success" for them includes job prospects, then being less than transparent about employment isn't helping them.)

[Wahoo Redux]

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

At the local level, that isn't necessarily so.  At my Uni, the STEM majors have been doing outreach to regional schools (elementary and secondary) to help recruit to our programs.  That has worked, apparently, because our numbers haven't dropped off as precipitously as the Uni's have, and we get crops of students every year that mention that "presentation during sophomore year" that changed their mind about major/school.

STEM isn't some monolithic thing.  It's still people.

Of course.  And I did not mean to imply that no one does this sort of thing since everyone has a "majors" table or some such at various student orientations, meeting with individual students, and what not, but it is hardly ever the focus of a department----people have their jobs to do.

[Wahoo Redux]

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

You, Marshman, just want to gloat in from your STEMy world. 

People like you are why the perception of the humanities is so bad right now.  And you are obdurate.

I have 3 kids. One did pure STEM, one did a mix of STEM and humanities, one did pure humanities. I've never tried to talk any student out of anything they were passionate about. And I've always said good students will do fine in whatever they choose.
The one thing I have consistently criticized is the recruiting of academically mediocre students into things that they're not really passionate about for the sake of keeping enrollment up. Those students are highly unlikely to have great job prospects. As MarathonRunner said, competitive programs don't have that problem because those students would never make it in.

I don't see how it counts as "gloating" to say that recruiting students who do not have great prospects for *success is not in their best interests.

(*And if "success" for them includes job prospects, then being less than transparent about employment isn't helping them.)

You hardly ever comment upon that.  You were not commenting upon that.  You make stuff up as you go.  No one deliberately recruits "mediocre" students----and I have worked with some extremely mediocre engineering students.

[marshwiggle]

Second, I realized I've never heard a compelling argument for how other disciplines like STEM fields have managed to do so much better marketing than humanities fields;  most STEM faculty have no clue about marketing and how to attract students. How are humanities faculty apparently so much worse at it?

The "marketing" is not done by faculty.  Marketing is pushed by public perceptions.  It is pushed by perceptions of the job market.  "Employability" is how all colleges market themselves.

You, Marshman, just want to gloat in from your STEMy world. 

People like you are why the perception of the humanities is so bad right now.  And you are obdurate.

I have 3 kids. One did pure STEM, one did a mix of STEM and humanities, one did pure humanities. I've never tried to talk any student out of anything they were passionate about. And I've always said good students will do fine in whatever they choose.
The one thing I have consistently criticized is the recruiting of academically mediocre students into things that they're not really passionate about for the sake of keeping enrollment up. Those students are highly unlikely to have great job prospects. As MarathonRunner said, competitive programs don't have that problem because those students would never make it in.

I don't see how it counts as "gloating" to say that recruiting students who do not have great prospects for *success is not in their best interests.

(*And if "success" for them includes job prospects, then being less than transparent about employment isn't helping them.)

You hardly ever comment upon that.  You were not commenting upon that.  You make stuff up as you go.  No one deliberately recruits "mediocre" students----and I have worked with some extremely mediocre engineering students.

I think definitions of "mediocre" may vary. In STEM and professional programs, probably only the top 10% (or something like that) of high school kids in certain subjects (such as math for STEM) will get in. I haven't heard any suggestion that, for instance, only the top 10% of English students in high school would be able to get into an English program.