New Yorker article "The End of the English Major"

[Wahoo Redux]

I think this is the entire pirated article.

https://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-end-of-the-english-major/

[secundem_artem]

This is nothing new.  I got my BS in 1979 and even then people were talking smack about the humanities.  My undergrad was in an applied health field because it was practical and I liked science (or so I thought).  It took decades for me to find out that the sweet spot for me is an intersection of the social sciences and healthcare. 

apl is right - how many square pegs are currently in round holes because STEM = jobs in their minds.  I don't regret the huge number of hours I spend in various lab courses or learning about Grignard reagents or the Henderson Hasselback Equation.  But I've never used them once in what I ended up doing.  Practical =/= better.

[Wahoo Redux]

My point (as I've stated on here many times) is that good students who are studying what they're passionate about will do fine. The students who are middle-of-the-road academically, and don't know what they want to do, are not likely to do very well whatever they choose if they're just going through the motions. (And of course people who don't have the skills or inclination for math aren't likely to succeed in STEM either.)

Not really what you have been saying.

And the world is full of mediocre students who enter business or whatever and do gangbusters.  For many students, school of any sort is simply a part of the process before they get to do what they really want to do.  This is the frustration that many of us have in the humanities.  Students will do fine with virtually any degree if they work well once they are out in the workforce.  It is the disinformation about and attitudes toward the humanities which damage the major.  Some folks simply cannot change their minds, however.

[marshwiggle]

My point (as I've stated on here many times) is that good students who are studying what they're passionate about will do fine. The students who are middle-of-the-road academically, and don't know what they want to do, are not likely to do very well whatever they choose if they're just going through the motions. (And of course people who don't have the skills or inclination for math aren't likely to succeed in STEM either.)

Not really what you have been saying.

And the world is full of mediocre students who enter business or whatever and do gangbusters.  For many students, school of any sort is simply a part of the process before they get to do what they really want to do.  This is the frustration that many of us have in the humanities.  Students will do fine with virtually any degree if they work well once they are out in the workforce. It is the disinformation about and attitudes toward the humanities which damage the major.  Some folks simply cannot change their minds, however.

This assumes that "getting a degree" is a goal in and of itself, with no direct relationship to employment. For students who have that mindset, that's fine. But for those who see the point of going to university as preparation for gainful employment, they should obviously make their choice based on what kind of employment they are interested in.

[ciao_yall]

This assumes that "getting a degree" is a goal in and of itself, with no direct relationship to employment. For students who have that mindset, that's fine. But for those who see the point of going to university as preparation for gainful employment, they should obviously make their choice based on what kind of employment they are interested in.

One activity I do with my business students in different classes is ask them to think about a company or job they would like, then look on LinkedIn for someone who has that job. Then, I ask them to write about that person's background. I then ask them to write about what they would need to do to "follow in that person's footsteps" so to speak.

99% of the time, the college major had nothing to do with their current job. Students might not be ready to change majors right then, but it does point out that they can get a job working for Nike or Apple as an English major. So hopefully that is food for thought.

I will also point out that STEM majors have the highest rate of changing out of their major, and have very high rates of having non-STEM related careers. The stats are somewhere but I don't feel like looking for them.

[Hibush]

I read this on an airplane flight, so the length ended up just right.

I really like the technique of contrasting Harvard and Arizona State.

Harvard students don't have to worry about being employable, so they are free to major in English. But they don't. There were quite a few nuanced, sometimes unexpected reasons. Those reasons will be present elsewhere also, and may be overlooked if one limits the diagnosis to employability concerns.

Arizona State students are unapologetically about career preparation. The place has no ethos about preserving the liberal arts tradition. Yet English is thriving, both as an undergraduate major and as a leading producer of faculty scholarship. How can that be? Again, some approaches that can be used at schools with a similar clientele.

Both of these threads belied the common tropes about the decline of humanities, so I'm curious whether the examples provided the possibility of a new approach in your departments that are experiencing a loss of students.

[Wahoo Redux]

But for those who see the point of going to university as preparation for gainful employment, they should obviously make their choice based on what kind of employment they are interested in.

Well, yeah.  I think that goes without saying.

But in my experience very few students know for certain what they want to do.  Accounting and STEM majors seem to be focused on those kinds of careers, and ed majors know what kind of job their degrees immediately qualify them for, but most career-oriented students just want "a job."  This is why business is such a popular major.  The perception is that one will leap right into a high paying job with the BS or the MBA, but that is not necessarily the reality. 

The other perception is that lib arts majors work as baristas and regret their college choices forever more.  This trope is all over pop-culture.  I was an English major with a degree from a fair-to-middling R1 football school who launched a career with a pretty good trajectory in business and hated it as no English major has ever hated a soulless path through life before----still, I was working for a huge national corporation, and I have no idea where I would be right now, but it would be pretty good.  I had considered applying for jobs at the national headquarters in Manhattan.  Wonder what would have happened...?

Well anyway, I find the people who do not see the simplicity of these truths to be very dull thinkers or simply people who prefer their prejudices. 

[marshwiggle]

But for those who see the point of going to university as preparation for gainful employment, they should obviously make their choice based on what kind of employment they are interested in.

Well, yeah.  I think that goes without saying.

But in my experience very few students know for certain what they want to do.  Accounting and STEM majors seem to be focused on those kinds of careers, and ed majors know what kind of job their degrees immediately qualify them for, but most career-oriented students just want "a job."  This is why business is such a popular major.  The perception is that one will leap right into a high paying job with the BS or the MBA, but that is not necessarily the reality. 

It seems to me part of the debate here is based on two different approaches to employment.

• Highly specialized; long time developing special skills which a small number of jobs require, but by definition have a small number of applicants.
• Generalized; shorter time developing skills not specific to any job but needed in many, which all have a large number of applicants.

As an analogy, think of restaurants. Chefs take the first approach; have intensive education in cooking and then are eligible for relatively few jobs, but with better pay on average than servers. (High end places could be quite lucrative.)
Servers take the second approach; able to apply to lots of different places since there are always openings. Each position will probably have lots of applicants, and the starting pay will likely be significantly less than chefs. (But again high end places will potentially pay significantly more.)

So STEM (for example) takes the first approach; humanities takes the second. Which one a specific student should consider will reflect the student's own personality and interests.

[Langue_doc]

Not sure how the author came to the conclusion that ASU is the "beacon for democratic promises of higher education" or how students would be attracted to majoring in English because most of their Shakespearean scholars are persons of color.

A.S.U., which is centered in Tempe and has more than eighty thousand students on campus, is today regarded as a beacon for the democratic promises of public higher education. Its undergraduate admission rate is eighty-eight per cent. Nearly half its undergraduates are from minority backgrounds, and a third are the first in their families to go to college. The in-state tuition averages just four thousand dollars, yet A.S.U. has a better faculty-to-student ratio on site than U.C. Berkeley and spends more on faculty research than Princeton. For students interested in English literature, it can seem a lucky place to land. The university's tenure-track English faculty is seventy-one strong—including eleven Shakespeare scholars, most of them of color. In 2021, A.S.U. English professors won two Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other English department in America did.

The school also appears to pander to student "interests" instead of giving them a solid foundation in literary studies as evident from how at least one instructor goes about choosing the books for her Introduction to Literary Studies course.

The assistant professor Brandi Adams's English 206: Introduction to Literary Studies met in one of A.S.U.'s biology buildings. "It looks like a closet door," she told me when giving directions to the classroom. When I slipped in one morning, Adams—salt-and-pepper hair worn in a high bun, glasses with translucent frames gradually drifting down her nose—was surveying her students about the course syllabus.

"We read 'Beowulf.' We read 'Tears of the Trufflepig,' by Fernando Flores. We read 'The Roman Actor,' by Philip Massinger. We read sonnets by Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt, Terrance Hayes, and Billy Collins," she said.

"We read 'Persuasion,' we read 'Passing,' we read Victoria Chang's banger poems 'Mr. Darcy' and 'Edward Hopper's Office at Night,' and we read 'Uses of Literature,' by Rita Felski. We also watched the 'Persuasion' and 'Passing' Netflix adaptations." She looked at the group: nine students in the room, two remote, appearing on an A.V. system. "It has given me the opportunity to think about what we did and didn't like. I think I might remove 'Persuasion.' What do you think? Keep it or ditch it?"

"I say ditch," a student said.

The author fails to mention that given the number of degrees and programs offered by the school, it is not surprising that students have far more interesting choices or that the school would not be promoting English at the expense of other majors: https://degrees.apps.asu.edu/bachelors

With more than 400 undergraduate degrees and more than 450 graduate degrees led by an expert faculty in highly ranked colleges and schools, students become master learners through an interdisciplinary approach to instruction, capable of learning anything.

The school appears to have gone "multicultural" with a vengeance which might also account for the lack of interest in majoring in English in this particular school. I think we had a thread on this incident a few months ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/magazine/arizona-state-university-multicultural-center.html?searchResultPosition=7

[Hibush]

The school also appears to pander to student "interests" instead of giving them a solid foundation in literary studies as evident from how at least one instructor goes about choosing the books for her Introduction to Literary Studies course.

I would not use "pander" to describe the professors effort to provide an honest and appropriate introduction to literary studies by using a literature that is meaningful to the students. I'd argue that it is responding thoughtfully to the needs of your interested students.

Given the ASU demographic, this is a program intentionally for the average part of the populace in Arizona. As long as it is sound enough literature to be subjected to study, why not use material that is contemporary and regional?

[marshwiggle]

The school also appears to pander to student "interests" instead of giving them a solid foundation in literary studies as evident from how at least one instructor goes about choosing the books for her Introduction to Literary Studies course.

I would not use "pander" to describe the professors effort to provide an honest and appropriate introduction to literary studies by using a literature that is meaningful to the students. I'd argue that it is responding thoughtfully to the needs of your interested students.

Given the ASU demographic, this is a program intentionally for the average part of the populace in Arizona. As long as it is sound enough literature to be subjected to study, why not use material that is contemporary and regional?

The vast amount of literature, music, art, etc. produced through history no longer exists. While some old works have survived by quirks of having been in the right place at the right time, many old works have survived by virtue of having been recognized at the time (and since) as *way above average. Recent material, which has not stood the test of time, has unproven value. At the very least, the majority of what is studied should be what has been recognized by a lot of people over a long time as being valuable. Otherwise I might as well just choose whatever the heck I like and who cares about anyone else?




*probably every generation produces about the same proportion of dreck.

[Wahoo Redux]

How much do you actually know about literature, Marshy?

[Langue_doc]

The school also appears to pander to student "interests" instead of giving them a solid foundation in literary studies as evident from how at least one instructor goes about choosing the books for her Introduction to Literary Studies course.

I would not use "pander" to describe the professors effort to provide an honest and appropriate introduction to literary studies by using a literature that is meaningful to the students. I'd argue that it is responding thoughtfully to the needs of your interested students.

Given the ASU demographic, this is a program intentionally for the average part of the populace in Arizona. As long as it is sound enough literature to be subjected to study, why not use material that is contemporary and regional?

I was struck by the choice of texts for a single course. I can't think of any rationale for including such a wide range of genres from across several centuries. It isn't clear though if the word "read" is used in the present or past tense.

"We read 'Beowulf.' We read 'Tears of the Trufflepig,' by Fernando Flores. We read 'The Roman Actor,' by Philip Massinger. We read sonnets by Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt, Terrance Hayes, and Billy Collins," she said.

"We read 'Persuasion,' we read 'Passing,' we read Victoria Chang's banger poems 'Mr. Darcy' and 'Edward Hopper's Office at Night,' and we read 'Uses of Literature,' by Rita Felski. We also watched the 'Persuasion' and 'Passing' Netflix adaptations."

But then the professor goes on to ask the students whether or not they should keep Persuasion which suggests that "read" is used in the present tense.

"It has given me the opportunity to think about what we did and didn't like. I think I might remove 'Persuasion.' What do you think? Keep it or ditch it?"

The choice of the books/texts and the professor not really having a rationale for these choices makes it clear that the professor was relying on what the students wanted. Perhaps "pander" might have been too strong a word, but it does appear that the professor is more or less winging it as opposed to designing a 200-level "Introduction to Literature" course.

Forumites who teach English, please weigh in!

[Wahoo Redux]

The choice of the books/texts and the professor not really having a rationale for these choices makes it clear that the professor was relying on what the students wanted. Perhaps "pander" might have been too strong a word, but it does appear that the professor is more or less winging it as opposed to designing a 200-level "Introduction to Literature" course.

Forumites who teach English, please weigh in!

What "rationale" are you looking for?

An intro to literature class should expose students, many of whom have not done any significant reading of any sort, to the wide variety of literature available.  And if you want to interest students in literature, students are responsive, even your biz and nursing majors, when you find things that they can relate to.  This is part of the reason we survey student opinions about what they read in class.

At it's simplest, that is the answer. 

If we include "literature" in the western canon alone you have over 2K years to choose from (more if you count Gilgamesh), and it is impossible to represent all the different movements, genres, and eras.  In 15 weeks you must limit what you present.  So you look for a representative sampling.

Also, since college is all about diversity these days, it is incumbent upon teachers to include minority and women writers, many of whom have been deliberately elided in the canon.  We want to remind students that people are still writing today, and that not everything we read has been written by dead white men.

When I have taught a general intro to lit class I try to strike a balance between the classic texts and texts which are contemporary.  We cannot predict what people two hundred years from now will consider masterpieces-----Stephen King may be considered the greatest living writer of our era (remember that Charles Dickens was serialized in popular magazines in his time); my bet it will be Tolkien.  So, in addition to Jane Austin, we look for things that are excellent and which represent our world at this moment.  That could be Alice Walker or Colson Whitehead, or it could be Kurt Vonnegut or T.S. Eliot.  A contemporary free verse poem written with a common vernacular voice is a very good way to introduce students to poetry and to break the conception that poetry must rhyme, be about flowers and beautiful things, and not have anything to do with our actual lived experience.

We also have to meet our students where they are.  Shakespeare is the gem of English lit, but he uses a great deal of Elizabethan slang, tends to write in meter, is very long winded, and deals with social issues which, while part of the great human struggle, are confusing to first-time readers.  "The Taming of the Shrew" is a masterpiece, but its portrayal of abuse towards women is simply going to be off-putting once one understands the language itself.  Not a good opening subject for students who have never really encountered Shakespeare or any ancient literature before.  I've shown the movie version of Othello.  But to get students ready---so they understand the struggle of the tragic hero and the conventions of the Elizabethan stage---takes a fair amount of time.  Again, one has to choose how best to use the time allotted in a semester.

In short, we need literature that your average reader (who might have read Grisham or fan fiction online or 50 Shades of Gray if they have read anything) can parse and have an opinion about.  I've successfully taught Milton and John Donne in class----but the responses tend to be very confused from students.  Some masterpieces are best left to specialty courses, not freshman lit.  Thus we find poems and short stories which your average reader can realistically respond to.

Short answer.

[kaysixteen]

Not to be *too* snarky, but who cares what an 18yo's opinion about Shakespeare is?