Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Mason Kumet/The Hechinger Report.
The University of Arizona campus in Tucson, where the number of undergrads majoring in the humanities has in creased by 76% since 2018, when a bachelor’s in humanities was introduced.

For years, the value of a postsecondary education has been measured by how much money someone can make after graduation, with the result that classes in the humanities were devalued.

Now there’s evidence that in addition to the intrinsic value of the humanities, they can make the difference between getting the job and not getting it.

Jon Marcus wrote at the Hechinger Report (a nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education) about what’s going on, and the Christian Science Monitor reprinted the story.

“Olivia Howe was hesitant at first to add French to her major in finance at the University of Arizona. She was afraid it wouldn’t be very useful in the labor market.

“Then her language skills helped her land a job at the multinational technology company Siemens, which will be waiting for her when she graduates this spring.

“ ‘The reason I got the job is because of my French. I didn’t see it as a practical choice, but now I do,’ says Ms. Howe, who, to communicate with colleagues and clients, also plans to take up German. …

“The simple message that majoring in the humanities pays off is being pushed aggressively by this university and a handful of others. They hope to reverse decades of plummeting enrollment in subjects that teach skills employers say they need from graduates but aren’t getting.

“The number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities at the University of Arizona has increased 76% since 2018, when it introduced a bachelor’s degree in applied humanities that connects the humanities with programs in business, engineering, medicine, and other fields. It also hired a humanities recruitment director and marketing team and started training faculty members to enlist students in the major with the promise that an education in the humanities leads to jobs.

“That’s an uncharacteristic role for humanities professors, who have tended to resist suggestions that it’s their role to ready students for the workforce. But it has become an existential one.

“Between 2012 and 2022, the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in the humanities – English, history, languages, literature, philosophy, and related subjects – fell 24%, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It’s now below 200,000 for the first time in more than two decades.

“In response, universities and colleges nationwide have started eliminating humanities departments and laying off humanities faculty as policymakers, parents, and administrators put a premium on highly specialized subjects they believe lead more directly to jobs. …

“ ‘What we are up against is the constant negative storytelling about how the humanities are useless,’ says Alain-Philippe Durand, dean of the University of Arizona’s College of Humanities and a professor of French. …

“ ‘When you tell them we are teaching the life of the mind, they laugh at you,’ Dr. Durand says over lunch at the student center. ‘You have people saying, “Do we really need this?” ‘ he says. …

“Dr. Durand’s department went so far as to put that declaration on a billboard on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, conveniently near the campus of rival Arizona State University. ‘Humanities = Jobs,’ it said, with the college’s web address. Dr. Durand keeps a model of it on a shelf in his office.

“The skills he’s talking about include how to communicate effectively, think critically, work in teams, and be able to figure out a way to solve complex problems outside of a particular area of expertise. Employers say they want all of those, but aren’t getting them from graduates who major in narrower fields.

“Eight out of 10 executives and hiring managers say it’s very or somewhat important that students emerge from college with these kinds of skills, according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. …

“What employers want ‘is people who can make sense of the human experience,’ says Rishi Jaitly, who has developed an executive education program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute that uses the humanities to help mid-career managers be better leaders.

“Along with Arizona, Virginia Tech is among a small group of universities taking steps to change the conversation about the humanities. A surprising number are technology-focused. These include the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has also started drawing a connection between the humanities and good jobs at high pay. That has helped boost undergraduate and graduate enrollment in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts by 58% since 2019, to 1,884 students in 2023 – the most recent period for which the figure is available.

“Before then, ‘we were doing almost nothing to explain the value of the humanities,’ says Richard Utz, interim dean. That’s important at a technological institute, he says. …

“A medievalist, Dr. Utz uses the example of assigning his students 15th-century Robin Hood ballads. ‘They read something that is entirely alien to them, that is in late medieval English, so they’re completely out of their comfort zone,’ he says. Then they split into groups and consider the material from various perspectives. It makes them the kind of future workers ‘who are versatile enough to look at a situation from different points of view.’ …

“In the first two years of the humanities-focused executive education program at Virginia Tech, the participants have come from Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow, and other companies. They study history, philosophy, religion, classics, literature, and the arts. They use these to consider questions about, and qualities of, leadership, and to see how what they learn can be applied to technology trends including data privacy and artificial intelligence. …

“Says Virginia Tech’s Mr. Jaitly, a former technology entrepreneur and founder of a venture capital firm whose own undergraduate degree was in history. ‘The superpowers of the future emanate from the humanities: introspection and imagination, storytelling and story-listening, critical thinking.’ …

“Some humanities faculty [bristle] at the idea that their work is relevant only when combined with more career-oriented disciplines, says Dr. Durand, at the University of Arizona. ‘But you have to be aligned with your students,’ he says. … ‘We can’t do things the way we always have.’ ”

More at the Hechinger Report via the Monitor, here. No firewall.

Read Full Post »