What is the value of Humanities today?

image credit: Anna Gay

Academics is a seasonal business. Just as we come to expect the leaves to turn in the fall and the tulips to bloom in the spring, as a professor in the visual arts, I was always prepared for the "breakdown."

The "breakdown" is the moment when a student, usually in their last year or last semester, suddenly realizes that the cyclic pattern of school will soon be over and yet they have absolutely no idea why they started the whole thing to begin with. Their thoughts would usually go something like "why did I go to college for this?" or "what am I going to do with myself now?"

This is the hard part, as there are no easy answers. I am reminded of Thomas H. Benton's advice article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed earlier this year which outlines what he considers the lie in the notion of the "life of the mind."

So so many young people are in school to get degrees they have been told will lead to greater success while at the same time opportunities for that success are disappearing and transforming into part-time or adjunct positions - not to mention the first thing to go during an "economic downturn."

How then do we answer these students' questions? Better yet, what should schools be telling students and parents before they even enroll? I always hated preview events when I had to meet with prospective students and parents because the later would always invariably ask "what will my child do with this degree?" Being an honest person it was hard to have a good answer that would soothe a concerned parent. "Well I have a job" would be my joking answer, but underneath, that current of doubt was still there.

Now that I work outside of the classroom but still within the institution I see this approach continue. And I see that not only are parents but even administration and trustees hard pressed to really feel confident in what a degree in the humanities will prepare students to do. In a time when career application has become the focus, nay, the obsession of higher education, humanities is having a hard time defending its existence. And during some of last weekend's college football games it was painfully obvious that even the commercials for R1 institutions were pushing the notion that their graduates were getting jobs rather than degrees.

The pain for me is that I am the product of a humanities-based education. And having taught in the humanities I believe and know that the the skills developed provide more than just the ability to take pretty pictures or write eloquent prose. But does this pedagogical model work when the focus of higher education has shifted away from a "life of the mind" to more of a linear career-path mindset? Should we re-examine the role humanities plays in higher education? Or does that just leave higher education masqueraded as vo-tech?