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Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

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Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#41

Post by nostrademons »

gonehome wrote: post #11

My hypothesis would be that in times of economic instability (70's energy crisis, 2008 financial crisis) - people bias towards more obviously reliable fields for income and work (Nursing, engineering, etc.). It's also probably easier to major in CS (or some other technical subject) and take some humanities classes you find interesting rather than major in humanities.

The graph certainly seemed to support that - humanities degrees fell precipitously in the 70s, started gaining in the mid-80s through 90s, fell again during the dot-com boom, held steady during the 2000s, and then fell precipitously after the financial crisis.

A slightly more accurate model might be that demand for humanities degrees dries up when either students feel that they must get a STEM/professional/trade degree for economic survival, or that they should get a STEM degree to take advantage of a recent technological change. That accounts for the drop during the dot-com boom and during the mobile/crypto/AI boom that followed the financial crisis. At this point in time it's probably a stupid idea to get a humanities degree when all the jobs are in technology, and college students are simply responding to that.

This would also predict that as recent tech markets get saturated and stabilize, then assuming we don't have a major economic crash, you'll see humanities enrollment trend upwards again. Basically stability is good for humanities, but either too little or too much growth pushes people into STEM fields.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#42

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

neom wrote: post #5

I'm 32, my parents studies humanities and strongly discouraged me "because in the future there are no well-paid jobs in the humanities". I presume I'm not alone?

I'm 34 and my parents suggested I get a degree just to get one. The problem is that the degree doesn't do anything for you if you aren't making the right moves while you're there, or know where you're going before you start. So now I have a diploma saying I spent 4 years studying history before I went back to school to train at a polytechnic to get a job.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#43

Post by lovich »

notafraudster wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #10

> Back in 2013, I wrote a few blog post arguing that the media was hyperventilating about a "crisis" in the humanities, when, in fact, the long term trends were not especially alarming. I made two claims them: 1. The biggest drop in humanities degrees relative to other degrees in the last 50 years happened between 1970 and 1985, and were steady from 1985 to 2011; as a proportion of the population, humanities majors e…

Is this a point you'd like to elaborate on? Without accusing you of anything, when I read a one sentence dismissal of humanities/social sciences, what I tend to think is that this is someone who thinks "post-modernism is bullshit", "third wave feminism is bad", "intersectionality isn't real", "everything is cultural marxism", "safe spaces", etc. and who is appealing to Jordan Peterson as an expert on everything. If w…

It might have been my school but I found the degree poorly taught. You could get a fairly easy B+/A- by just parroting the teachers opinion on the topic at hand. STEM classes had some teachers like that, but most of the work there had objectively wrong and right answers.

My friends from other schools all had the same experience for the most part with only a handful of exceptions for particularly good teachers, who also all happened to be employed at other jobs and working as an adjunct professor to teach single courses on their topics.

The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach, but as much of the humanities has no right or wrong answer then the professor can bullshit as much as they want. I don't think that the teachers are any worse than STEM teachers. If STEM courses were as subjective I'm sure we'd see the same problems

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#44

Post by AmericanChopper »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #30
AmericanChopper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with that is women and minorities are all individual people who make their own decisions about what they want to do in life. What does a funnel look like? Forced degrees? Forced employment?

Probably just a less obviously-hostile environment would be a good start.

What exactly is obviously hostile about our universities? Is it the safe spaces? Is it the lower standards applied to minorities and women to make it easier to get in? Is it all of the scholarships open only to minorities and women?

Universities are quite obviously the most inclusive and least hostile place in the world for minorities and women.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#45

Post by munin »

ams6110 wrote: post #37
darpa_escapee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to be human and get sick on $18k a year.

One good thing about university employment is that the health benefits are usually very good, even if the salary isn't.

Adjuncts aren’t employees.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#46

Post by schoen »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #18
seibelj wrote: post #8

I was a double major in CS and Latin, and once I asked my Latin advisor about grad school for Latin. I didn’t intend on going, I was just curious about what she would say as a tenured Latin professor at a good university. The look on her face when I asked was complete shock and she went on a rant about how it was the dumbest idea ever. She told me how she was going on sabbatical to write a book that only 30 people wo…

Which is a shame, because I would happily teach Latin for a guaranteed $18,000 a year. Latin is an amazing language that has a lot of tangential applications. At the very least, Latin shouldn't go extinct.

Sed ubi tum id faciens illo pretio habites?

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#47

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

jessaustin wrote: post #24

Maybe this is more an indictment of universities than of the humanities? Is it possible that university study in general is on borrowed time, and the future is simply here earlier for the humanities? It's not as though the Classics will be forgotten, nor will writers, artists, connoisseurs, or critics disappear. Professors haven't ever been [EDIT:] a vital part of this.

> Professors haven't ever been an important part of this.

Professors have definitely been an important part of Classics. First of all, if someone picks up any Latin or Greek text, that text was established (based on painstaking study of the manuscript tradition) by someone who was almost certainly employed at a university.

Then, if the text has notes at the back of it, those notes were written by someone who was almost certainly employed at a university. If it was translated from the original language for a general public readership, then commonly that was done by a scholar in that field.

As time goes by and new manuscripts are discovered, new light is cast on manuscripts already known, our understanding of some aspect of Greek or Latin life is expanded, or the focuses in our contemporary society change, there is a periodic need for new such editions, and we generally look to scholars to do all that instead of just anybody out there.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#48

Post by 1996 »

jessaustin wrote: post #24

Maybe this is more an indictment of universities than of the humanities? Is it possible that university study in general is on borrowed time, and the future is simply here earlier for the humanities? It's not as though the Classics will be forgotten, nor will writers, artists, connoisseurs, or critics disappear. Professors haven't ever been [EDIT:] a vital part of this.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

In developing countries, humanities can only get you a government job. If your idea is right, as the economy expand and the role of government jobs becomes less important, humanities would naturally decline.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#49

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

lovich wrote: post #43
notafraudster wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a point you'd like to elaborate on? Without accusing you of anything, when I read a one sentence dismissal of humanities/social sciences, what I tend to think is that this is someone who thinks "post-modernism is bullshit", "third wave feminism is bad", "intersectionality isn't real", "everything is cultural marxism", "safe spaces", etc. and who is appealing to Jordan Peterson as an expert on everything. If w…

It might have been my school but I found the degree poorly taught. You could get a fairly easy B+/A- by just parroting the teachers opinion on the topic at hand. STEM classes had some teachers like that, but most of the work there had objectively wrong and right answers. My friends from other schools all had the same experience for the most part with only a handful of exceptions for particularly good teachers, who al…

> The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach

Why do you think faculty’s lack of desire to teach is something limited to the humanities? In STEM fields too you will commonly see faculty delegating their workload to teaching assistants so that they can focus on things that interest them more.

Re: Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities

#50

Post by Moodles »

80% of humanities papers are never cited once. 80%. That. is. appalling. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/aca... Social "science" is even more terrifying in my view. 25% of social sciencist identity as Marxist. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.ht...

I don't know how anyone can see these statistics and not think that there is a crisis.

I nearly took history at undergraduate. My colleague has an English degree but now works in CS with me. What's shocking is that, at age 16, we're meant to make these huge decisions for our lives and we really have no clue about the ramifications.

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