Posted on 08/26/2018 6:19:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
People have been proclaiming the imminent extinction of the humanities for decades. A best-selling volume in 1964 warned that a science-focused world left no room for humane pursuits, even as Baby Boomers began to flood the English and history departments of new universities. Allan Bloom warned about academics putting liberal ideology before scholarship in 1987; humanities degrees quickly rose.
While coverage of individual academic disciplines like musicology, history, or comparative literature often deals with the substance of scholarship, talk of the humanities in general always seems to focus on their imminent extinction. In 2010, Wayne Bivens-Tatum provided a useful walk through the first 50 years of the humanities crisis, until about 1980. Because of this long history, Ive always been skeptical of claims that the humanities are in retreat.
But something different has been happening with the humanities since the 2008 financial crisis. Five years ago, I argued that the humanities were still near long-term norms in their number of majors. But since then, Ive been watching the numbers from the Department of Education, and every year, things look worse.
Almost every humanities field has seen a rapid drop in majors: History is down about 45 percent from its 2007 peak, while the number of English majors has fallen by nearly half since the late 1990s. Student majors have dropped, rapidly, at a variety of types of institutions. Declines have hit almost every field in the humanities (with one interesting exception) and related social sciences, they have not stabilized with the economic recovery, and they appear to reflect a new set of student priorities, which are being formed even before they see the inside of a college classroom.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
I think Equifax should hire a music major to be their Chief Security Officer. Oh, wait ........... never mind!
Maybe people are abandoning college degrees.
On your other comment, I recall that our band/music teachers were the second best paid school employees next to the superintendent
Because they were smart enough to finish school with teaching credentials.
As for me, I learned music in the bars. As a youngster there were times I was making more off the guitar than Uncle Sam paid me but I never tried to make a living off it.
Made a couple dozen fiddles and several mandolins after retirement, still have a rental fleet, do some repair, and still gig a couple times a month. I have to admit the liberal arts degree did help get me promoted in the military but any degree would have at the time.
Underwater basket weaving
The "humanities" today are a monstrous fraud.
Specially, lower education brainwashes the young, and "higher education" cements the educationally crippled.
I was educated "officially" a decade before the "Great Change," now mystified as STEM.
I will challenge my ownership of the benefits of the necessity of grasping the humanities against any millennial or "safe place" uneducated moron, even if obtained through autodidactism.
Humanities use to teach Western Civilization - now they teach liberal ‘fashion ideas’ of the moment.
It’s a waste of student money... Kids must be smarter than I thought if they’re dumping this stuff...
Careful.
That's the third rail around this place.
One of those delusionals will criticize you for confusing a partial URL for the name of this place, but can't be bothered to spell "bait" or "four" correctly.
BFL
Right and the various Ethnic Studies. There should be a price to pay for the bogus degrees.
..and thank you, Yoda, for that bit of cereal box wisdom...
When I worked for EDS, they didn’t hire Computer Science majors. They wanted to hire people with other kinds of degrees, so they could train them to code the way they wanted them to code.
They figured with CS majors, they’d have to ‘unlearn’ everything they were taught.
It seems men are. Whenever I went to an orientation with my daughter, it was almost 80% girls there.
A balance of liberal arts WITH a technical or science education USED to be normal...
"....While history, English, and the rest have faded, only one set of humanities fields without a foot in the sciences has clearly held its own: the much newer (and smaller) disciplines the statistical agency joins together as ethnic, gender, and cultural studies.........
These 'disciplines' are those with radical activism potential. They should not fade, they should be crushed.
Better put on your flameproof suit.
That is not only ignorant, but sexist, homophobic and racist...
< /sarc >
Or defecating on someone’s grave. That’s about the right for what an animal can do.
Bkmk
Now that is among my five most favorite jokes I have heard in my long life.
I wish I had kept track over the years; what the others are, I will recognize when I hear them again.
Alas, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford to “enhance intellectual life” with extraneous and abstract studies. Most folks have to get a job and work.
We are not yet at Millennium.
Studying women these days might get ya fired.
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