Frank Donoghue had an interesting article on the long-term future of the humanities in The Chronicle Review for 5 Sept. Here’s the windup:
The shifting social mission of the university will also contribute to the shrinkage of the humanities as we move forward. The colleges of 1910 served a tiny population—only the children of the elite. College was, in most cases, either free or relatively inexpensive, but it served no purpose in the lives of the vast majority of everyday workers. Now, a college credential of some kind is all but mandatory for any job that pays a living wage. Roughly 18 million students are enrolled, with those numbers projected to continue going up. At first glance, that might seem to bode well for the humanities, but in fact, the opposite is true. The credentials that the influx of students seek, and the colleges that grant them, would have been unforeseeable in 1910.
Thus, the humanities were fine and dandy back then. But they’re largely irrelevant to the largely vocational goals of higher education today. That would seem to be the death knell for the humanities. And the fastest growing sectors of the higher ed biz, for-profits and community colleges, have little interest in the humanities.
With all that in mind, here’s Donoghue’s pitch:
So, will the humanities survive the 21st century? My guess may surprise you, in light of the trends I've just rehearsed: Yes.
Intelligent popular novels continue to be written; the nonfiction of humanists who defy disciplinary affiliation (Thomas Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell, and Garry Wills, among others) will still make best-seller lists; and brilliant independent films (like Slumdog Millionaire) will occasionally capture large popular audiences.
The survival of the humanities in academe, however, is a different story. The humanities will have a home somewhere in 2110, but it won't be in universities. We need at least to entertain the possibility that the humanities don't need academic institutions to survive, but actually do quite well on their own.
Some people may argue that, even if the humanities flourish outside academe, some group will have to train the new generation of public humanists how to read and write. Perhaps, but I see no compelling reason that those trainers must be college professors.
I think it’s a rather good pitch. That is to say, it’s worth thinking about, seriously. I’m reasonably convinced that the whole educational landscape is changing (see, for example, this post on the citizen researcher). That in itself isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s not necessarily bad. It’s to be determined.
Take one of my core interests, literary studies. And take my favorite passage from Kenneth Burke (from "Literature as Equipment for Living" in The Philosophy of Literary Form):
. . . surely, the most highly alembicated and sophisticated work of art, arising in complex civilizations, could be considered as designed to organize and command the army of one's thoughts and images, and to so organize them that one "imposes upon the enemy the time and place and conditions for fighting preferred by oneself." One seeks to "direct the larger movements and operations" in one's campaign of living. One "maneuvers," and the maneuvering is an "art."
If that’s why literature is generally important, it’s not at all obvious to me why that activity has to take place in colleges and universities. It can take place anywhere, in reading groups and in the blogosphere, and one doesn’t have to have a Ph. D. to lead others through such discussions, if leading is necessary. The discussion is what matters, and not just in one’s teens and early twenties, but throughout one’s life.
Seeing that the discussion takes place, and that it is free and open, that's what we have to worry about.
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