During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent ... What’s going on? The trend mirrors a global one; four-fifths of countries in the Organization for Economic Coöperation reported falling humanities enrollments in the past decade. But that brings little comfort to American scholars, who have begun to wonder what it might mean to graduate a college generation with less education in the human past than any that has come before.
Heller considers various explanations proffered to explain the shift, and visits Arizona State and Harvard, his alma mater, to provide snapshots of universities now in thrall to STEM. I'm familiar with the broader arguments, if not with the particular centers and shiny buildings he visits. But as he went on (it's a long article) I found myself wanting something Heller never bothers to explain: why should anyone major in English in the first place?
I feel quite the philistine even asking this question. I love the pleasures of texts and I understand myself as a scholar of the humanities but have tended toward things that point beyond literary study - philosophy, politics and economics, then religious studies, with some anthropology and geography along the way. Sure, religion is as made-up as literature, but I approach it as a way of attuning oneself - body, soul, society - with the real. I've often quipped that the religious studies and interdisciplinary science types at my college get on so well because, unlike the rest of the curriculum, our courses seek a reality beyond the limits of human artifice and interpretation. (And yes, I know that you never get beyond those limits, especially when you think you have...)
Many of the arguments for the common good of citizens getting an "education in the human past" are compelling to me, but precisely as things that every college student should be getting. The liberal arts ideal is something you shouldn't have to major in a humanities subject to get. I'm chilled by the true philisitinism of those critics of American higher education who reject the critical and self-aware gifts of humanistic learning in favor of a narrow and naive conception of virtue (more "Christian" than civic) and want to prohibit teaching that might make students feel uncomfortable about living in and, in many cases, benefiting from an unjust society. But again: why should the number of literature or humanities majors be the measure of success here? Wouldn't it be as good, even better, if everyone minored in a humanities subject?
In fact, the numbers of humanities majors has never been that high ...
For decades, the average proportion of humanities students in every class hovered around fifteen per cent nationally, following the American economy up in boom times and down in bearish periods.
... though recent years suggest a new pattern.
Enrollment numbers of the past decade defy these trends, however. When the economy has looked up, humanities enrollments have continued falling. When the markets have wobbled, enrollments have tumbled even more. Today, the roller coaster is in free fall.
I'm not sure a decade is statisticaly significant, but for what it's worth, religion majors appear to be dwindling faster than English, indeed almost as fast as the biggest loser history majors - as we've known for years. (I remember doom and gloom a dozen years ago!) But again, why are majors the measure?) What's wrong with majoring in something you think will place you in a good job? Heller's piece has produced a wave of people successful in all sorts of fields coming out has having been English majors, and we often say that your particular major matters less than having a liberal arts degree, which makes you adaptable, open to complexity, good at collaboration and communication. Shouldn't the benefits, in maturity, responsibility and a reflective understanding of the human condition, be everyone's? I suppose advanced literary study gives you something above and beyond that... but what? (The collapse in history majors seems to me a greater civilizational crisis.)
I know, I know. As majors fall, faculty lines are reapportioned. We hear about the closure of humanities departments at one school or another practically evey week. Fewer humanists in the professoriate (as opposed to the growing ranks of contingent faculty teaching general education curricula) change the tenor of faculty discussions, diminishing the otherworldly call of learning for learning's sake, maybe weakening the position of the university as a source of wisdom, new knowledge and lateral thinking for society as a whole.
So: decline in liberal arts aspirations and achievements, a problem I'm all over. But a decline in literature majors? Heller reports that my neighbor Columbia's has seen a halving in their English majors between 2002 and 2020, from 10% of their graduating class to 5%. I'm still astonished by the 10%. What were those students thinking?
