The Rise and Fall of Humanities Studies

Angelo Franco

 

A recent report released by Harvard University, “Mapping the Future,” found that the number of students who earned a humanities degree in the United States halved in the past four decades.  Headlines proclaiming the fall of humanities from favor as a global crisis are reported throughout major news outlets.  Some argue that students are simply no longer interested in humanities, while others ascertain that the changing landscape of women in the workplace is the reason to blame.   While these causes are part of a bigger truth, there is a general consensus about a key factor in the decline of humanities degrees: in an overcrowded workforce, students are anxious to express interest in a field with weak job prospects.

 

In the wake of a global economic competition, rising tuition costs, and sky-high student loan debts, students face a job market that seems to disproportionally reward employees with measurable skill sets that come with a “hard” science degree.  Nevertheless, colleges and universities in the United States and abroad are determinedly pursuing humanities as a way to entice student enrollment.  Harvard and Princeton, for example, are in the process of major marketing campaigns to attract freshmen into a humanities degree.  Relatively new concentrations such as Queer Studies, Food Studies, and Sustainability are sharing campus buildings with the English and Social Studies departments. 

 

But the rise in humanities concentrations is often overshadowed by more technical-leaning degrees.  While there are more than 400 institutions in the United States alone offering a degree in Women’s Studies, for instance—or Gender Studies or some variation thereof—there is newfound interest in majors such as Robotics, Cybersecurity, and Business Analytics (Business Analytics and related concentrations, such as Data Science, are new additions to the academic curriculum. University of Tennessee started offering Business Analytics only in 2010, and the College of Charleston is one of only a handful of institutions offering Data Science).     

 

Meanwhile, the labor outlook for young graduates remains bleak.  Though the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has seen a substantial break since its peak in 2010, another matter proves to be just as pressing a problem: underemployment.  According to figures released by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, as many as 36 percent of college graduates are working jobs that don’t require a college degree.  Economists call this “mal-employment,” and it is a trend that is likely to continue as more and more people earn college degrees. 

 

This means that while the unemployment rate for young people under 25 is relatively low compared to the current national average, the college graduates working in hospitality, retail, and other such industries in positions below their education levels are not counted within those figures.  Instead, they are mal-employed.  The study by Northeastern also revealed that mal-employed workers earn up to 40 percent less than their peers, which could have lasting financial consequences as they enter the wage ladder at a lower average and may have difficulties repaying student loans and maintaining a financially stable lifestyle. 

 

So why are universities pushing for more enrollment in humanities fields, and why should students still care? It seems that in a labor market saturated with college graduates, a degree in humanities may offer an edge to those striving for the coveted entry-level positions after all.

 

Most students who choose to study humanities argue that the best way to get the foot in the door of any industry is to start at the beginning: an internship.  Understanding that the career outlooks for young college graduates are as competitive as they’ve ever been seems to be half the battle.  With an influx of tech companies flooding the job market, both a technical and a humanities degree are still coveted by employers; and for many of these companies, and at times whole industries, the best way to source through potential candidates is to sort them out through practical internships. 

New York City, for example, recently started an economic development program to stimulate job growth within the city’s digital sector.  Part of the “Made in New York” campaign, the initiative strives to highlight tech companies that are offering job and internship opportunities in New York City.  Its website currently hosts over 900 tech companies on the hunt for potential employees and interns.  What sets these relatively new companies apart from older, established companies, is that they are often heralded with an ideology representative of the so-called “millenials,’ something that some experts argue is a major contributing factor to the high unemployment and underemployment rate of recent college graduates.


That, however, is poised to change with the tides of time, and that is what humanities students are anchoring their hopes on.  All of the tech companies listed on the “Made in New York “ website certainly look for particular, technically skilled workers such as web coders, engineers, and designers, but they are also on the lookout for candidates with a bit of knowledge in different fields.  The Wall Street Journal recently published a series where it asked experts and employers to weigh in on the issue of whether humanities still mattered, citing tech executives such as Mark Bertolini from Logitech commenting on the intrinsic value of a pan-expertise employees working alongside hard-skilled ones.

 

An internship at a company like some of these tech businesses in New York City is slowly becoming the new standard for post-college experience.  This is also partly because most, if not all, of these internships are paid.  “Traditional” internships, it seems, where an intern was asked to do “menial” work for no pay or a small stipend are slowly making an exit.  Lawsuits against Condé Nast, Hearst, and other publications from unpaid interns who claimed were overworked, are forcing “traditional” companies to rethink the value of interns in terms of real experiences they can bring to the company.  Internships at Condé Nast were once highly coveted until the company announced it was ending its internship program in light of recent developments. 

 

While some were dismayed to hear that there were to be no more Vogue interns, others argue that these internships were already discriminatory in nature for those whose career outlooks were already grim, as only a certain type of young person would be able to afford to live in New York City or any other metropolitan area working 40-plus hours a week for no pay. 

 

Some of these “traditional” companies already took notice.  The New York Times Company pays its interns; and Atlantic Media, which publishes titles such as The Atlantic and the National Journal, ended unpaid internships three years ago in favor of fellowship programs that offer candidates a living wage and even health insurance.   Tech start-ups also see the potential value of bringing in recent college graduates with a concentration in the humanities field to provide that extra edge that every company wants to have, as reflected in the widely different job descriptions on their career sites. 

And others still, campaigning for humanities degrees, say that at the end of the day, someone has to do it.  In a manner of speaking, someone has to crunch the numbers, but then someone else has to make sense of them.  A Women’s Studies major in a marketing role would come in handy when proposing demographically-targeted campaigns, as well as, perhaps, a Sociology major to determine whether said campaign or program is actually working.  

 

Eva Wasko, an account executive at Cohn & Wolf, a global public relations firm representing brands such as Nokia, Ubisoft, and Pillsbury, says that it is of upmost importance to have a wide employee pool with different backgrounds to pull ideas from.  “The digital department always does a beautiful work designing and creating our websites and mobile pages and commercials and such,” Wasko says.  “But when we brainstorm, we have a Theatre major such as myself throwing out an idea that this Economics major or Spanish major or Marketing major will think it’s wonderful, or not.  And you bet the digital department is also part of that brainstorm session.  I think that’s what makes this company so successful, the integrity of its diversity.” 

 

Cohn & Wolfe pays its interns, and 75 percent of them are hired into entry-level positions. 

 

It is unclear whether the recovering economy will prove a pivotal aspect in the strain humanities degrees are under.  With universities making a push for higher enrollment rates and companies rethinking the value of interns and entry-level candidates with humanities concentrations as well as tech and “hard” sciences, students nevertheless still face a grim labor market.  Deciding what it is that gives each of them that particular edge to make them stand out from the crowd is what will ultimately decide the fate of the humanities degrees, whether they do what they love or what they think is best for them.

 

“I studied Theatre because I wanted to be creative,” says Wasko, who started at the company as an intern. “And in this job I get to think creatively every day.  That’s what my humanities degree gave me.” 

 

Author Bio:
Angelo Franco is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

Popular: 
not popular
Photographer: 
Wikipedia Commons; Leslie Byk (Flickr)
Bottom Slider: 
Out Slider