Humanities departments are among the hardest hit. In this post, Joel Mark comments:
The recession is not what is hitting the humanities departments of most of our major universities. Intellectual poverty and dishonesty are what is hitting them, in the name of such ideologies as postmodernism, neo-Marxism, socialism, political correctness, multi-culturalism and sheer selfish and immature anger (especially in the arts).
I love the humanities and have taught for several years in the humanities department of a university in California. The best place to study and learn about what we call the humanities today, however, is often as far away as possible from a major modern university.
If humanities departments in universities do suffer, that constitutes our best hope for a future rise in our actual learning in the real ‘humanities’ far from the angry ivory towers. So, I am optimistic.
Nice to read good news for a change.
University provides these benefits to humanities students:
1. Library with the books they need.
2. People with whom they can discuss the topics. This includes both fellow students and experts (= professors).
3. Structure and selection of what is important.
The first two are mostly available online. Any subject you’re likely to find in a university has message boards on line, and most works humanity students study are already out of copyright and available on line anyway.
The structure just isn’t important enough to justify the huge investment in time and money for a degree by itself.