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As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/education/as-interest-fades-in-the-humanities-colleges-worry.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1383236263-+AvAVERkmWlt66YIMBv3bw&pagewanted=all&[/url]

STANFORD, Calif. — On Stanford University’s sprawling campus, where a long palm-lined drive leads to manicured quads, humanities professors produce highly regarded scholarship on Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language.

They have generous compensation, stunning surroundings and access to the latest technology and techniques of scholarship. The only thing they lack is students: Some 45 percent of the faculty members in Stanford’s main undergraduate division are clustered in the humanities — but only 15 percent of the students.

With Stanford’s reputation in technology, it is no wonder that computer science is the university’s most popular major, and that there are no longer any humanities programs among the top five. But with the recession having helped turn college, in the popular view, into largely a tool for job preparation, administrators are concerned.

“We have 11 humanities departments that are quite extraordinary, and we want to provide for that faculty,” said Richard Shaw, Stanford’s dean of admission and financial aid.

The concern that the humanities are being eclipsed by science goes far beyond Stanford.

At some public universities, where funding is eroding, humanities are being pared. In September, for example, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania announced that it was closing its sparsely populated degree programs in German, philosophy, and world languages and culture.

At elite universities, such departments are safe but wary. Harvard had a 20 percent decline in humanities majors over the last decade, a recent report found, and most students who say they intend to major in humanities end up in other fields. So the university is looking to reshape its first-year humanities courses to sustain student interest.

Princeton, in an effort to recruit more humanities students, offers a program for high school students with a strong demonstrated interest in humanities — an idea Stanford, too, adopted last year.

“Both inside the humanities and outside, people feel that the intellectual firepower in the universities is in the sciences, that the important issues that people of all sorts care about, like inequality and climate change, are being addressed not in the English departments,” said Andrew Delbanco, a Columbia University professor who writes about higher education.

The future of the humanities has been a hot topic this year, both in academia and the high-culture media. Some commentators sounded the alarm based on federal data showing that nationally, the percentage of humanities majors hovers around 7 percent — half the 14 percent share in 1970. As others quickly pointed out, that decline occurred between 1970, the high point, and 1985, not in recent years.

Still, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued a report this spring noting the decreased funding for humanities and calling for new initiatives to ensure that they are not neglected amid the growing money and attention devoted to science and technology.

In The New Yorker in August, the writer Adam Gopnik argued for the importance of English majors. The New Republic ran an article, “Science Is Not Your Enemy,” by Steven Pinker, a Harvard cognitive scientist. A few weeks later came a testy rebuttal, “Crimes Against Humanities” by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, rejecting Dr. Pinker’s views on the ascendancy of science.

“In the scholarly world, cognitive sciences has everybody’s ear right now, and everybody is thinking about how to relate to it,” said Louis Menand, a Harvard history professor. “How many people do you know who’ve read a book by an English professor in the past year? But everybody’s reading science books.”

Many distinguished humanities professors feel their status deflating. Anthony Grafton, a Princeton history professor who started that university’s humanities recruiting program, said he sometimes feels “like a newspaper comic strip character whose face is getting smaller and smaller.”

At Stanford, the humanists cannot help noticing the primacy of science and technology.

“You look at this university’s extraordinary science and technology achievements, and if you wonder what will happen to the humanities, you can be threatened, or you can be invigorated,” said Franco Moretti, the director of the Stanford Literary Lab. “I’m choosing to be invigorated.”

At Stanford, digital humanities get some of that vigor: In “Teaching Classics in the Digital Age,” graduate students use Rap Genius, a popular website for annotating lyrics from rappers like Jay-Z and Eminem, to annotate Homer and Virgil. In a Literary Lab project on 18th-century novels, English students study a database of nearly 2,000 early books to tease out when “romances,” “tales” and “histories” first emerged as novels, and what the different terms signified. And in “Introduction to Critical Text Mining,” English, history and computer majors use R software to break texts into chunks to analyze novels and Supreme Court rulings.

Dan Edelstein, the Stanford professor who ran this summer’s high school program, said that while it is easy to spot the winners at science fairs and robotics competitions, students who excel in humanities get less acclaim and are harder to identify.

“I got the sense from them that it’s not cool to be a nerd in high school, unless you’re a STEM nerd,” he said, using the term for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

True, said Rachel Roberts, one of his summer students.

“I live in Seattle, surrounded by Amazon and Google and Microsoft,” said Ms. Roberts, a history buff. “One of the best things about the program, that made us all breathe a sigh of relief, was being in an environment where no one said: “Oh, you’re interested in humanities? You’ll never get a job.”

For university administrators, finding the right mix of science and humanities is difficult, given the enormous imbalance in outside funding.

“There’s an overwhelming push from the administration at most universities to build up the STEM fields, both because national productivity depends in part on scientific productivity and because there’s so much federal funding for science,” said John Tresch, a historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, since the recession — probably because of the recession — there has been a profound shift toward viewing college education as a vocational training ground.

“College is increasingly being defined narrowly as job preparation, not as something designed to educate the whole person,” said Pauline Yu, president of the American Council of Learned Societies.

While humanities majors often have trouble landing their first job, their professors say that over the long term, employers highly value their critical thinking skills.

Parents, even more than students, often focus single-mindedly on employment. Jill Lepore, the chairwoman of Harvard’s history and literature program, tells of one young woman who came to her home, quite enthusiastic, for an event for students interested in the program, and was quickly deluged with messages from her parents. “They kept texting her: leave right now, get out of there, that is a house of pain,” she said.

Some professors flinch when they hear colleagues talking about the need to prepare students for jobs.

“I think that’s conceding too quickly,” said Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia. “We’re not a feeder for law school; our job is to help students learn to question.”

His university had 394 English majors last year, down from 501 when he arrived in 1984, but Professor Edmundson said he does not fret about the future. “In the end, we can’t lose,” he said. “We have William Shakespeare.”

But for students worrying about their own future, Shakespeare can seem an obstacle to getting on with their lives.

“Students who are anxious about finishing their degree, and avoiding debt, sometimes see the breadth requirements as getting in their way,” said Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

Many do not understand that the study of humanities offers skills that will help them sort out values, conflicting issues and fundamental philosophical questions, said Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College.

“We have failed to make the case that those skills are as essential to engineers and scientists and businessmen as to philosophy professors,” he said.

[[i] 本帖最后由 Ageji_Mom 于 2013-11-1 02:50 编辑 [/i]].

“the study of humanities offers skills that will help them sort out values, conflicting issues and fundamental philosophical questions”，所以humanities 作为大学中学的通识教育很好的，强化critical thinking skills；但作为专业则比较尴尬，毕竟没多少人可以靠莎士比亚来吃饱饭的，feed law school是最好的出路。

阳春白雪毕竟曲高和寡，不论教授们愿不愿意接受，现实就是谋生最重要了:L.

回复 2楼pp_dream 的帖子

Humanities从教育、训练的角度看是必要的，但作为专业是让人发愁的。我曾读过一篇讲大学生债务的文章。那些孩子一身债，可那些专业，确实让人嗟叹。

我是忧虑型的，早就告诉ageji有一个前提条件他必须满足，要有一技之长，能养活自己。在能自己养活自己的情况下，他可以自由去追求他的特别兴趣。有意思的是，他在六年级时感兴趣要求学programing，我未及安排拖到他上七年级时，碰巧我的同学志愿开课教一帮小孩，我就把他扔过去了。无论他将来干什么，会点programing都有益处，自己编游戏自娱都好。不管怎样，当个码工，捣鼓big data糊口也行。

[[i] 本帖最后由 Ageji_Mom 于 2013-11-1 06:06 编辑 [/i]].

我们坚持选Humanities，尊重孩子兴趣最重要！选容易谋生但自己不喜欢的，从读书开始会痛苦到工作，人生乐趣还有多少？再说在自己不喜欢的专业里，也无法做到最好。.

回复 4楼不二周助 的帖子

尊重小孩的兴趣是很重要。我们正是因为孩子自己的兴趣和需要让他提前单飞，我们大人自己作了很大的牺牲。

为父母的大多想孩子有完美的一切。如果可能，很多人愿意为后代撑起完美的一方天。只是，谁能保证这方美景亘古永驻？人性不完美，社会不完美。有时候，人需要压上一些担子才能激发出潜能。除了兴趣，人也会有其它社会需要。社会有其美好的一面，也有其残酷的一面。孩子既然不可能永远呆在象牙塔中，我们当父母的能做到的最大的好，就是培养他们足够强大，能面对任何情况（涉猎广泛，是quick learner, 有transferrable background and skills...)。

能一帆风顺地做自己喜欢的事是最理想的，但有时候真是一种奢侈。另一方面，人生的磨砺，未必是不好的。

[[i] 本帖最后由 Ageji_Mom 于 2013-11-13 07:23 编辑 [/i]].

楼上两位说的都对，因为一个是男孩一个是女孩。:).

回复 3楼Ageji_Mom 的帖子

呵呵，我算是焦虑型的:L 面对我家这位熊丫头， 焦虑得快不行了:Q.

[quote]原帖由 [i]pp_dream[/i] 于 2013-11-13 10:45 发表 [url=http://321ww.org/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=9505649&ptid=4860151][img]http://321ww.org/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
呵呵，我算是焦虑型的:L 面对我家这位熊丫头， 焦虑得快不行了:Q [/quote]
我跟你刚好相反，上旺网的主要目的就是要让自己受点刺激，积极一点:P

我比较不焦虑，因为，即使做最坏的设想，我还是相信我的孩子有生存的能力。

我的最坏设想是：世界级大灾难:funk: ，我孩子的生存几率应该还行，他们懂得游泳，懂得喂饱自己，有战斗和自卫策略（通过电脑游戏学的），没有严重敏感，身强体壮，还看过“Surviving Disaster"的纪录片。。。:loveliness:

如果未来情况比这个好的话，暖饱娶妻应该没问题。:victory:

不过，即使将来他们要往人文方面发展，本科最好还是读点理科。.

[quote]原帖由 [i]sask[/i] 于 2013-11-13 13:54 发表 [url=http://ww123.net/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=9505917&ptid=4860151][img]http://ww123.net/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]

我跟你刚好相反，上旺网的主要目的就是要让自己受点刺激，积极一点:P

我比较不焦虑，因为，即使做最坏的设想，我还是相信我的孩子有生存的能力。

我的最坏设想是：世界级大灾难:funk: ，我孩子的生存几率应 ... [/quote]

:handshake

同感，我也不担心孩子的生存能力。希望增加应付灾难的能力。其它的，顺其自然，发挥自己的潜能即可，这方面正好是无极限的。.

回复 5楼Ageji_Mom 的帖子

我同意这种说法。但是还有一点就是，即使是为现实而计划，我也觉得是孩子自己的领悟。而不是父母一定要安排孩子读容易生计，自己不擅长不喜欢的专业。也就是说，如果她自己现实，就让她自己成熟的时候面对现实吧。但是，我也发动了一些我的国外朋友们，专门来提早告诉她现实。特别告诉她关于艺术出路的问题，关于美国艺术博士也找不到工作的现实。（当然理科博士也未必人人有工作，只是概率问题）。如果我让孩子一个梦想在还没有尝试前提早面对现实而放弃，我不能让她另外一个梦想也破灭。接下来，就看孩子自己的选择了。她现在说纯Humanity也找不到什么工作，在摇摆之间，我觉得这是很残忍的一种成熟。我有冲动告诉孩子，如果你读了Humanity找不到工作，我也支持你。

[[i] 本帖最后由 不二周助 于 2013-11-14 00:16 编辑 [/i]].

回复 8楼sask 的帖子

世界级的灾难？世界大战是不可能的，那么只能是地球毁灭？
呵呵，我最不担心的就是这样广义的灾难了，2012世纪末日盼了半天什么都没发生，懊恼！.

回复 10楼不二周助 的帖子

[[i] 本帖最后由 Ageji_Mom 于 2014-4-29 07:42 编辑 [/i]].

[quote]原帖由 [i]不二周助[/i] 于 2013-11-14 00:09 发表 [url=http://ww123.net/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=9506336&ptid=4860151][img]http://ww123.net/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
我同意这种说法。但是还有一点就是，即使是为现实而计划，我也觉得是孩子自己的领悟。而不是父母一定要安排孩子读容易生计，自己不擅长不喜欢的专业。也就是说，如果她自己现实，就让她自己成熟的时候面对现实吧。但 ... [/quote]

Humanity 专业挺好的。 不鸣则已，一鸣惊人。开始工资不高， 有才能、又坚持的话，会有大出息。.

回复 11楼pp_dream 的帖子

我想的灾难就是指生活中一些突发的事件，不容易处理好，最考验人。.

[quote]原帖由 [i]pp_dream[/i] 于 2013-11-14 03:17 发表 [url=http://321ww.org/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=9506350&ptid=4860151][img]http://321ww.org/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
世界级的灾难？世界大战是不可能的，那么只能是地球毁灭？
呵呵，我最不担心的就是这样广义的灾难了，2012世纪末日盼了半天什么都没发生，懊恼！ [/quote]
连这个你都不怕，其他有什么可怕的？:o

我大概是灾难片，灾难小说看多了，最怕的就是这种只能听天由命，九死一生的处境。最可能发生的应该是瘟疫吧？大城市人口这么密集，全球人口流动又广又快，一发生肯定难以隔离和控制；都市人的食物食水都是从很远的地方运过来的，如果灾区遍布全球，再没有外援的话，如何是好？:funk:.

从个人角度出发，人文科的学生少，竞争也相对少，孩子如果有兴趣，崭露头角的机会应该比较大吧？

从社会角度出发，我希望人文系的学生跟其他科系的学生一样，有严谨的逻辑思维，是因为兴趣而选择人文，不是因为数理不行才选择人文。



[quote]原帖由 [i]meia[/i] 于 2013-11-13 17:00 发表 [url=http://321ww.org/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=9506106&ptid=4860151][img]http://321ww.org/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]


同感，我也不担心孩子的生存能力。希望增加应付灾难的能力。其它的，顺其自然，发挥自己的潜能即可，这方面正好是无极限的。 [/quote]
:handshake

想到儿子跟我对抗时显示出的韧力和意志力，我就觉得不必太担心了。;P.