5 Questions with the director of FIU’s Center for the Humanities in an Urban Environment
“…The humanities are about understanding, celebrating and studying what it means to be human. That includes the forms of ‘production’ that we make through our cultures, the way we set up our societies, the way we talk to each other, the way we think. And the way we tell stories about ourselves and our world. It’s us. It’s people. “
Read the interview here
The Federal Government's "job-ready graduates" package has come under fire for building unfairness into university student fees.
From 2021, new science students will benefit from cuts while fees for many humanities and social science courses will double.
Education Minister Dan Tehan said the legislated changes would "incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices".
However, Margaret Gardner, chair of the Group of Eight research universities, told ABC listeners the policy ignored the evidence on which degrees actually lead to employment.
Read more here
…Afraid that the traditional humanities disciplines are increasingly regarded as relics that have lost their salience, as Eurocentric vestiges of an obsolete and disreputable past with no little obvious traction in the job market, it is not surprising that many humanists seek a new currency.
Fears for the future of the humanities are well warranted, evident in a marked decline in the number of majors in traditional humanities disciplines even at the most selective colleges. The sharpest drops in majors occurred in the core humanities departments: art history, English, history and philosophy…”
Read more here
“…Perhaps your favourite teacher at school did an arts or humanities degree, especially if they taught in one of those subjects….An under-discussed aspect of the government’s proposal is it risks pushing many would-be teachers in these fields away from undergraduate humanities training, potentially at the expense of their future students.”
Read full article here
…“According to the OECD, "globally competent individuals can examine local, global and intercultural issues, understand and appreciate different perspectives and world views, interact successfully and respectfully with others, and take responsible action toward sustainability and collective well-being."
The OECD believes "educating for global competence can boost employability," and also believes that all subjects can introduce global competence.
It seems to us learning history and other humanities disciplines are effective ways to foster the elements of global competence outlined in their description.”
Read full article here
Photo Credit: Antan O/Wikimedia Commons
“The number of STEM majors is exponentially increasing. As fewer graduates walk away with degrees in English, foreign languages, and history, fewer graduates walk away with the critical-thinking and social skills harnessed by these disciplines as well.”
Alaina Joby, a first-year student from Los Angeles, CA looks at the current global pandemic and the urgent need for a humanities-based response. Read more here
Australian Academy of the Humanities president Joy Damousi said the reason for targeting the field was unfathomable. Read the full article here.
The federal government’s announcement they will more than double the cost of humanities and communications degrees for university students has taken the sector by surprise – not least because it goes against increasing evidence that these programs are the key to our nation’s future success. Read more here.
Business leaders call for humanities, not STEM subjects. Read why here.
Image: Marcus Reubenstein
When people who should know better do something egregiously silly, humanities graduates tend to apply their critical thinking skills to understanding why. Using the reasoning powers and the understanding of the human condition they have derived from their study of history, philosophy, literature or the social sciences, they often find they can attribute the folly to one or more of ignorance, cowardice or malice. In the case of the government’s decision to more than double the cost of most humanities degrees, it seems all three explanations are relevant.
Let us take ignorance first. The government claims to have consulted widely. How then is it not aware of the research findings of expert bodies, ranging from Oxford University and the World Economic Forum to our own Foundation for Young Australians, all of which show that humanities graduates are highly employable and tend to outperform other graduates in any given career? Does it not know that many of the founders and leaders of the world’s largest companies in Silicon Valley such as LinkedIn and YouTube are humanities graduates? Even a few phone calls would have revealed that two thirds of the CEOs of the ASX 200 are as well. And they should surely know that two out of three federal parliamentarians are.
And who are the companies they claim to have consulted? Why is their definition of future skill requirements so different from that defined by all recent research, including that cited on the government’s own “Skills for the Future” webpage? A recent report from Deloitte suggests that the skills that are in increasing demand are precisely those developed by the humanities: communication, teamwork, critical thinking, self-management and solving novel problems. Most of the degrees the government has chosen to privilege involve learning specific techniques with a narrow range of application, which are exactly the type of skills for which demand is projected to decline. All informed commentators agree that the nature of work is changing rapidly, thanks in particular to learning machines, and people will need to change roles and learn different skills many times in their careers.
A further example of ignorance is a complete failure to consider the side-effects of an inappropriate use of pricing signals. Do we really want all our teachers and nurses to be those who could not afford to do another degree? Do we want to establish a hereditary class system, where most of the people getting to the top in business or politics are those whose parents could help fund a humanities degree? If we want more people to apply to become teachers and nurses – and I’m sure we do – a more effective application of neo-liberal principles would be to increase the miserable amount we pay them, rather than try to convert places of learning into job factories.
Assuming some of these things were known to the decision-makers, the next explanation is cowardice. It is easy to pretend to be supporting the economy by funding courses with job-titles in them and much harder to explain to the public why the skills we need don’t actually come in courses with job titles – especially to a public many of whom have been denied a humanities education themselves by past policies and misrepresentations. This cowardice comes at the expense of our children. Even if the jobs they have been herded into in response to these price signals turn out to be ones they enjoy and are good at (an unlikely combination of circumstances given the basis of the decision-making), they will change jobs on average every three or four years, and whatever job they learn to do now is almost certain to have been radically disrupted by learning machines long before they reach mid-career, in some cases before they have completed their studies. They will have spent the best years of their lives for learning in acquiring techniques the world will no longer pay them for, and they will not have developed the flexibility and transferrable skills they need to succeed in today’s world, let alone tomorrow’s.
A charge of malice is more disturbing. An alert citizenry will recognise, however, that this decision is consistent with the government’s treatment of research grants, notably through the Arts Council, its defunding of the ABC and its lack of support for universities and the performing arts during the COVID-19 crisis. A government that feels a need to constrain critical thinking must give us great cause for concern.
©Dr Peter Acton 2020
Dr Peter Acton is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and The Australian Institute of Management, and was Managing Partner of the Boston Consulting Group’s Melbourne office. He is the Founding President of Humanities21 (www.humanities21.com.au)
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In response to ABC News report: "University fees to be overhauled, some course costs to double as domestic student places boosted" -
Our position @ Humanities 21 is as follows:
The Government’s hiking of the costs for studying the humanities in favour of ‘job-ready graduates’ undermines the value of a humanities education.
Humanities courses teach critical thinking, communication, and creative problem-solving skills fundamental to diverse industries and careers. The humanities, combined with other studies provides students not only with a dynamic skillset, but one that has been harnessed by leaders today, from the CEOs of Disney, Westpac, and YouTube, to Prime Ministers.
It is through engaging with the humanities, that we can tackle problems, and invest in our future. Individually, and as communities, we look to shared understandings to see issues from different perspectives, and to engage with a critical and empathetic perspective.
The humanities provide this, and studying the humanities makes us better.
#humanities #university #government #degrees #students #Australia
Steven Mintz, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin examines the AAAS/Humanities Indicators’ report, “A Profile of Humanities Departments Pre-Pandemic, and suggests it is not as ‘bleak’ as first thought: “…Despite a significant decline in the number of degrees granted in departments of art history, English, history and philosophy, the number of minors remained stable and course enrollments [sic] remained high at around six million.” Read more here.
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