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
Graduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences are just as employable as their counterparts in STEM subjects, fuel some of the fastest-growing sectors in the UK and enjoy rewarding careers in a wide range of sectors. These are the key findings of a new British Academy report examining the employment prospects of graduates from different subject groups.
Read more here.
In response to the Federal government’s announcement to increase fees for Humanities student, retaliation continues, and in this blog post, we hear from the students.
“The move could discourage students from studying humanities if it will cost them around $45,000 for a three-year undergraduate degree….
For current Year 12 students who were planning on studying humanities in 2021, the decision is particularly stressful. As Year 12 student Ashley Orr (WA) tells Student Edge, it has made her feel somewhat uncertain about her future.
"I’ve had my sights set on law for basically my entire life, but this makes me wonder whether all my hard work is worth it," she says.
"Like, is it really worth spending six years studying if I’m going to spend half my life paying it off? It’s so frustrating."
Read more here
The flu pandemic of 1918 was terrifying through its sheer lethality.
As we begin to emerge from social isolation into a “new normal”, much remains unknown. At this liminal moment, Monash historians and archaeologists take the opportunity to look to the past – to discover precedents for our current situation, new perspectives we might take, or even some consolation we may find in our forebears’ pathways to recovery.
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)
#BreakingNews
#Humanities
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
In recent months world leaders have mobilized seemingly every technological resource at their disposal to stem the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence and scientific opinion have gained newfound respect; decision makers have arguably become better at listening to scientists and following their directives.
But the virus has also exposed social problems that, by their very nature, go beyond science: deep-rooted health and social inequalities, a fractured political response, mental health challenges associated with home confinement. All this points to systemic issues that are broader than the immediate public health emergency. Here, science still has a role to play, but it is a supporting one to the humanities and social sciences.
Read more here.
Image: Thomas de LUZE /Unsplash
Does the idea of having meaningful work become a form of pressure, and how do we navigate this?
How do we make decisions when we are faced with many options or passions?
What value does a humanities education have for the development of self, society and career?
This podcast explores these notions and more in an interview with Bridget Vincent, Professor of Literature at the University of Nottingham.
Professor Vincent founded the Australian Youth Humanities Forum. She is also the author of the forthcoming Moral Authority in Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill (Oxford University Press.
Listen here.
With thanks to Daniel Mostovac, Editor of False Summits.
Program co-founder John Perry and current host Joshua Landy reflect on how philosophy, and the humanities broadly, can help during these turbulent times. Read more here
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.
“…the arts and humanities are essential in understanding how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic…this is one of the things that the humanities, arts and social sciences do well. They look at the causes, and they study those implications across society and the cultural and political fields.”
Colin Elliot, assistant professor in the Indiana University Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of History recently gave a presentation on the Antonine plague and the privilege of quarantine as part of Quarantine(d) Conversations. The weekly discussions, streamed live on Facebook, feature IU arts and humanities faculty discussing research tangential to the pandemic, as well as creative projects in writing and design that address pandemic-related needs. Read more here.
Published: Indiana University website, May 12, 2020
“…The humanities should be studied for their own sake. One reads The Great Gatsby in order to enjoy the novel, to live within its imaginary world and to learn about our own world through its refracted image of the same. There is a sense in which the humanities are useless because they are not practical, at least not in a way that can be measured with statistics. They build up the human soul only indirectly and over the period of a lifetime (as any teacher who receives appreciative emails from students several years after their graduation could attest). This building up of the soul is often part of a spiritual birth or a political awakening…”
Santiago Ramos explores the notion of ‘utilitarian value’ and its precedence over the humanities and the need to refute this position. Read more here
Published: November 04, 2019, America: The Jesuit Review
Historian Emma Russell provides a personal account of her recent experience in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here is a Covid-19 story that thousands of small businesses like mine can now incorporate into our own business histories.
Monday, 16 March was probably the most difficult day in my twenty-year-old history and heritage consultancy business.
I had been really looking forward to travelling to Sydney and Canberra with a colleague to conduct a number of oral history interviews, which would eventually become a series of podcasts. I was going to talk to architects, carpenters, artists and others involved with a unique national project that had unfolded in the late 1970s. That gives you an idea of their likely ages today. Interstate travel, face-to-face interviews, the middle of March… you get the picture.
I had been enthusiastic and engaged in the project; researching, having preliminary discussions with some of the interviewees, learning more and more about this big 1970s project and with that, as always, coming up with more questions to ask. Many of these were to be answered the following week - or so I thought at the time.
Then, as our travel dates approached, our questions turned to ‘should we go?’, ‘what are the restrictions?’, ‘how quickly will things get worse?‘. Early on Monday the 16th I emailed everyone, following up with phone calls in case they didn’t read emails that day, to say we were putting the project into hibernation until Covid-19 had passed, and promising the project would be picked up again as soon as social isolation was over. Project expectations meant phone or zoom interviews would not have produced an adequate result and everyone agreed it was best to wait. Of course, the next thing was hours spent waiting on the phone and on crashing websites to cancel flights and accommodation. But that’s not a story I care to dwell on…
The rest of that week unfolded in much the same way as it did for thousands of other small businesses – with few or no projects left and a mix of emptiness and panic.
But while the virus has disrupted so much, it’s also set in train some amazingly quick and positive responses. While confusion reigned for weeks over what we were or weren’t allowed to do, we also saw decisions being made that would throw lifelines to small businesses, including in the history, heritage, arts, culture, and community sectors. One of these is the Victorian State Government’s Business Support Fund. I heard about this from a friend and within a week of putting in my own application I received an email saying I had been accepted and the money – $10,000 – would be in my business account soon. And it was!
So while my projects might be in hibernation and my income shaken for the next several months, I have an opportunity to think more deeply about what I do and why it’s important, and how I can ensure my business picks up again on the other side of coronavirus. The Business Support Fund is an opportunity to build resilience into your business activities. It’s the sort of ‘luxury’ opportunity that small business’ like mine rarely have. Please make the most of it.
Emma Russell
Director
History At Work
Crises are, at least while they are happening, not educational opportunities. But there are still things to learn.
Universities are cloistered gardens. The classroom is the innermost sanctum of that cloister, where worldly demands can be blocked out long enough for a group of people—some of whom had no prior interest—to share a poem by Horace, or an argument by Aristotle. In the past few weeks, as schools have sent students home, that sanctum has been breached. Moving classes online means replacing the shared, clean space of the classroom with a collection of private and cluttered rooms. Even when we cannot see the piles of dishes and laundry, or hear the children yelling, the cares that lurk in the background divide and distract us. Many universities are expanding their pass/fail options, an acknowledgment of how hard it is to keep the coronavirus out of the room—and to keep Horace or Aristotle in it.
To some, these problems will seem trivial. Don’t we have bigger concerns at the moment than ancient poets and philosophers, or the difference between a B-plus and an A-minus? Even in good times, the humanistic academy is mocked as a wheel turning nothing; in an emergency, when doctors, delivery personnel, and other essential workers are scrambling to keep society intact, no one has patience with the wheel’s demand to keep turning. What is the role of Aristotle, or the person who studies him, in a crisis. Read more.
First published: The New Yorker, Agnes Callard, April 11, 2020
Illustration: Julien Posture
In contrast to other countries, philosophers, historians, theologians and jurists have played a major role advising the state as it seeks to loosen restrictions.
In the struggle against the new coronavirus, humanities academics have entered the fray – in Germany at least.
Arguably to a greater extent than has happened in the UK, France or the US, the country has enlisted the advice of philosophers, historians of science, theologians and jurists as it navigates the delicate ethical balancing act of reopening society while safeguarding the health of the public.
Read more.
First published by Times Higher Education, David Matthews, April 22, 2020
A discussion between Emma Smith, James Shapiro, Jeffrey Wilson and Vanessa Corredera. Moderated by Scott Newstok.
“It’s strange to think that on the day we began contemplating a roundtable to mark William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo created a containment zone in the city of New Rochelle, formerly the epicenter of the state’s coronavirus outbreak. We were on the eve of the pandemic declaration and approaching the day Broadway would go dark for the first time since 9/11. It became apparent that just as the death toll would rise, so too would there be consequences for the social and cultural fabrics that bind us to one another.
Briefly, the prospect of a conversation centered on the Bard seemed, at best, like a convenient escape. But the following discussion, between five scholars who have devoted their careers situating Shakespeare alongside issues of performance, education, identity, partisanship and more, feels uniquely primed to our moment. It is an essential guide to the possible futures of our collective engagement with theater…”
Read more
First published on Literary Hub, April 23, 2020
Emily Levine and Matthew Rascoff look at the ‘new normal’ in higher education.
“…despite the challenges and instability facing learning institutions, and the personal interruptions of all our lives, learning is still happening -- perhaps more than ever. As in previous crises, it is happening in new ways and in different spaces, such as the conferencing system Zoom and the open learning platform Coursera. These moves may hold clues for possible directions for higher education after the pandemic subsides.”
Read more here
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