Why studying the humanities is as important as ever

The Challenges Facing  Colleges And Universities Today

Higher education in the United States is in a state of crisis. Costs of education have increased precipitously, multiplying by a factor of 12 over the past 30 years, which has resulted in total student loan debt of over $1 trillion, all at a time when recent college graduates face a grim job market. Perhaps even more troublingly, recent studies by  prominent economists argue that since 2000, the demand for high-skilled labor has declined, which is likely to push more educated workers further down the income scale, and potentially squeeze out less educated and unskilled workers altogether.

Policymakers, educational leaders, parents, and students are all grappling for solutions to these challenges. Recently, President Obama set forward a sweeping proposal for curbing tuition costs. This will be accomplished, in part, by tying federal financial aid to a ranking system, which will assess the overall value of an undergraduate education, according to a formula that considers tuition prices, graduation rates, and the employment prospects of recent graduates.

Meanwhile, Florida’s public university system is exploring a differential tuition model, where students pursuing degrees in fields like engineering or biotechnology—which are considered of “strategic interest” due to superior postgraduate employment rates—would end up paying less for their education than students in other paths of study, such as the humanities. The program has come to be known as the “$10,000 degree challenge” since Governor Rick Scott is challenging the state’s public universities to provide this education for a cost of just $10,000. In Texas, Governor Rick Perry is pushing for similar changes in the tuition structure of state universities, with $10,000 degrees available for students studying subjects like computer science, math, and various specializations in information technology.

 In the eyes of some critics, an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) must come at the expense of other fields of study, specifically, the humanities (which is generally understood to comprise subjects such as history, philosophy, music, literature, foreign languages, and other related disciplines).  This is what’s happening in North Carolina, where, in addition to pushing for a more employment-focused university curriculum, Governor Patrick McCrory has been highly critical of humanities education.

This isn’t just a problem in North Carolina. Budget cuts at public universities have gutted entire programs, while the number of today’s college students studying the humanities has dropped substantially. This has also resulted in a major reduction in the number of humanities courses offered.  

Many of those who advocate for an elevated emphasis on STEM education believe that, in a world where 65% of today’s elementary school students will be performing jobs that don’t exist today (due to exponential advances in science and technology), a strong background in math, science and engineering is increasingly crucial to our national future. Observers often cite the more rapid growth in STEM jobs, as compared to the rest of the US economy, as well as the increased demand for STEM-related skills even in jobs outside of traditionally scientific fields like medicine or engineering, and thus argue that our educational system needs to more effectively impart STEM skills to a greater number of people.

These STEM advocates are correct in their assessment of the situation. In a world that is increasingly driven by concepts like Big Data, there is no question that all of today’s graduates need a basic grounding in math and science, particularly advanced mathematics, statistics, and computer science. Allowing students to graduate from college without demonstrating some basic grounding in these subjects, does them a major disservice. Yet, the humanities have a vital role to play in providing all college students, whatever their academic or career goals, with a complete intellectual toolkit, as they seek to understand, create, and achieve in today’s world. 

The Study of Humanities Helps Facilitate Innovation, and Produces Better Employees

In his book The Innovator’s DNA (co-authored with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gergersen), Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen argues that one of the most critical skills of successful innovators and entrepreneurs is the ability to associate ideas, that is, to connect “seemingly unrelated” concepts, often from different disciplines, in order to come up with new approaches and solutions.

Christensen draws upon the example of Steve Jobs, and numerous other impactful entrepreneurs, to illustrate this point. Jobs enrolled at Reed College, a liberal arts school in Oregon, and ended up dropping out after 6 months. However, Jobs spent the following 18 months exploring a variety of creative classes at the university, including a course in calligraphy. Jobs’ credits the calligraphy course for the proportional font spacing and varied typefaces found in even early Apple computers, and which was one of the distinguishing features of Apple’s early technology.

Just a few days after unveiling the game-changing iPad tablet, Jobs observed: “We're not just a tech company, even though we invent some of the highest technology products in the world. It's the marriage of that plus the humanities and the liberal arts that distinguishes Apple.” Reflecting further upon his trajectory as a creative thinker, he further remarked “It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing…Creativity is just connecting things.”

Jobs’ life illustrates how varied learning and educational experiences, particularly in the humanities, can contribute to one’s creativity. Exposure to a diverse and complex array of information, concepts, and experiences, across a variety of disciplines, by definition, means that one now enjoys access to more idea libraries from which to engage in association. Thus, it’s important for all students, including those STEM majors who might be the founders of tomorrow’s Apple, Google or Facebook, to gain the sort of broad exposure, which the study of the humanities can provide for students.

Christensen and his co-authors also argue that questioning is an important skill for innovators, that is, a belief in the value of inquiry, and a desire to “challenge the status quo.” Studying subjects like history, sociology, or literary criticism, which typically don’t offer clear, binary answers to complex questions, can, at their best, serve as a springboard for rigorous critical inquiry, which is demanded of those who wish to facilitate disruptive change in any field. 

Scientists can also benefit from a strong grounding in the humanities. Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, who has extensively explored the foundations of human creativity, conducted a study of more than 200 highly accomplished scientists, and found a strong correlation between success in the sciences and engagement with artistic and creative ventures. Based on these findings, Dr. Root-Bernstein thus believes that schools should “emphasize cross-disciplinary skills” and “place arts on a par with the sciences.”

Dr. Root-Bernstein offers compelling examples of how the arts and sciences (and individuals adept in one or both disciplines) can come together to produce tremendous progress in science and technology. For example cellular phone encryption technology (vital for mobile device security) is based on the concept of “frequency hopping”, which was in large part developed by composer and author George Antheil, in collaboration with actress Hedy Lamarr, during World War II.  The images gleaned from NSA and NASA satellites are enhanced by use of Renaissance-era artistic techniques like chiaroscuro and false coloring, while Samuel Morse (telegraph innovator and Morse code co-founder), and Robert Fulton (who developed the first steamboat successfully used for purposes of business/commerce), were both prominent artists, prior to their storied scientific achievements.

 

The humanities are of great value not only for potential entrepreneurs and discoverers, but also for the majority of students, who will go on to work for various government, business, and non-profit organizations. Employers consistently rank effective communication skills, both written and oral, to be amongst the most valuable traits for functioning as an effective member of any workplace. There are few better means to hone these abilities than through engaging at the university level, whether that is through intensive writing courses that really push and test a student’s communication abilities, or via classes in public speaking, rhetoric, debate, drama and theater, all of which both demand and mold successful communication. 

As noted earlier, a strong capacity for critical thinking is another quality coveted by employers. The humanities are an excellent vehicle through which to improve one’s ability to assess arguments, evidence, and situations with a thoughtful, nuanced perspective, which is the hallmark of an effective critical thinker.

 When assessing a historical question, there’s often a variety of evidence and perspectives, often conflicting, contradictory, or incomplete, that must be sifted through, in order to make sense of a particular issue or event. The same is true if one takes courses in literature and fiction, where the motivations and actions of characters are often subject to considerable interpretation and ambiguity. Anyone who has attempted to study the Civil War or French Revolution in depth, or work through a Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Toni Morrison novel, will be more than willing to attest to this point. Learning to effectively grapple with these various complexities can mold a student into a sharper, more incisive thinker, and is a further testament to the value of intense study of the humanities.  

What Philosophers Had to Say about Income Inequality

Income inequality in the United States, now at it’s highest levels since the eve of the Great Depression, is a topic of considerable interest in the nation today. In addition to being the focus of prominent economist Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital In the 21^st Century (currently the #1 selling book on Amazon), inequality was a major catalyst for the Occupy movement, and was an important issue in the 2012 presidential election. After his reelection, President Obama also devoted considerable attention to this issue. Economists like Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Paul Krugman of Princeton University have argued that income inequality has slowed the recovery from the Great Recession.

Additional research also suggests that income inequality in the United States is closely associated with increased homicide rates, elevated infant mortality, as well as decreased levels of educational attainment. Given the potential impact of inequality on society, it is clearly a crucial topic that needs to be better understood.  Yet, without studying the humanities, and in particular philosophy and history, it will be increasingly difficult to understand issues like income inequality, and to sustain and nurture American democracy as a whole.

A study by economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that for annual incomes of up to $75,000, income was closely correlated with various measures of happiness, including stress levels.  After $75,000, however, this effect disappears, with additional income not significantly impacting these measures of satisfaction. Yet, in a puzzling twist, when people were asked whether their life was “going well,” those with higher incomes were more likely to answer in the affirmative.  Deaton and Kahneman’s work sheds a fascinating light on how we understand and react to our financial status. 

Utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, believed realities and situations should be assessed by whether they provided the greatest amount happiness (defined by Mill as the “absence of pain”) for the largest possible number of people.  Utilitarian thinkers would examine Deaton and Kahneman’s findings, and probably argue that high levels of income inequality were a net negative, because with a skewed wealth distribution, many people (those on the lower end of the income distribution, whom there are necessarily many of in a highly unequal society), are not experiencing their optimal levels of happiness. When presented with some of the aforementioned data linking inequality with worsened educational outcomes, and increased infant mortality rates, Bentham and Mill would likely cast an even more critical eye towards income inequality.

At the same time, if income inequality were to somehow increase average incomes substantially (as has been argued by Judge Richard Posner, a prominent United States Court of Appeals judge, and the most cited legal scholar of the twentieth century), then utility for the greatest number of people, in the form of personal happiness, would be maximized. In such a scenario, income inequality could actually be a net positive. 

The late John Rawls, perhaps the most prominent American philosopher of the 20^th century, argued that various personal advantages which individuals enjoy (whether in terms of talents and abilities, or social status and income), are justified only if the manner in which these advantages are rewarded (for example, through large earnings, or considerable political power) is, in a macro sense,  beneficial to everyone in society, no matter what their income status or intellectual abilities. Rawls doesn’t argue that everyone needs to be equal in terms of income or power, but rather, that society is structured in a manner where inequalities and disparities are advantageous to the worst-off in society (that is, they are better off than they would be under some other societal structure). 

Rawls also believed desirable positions (such as a coveted job at a respected company, or the ability to run for elected office) should be available to all people, on the basis of fair and equal competition. According to Rawls’ formulation, this requires not just that positions be made available on the basis of merit (for example, without racial or religious discrimination, or undue advantages due to family connections), but also that all people have the proper starting point (such as access to educational resources), to be able to viably compete for desired positions.

That is, Rawls argues for not just an equal right to seek out and obtain the employment that one desires, but also an equal opportunity to acquire the knowledge, and develop the skills necessary, to effectively compete for such positions. As Rawls puts it: “In all parts of society there are to be roughly the same prospects of culture and achievement for those similarly motivated and endowed.”)

Whether Rawls would consider the current income distribution justified would depend in part on whether this distribution is beneficial to the worst off in society, that is, whether it leaves the most socioeconomically disadvantaged Americans better off than they would be in the absence of such inequality. Rawls would also examine the degree to which all people could obtain the jobs they desired, based on the aforementioned framework.

Hypothetically, if income inequality and wealth disparity improves the economy as a whole, and if it ultimately also benefits those in the lower strata of society (as Judge Posner argues), current levels of inequality might be a net positive.  However, given that the poor seem to be suffering from elevated levels of educational underachievement , while facing lower life expectancies  and limited access to the legal system , Posner’s assessments are, to say the lease, debatable. These realities also suggest that the equality of opportunity that Rawls so valued, isn’t present in today’s America. Thus, Rawls would likely cast a wary eye towards current levels of income inequality.

Why does it matter what Rawls, Bentham, Mills, or any other philosopher thinks about income inequality? Can’t we just use the statistical and economic data before us to reach a decision as to how to reach a sound understanding on this topic? Actually, that isn’t possible.

Whether one views the current wealth distribution as problematic or acceptable depends in large part upon how we view questions such as whether unearned advantages (like the family and society one was born into) should drastically affect one’s life chances, or what obligations members of a society owe to each other, and whether social mobility is important, and how it ties to inequality.

The conclusions that any individual reaches on these issues, are in large part underpinned by moral and philosophical concerns.  By better understanding the reasoning of those philosophers who preceded us, and the broader themes and framework that drive their thinking, we can better assess our respective positions, and thus have a deeper, more meaningful conversation about our own nation’s path forward on issues like income disparity.   

Studying History Allows Us to Understand Today’s Society

A basic understanding of American history is also crucial to maintaining a democratic society. How can we truly understand the current outcry over the NSA spying scandal, and the potential dangers of an expansive security state more generally, without considering  past programs of domestic surveillance, or how the nation approached questions of civil liberties during prior times of war and conflict? Along these lines, how do we analyze labor issues, such as the unionization campaigns of today, without probing the broader history of the labor movement? Or what about how the recent recession and recovery compares with past economic turnarounds from major downturns, and how our solutions to the recent crisis are similar to, and differ from, those applied in previous crises?

Why College Is The Ideal Place To Study Philosophy and History

Engagement with topics like philosophy and history is a lifelong, dynamic process. And yet, colleges and universities, as the final place where most people will formally study such a broad array of subjects (as opposed to the highly specialized and segmented curriculum of graduate school, or the very specific demands of the working world), is an important juncture. Furthermore, since most of today’s high school graduates attend colleges (either 2 or 4 year) and universities, these institutions bring together a large portion of the population, from which to create a common academic grounding in these subjects, which will be highly beneficial to the political process as students become voters. Additionally, since most members of Congress hold college degrees, the university must be understood as a shared experience for not just voters, but also, future elected officials. 

If we hope to build an informed, engaged citizenry, whatever their individual political stances, requiring the study of philosophy and history, is an important starting point.  

A Required Curriculum in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science

Recognizing that all students must study the humanities, does not mean that those focusing on the humanities need not study other subjects; on the contrary. In a world where big data is increasingly expected to both drive decision making, and serve as a source of future employment, and in a time when the National Academy of Sciences warns of a “gathering storm” in American education, due to major fissures in math and science education, it is clear that everyone needs a basic understanding of math and computer science, preferably as a part of the core college curriculum.

 At a minimum, all students should be asked to demonstrate basic proficiency in both mathematics and statistics. Math not only provides students with important critical thinking and logic skills, but is the underlying basis for important concepts and themes in disciplines ranging from engineering to medicine to economics . Statistics is no less important, since statistics is a core tool for a variety of undertakings, from making strategic business decisions to political forecasting to research in psychology. Additionally, since statistics, particularly in politics and healthcare, are often used in an ideologically biased manner, and misused or misinterpreted, it is vital that students develop a strong understanding of statistics on their own, so that they aren’t vulnerable to the deceptions posed by, as Mark Twain once put it “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”  

Students should also take at least one course in the fundamentals of computer science, which can help shape a very basic understanding of how the Internet and digital technology works. The lives of humanities majors will be just as affected by technology, science and data as everyone else, and so must have a core grasp of these critical concepts. This idea was best captured by the title of a recent book arguing for increased technology literacy, from media theorist Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed.

Conclusion

Valuing science and technology doesn’t mean that we can in any way afford to undermine or ignores the humanities. A solid grounding in the humanities, ideally through required courses in philosophy, American history, and English, should be mandatory for all students. Study of arts, theater, literature, anthropology, world history, and more should be encouraged and supported as well, financially as well as in spirit, and both inside and outside of the classroom.

Higher education in the United States is largely broken, whether we consider the costs of education, the job prospects of recent graduates, or the need to provide graduates with the skills to compete in today’s hypercompetitive global marketplace. It is as crucial as ever to fix those problems. But, in seeking solutions, let’s not allow any of those realities to allow us to minimize or dismiss the vital importance of the humanities for all university students. We do so at our own peril.