Are the arts and humanities only for the wealthy?

[90sNickelodeon]

Do you feel that arts and humanities are fields that anyone can study regardless of financial background?

I ask because many liberal arts colleges/programs are having a hard time in an increasingly technological/math/science oriented world. Many feel that the liberal arts is only for the wealthy (who can rest on their laurels and study whatever they choose).

Here's a link to a recent NYT article called "Making College Relevant" that addresses this issue.

Making College Relevant--NYT

Edited January 14, 2010 by 90sNickelodeon

[Victorianna]

I have wondered about this as well. It seems that academia is certainly structured to privilege certain socioeconomic classes. I find this to be particularly true in the humanities. Criteria for gaining admission to a graduate program requires that you take the GRE (some individuals may disagree with my assessment that the GRE privileges certain test takers from specific socioeconomic backgrounds, but there are studies to suggest that this is true) and have attended a recognizable and substantial undergraduate institution. Meeting these conditions can be very difficult for individuals from different socioeconomic classes. I myself spent a semester at my undergraduate institution homeless. This almost certainly had an effect on my academic achievement.

It is also true that the individuals selecting candidates are themselves members of a certain status.

I am sure that there will be plenty who disagree with my comments, but I did want to state my opinion.

[johndiligent]

Is it only for the wealthy? I'm proof that it isn't. I grew up in housing projects at the best of times - a family of six that made $18,000 a year GROSS. We've struggled with being able to pay for food and shelter our whole lives and even lived in our car for a while. But I did my BA in Classics. Can't get too much more "impractical" than that. Granted, I had to do the whole thing on student loan and now owe $68,000.

I wouldn't change it, though, and I don't think that the way the system is moving toward tangible skills is working. I really think that a Bachelor of Arts degree provides the student with critical thinking ability, which is absolutely necessary to a well-functioning democracy. The problem isn't that the humanities are impractical, it's that college isn't free for everyone who elects to do it. Once it is, and I hope that it will be eventually, the benefits of studying humanities won't be eclipsed by the lack of tangible, employable skills.

[peppermint.beatnik]

I say a qualified yes. It doesn't have to be that way, but my parents supported me through 6 years of undergraduate study. I changed majors three times, from english, to philosophy, to humanities. I also got to study abroad. A lot of my friends didn't have that luxury. Most did health science, nursing, or something along those lines and paid for there own education.

[spozik]

I realized right before I hit post that this is really long. Sorry, I've thought about this extensively.

As a humanities person, there are some things from that article I'd like to respond to. But first, let me answer the question: no. I'm not wealthy, did not grow up wealthy, and have no great desire to be wealthy. Now, I may be wealthy at some point (and may already be considered so by some) because of my wife's career, but that's really beside the point. I went to college to major in physics. I found that I liked Classics more and switched to that. I don't think that anything about *me* as a person really changed. I certainly didn't become more wealthy. I think maybe, if anything, I got real with myself about what I was interested and what I wanted out of life.

And that's where I think the big difference is. The survey referenced in the article is pretty clear on this point:

In 1971, 37 percent responded that it was essential or very important to be “very well-off financially,” while 73 percent said the same about “developing a meaningful philosophy of life.” In 2009, the values were nearly reversed: 78 percent identified wealth as a goal, while 48 percent were after a meaningful philosophy.

It looks to me like a lot more people are concerned with becoming wealthy now than they were in 1971. That could be for any number of reasons, none of which is really what's important to the question at hand. I think most people are aware that the humanities most likely aren't going to make you rich. I don't have any issue with this, but it looks like 78% of the population does.

If there is one thing in the article that really bothered me, it's this:

The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,” 81 percent asked for better “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.”

Given that people who major in the humanities typically are bombarded with the "what are you going to do with that?" question on a constant basis to the point where you either get bitter about it or come up with a witty reply, there are is a problem. A disconnect between expectations, the "real world," and results. People who study the humanities should excel in all three of those categories referenced in the article snippet quoted above.

So why aren't they getting the jobs? There are several equally plausible problems, which probably all exist to some varying degree: (1) despite these being the advertised skills of a humanities degree, the students are not, in fact, learning these skills; (2) the students are not interested in the kinds of jobs referenced above, preferring instead to hold out for the rare job related to their humanities discipline or taking an "easier" job to allow them more flexibility to pursue their humanities interests in their spare time; (3) universities are not communicating effectively with companies about the resultant skill set of a student who has received a humanities degree, leading the companies to believe that the students do not have these skills; (4) the companies surveyed are not actually good at assessing these skills in a job applicant.

Now, as I said, all 4 of these cases are probably contributing factors, to varying degrees in every specific case, of any unemployed/underemployed humanities major. As you will see, the fault is in 3 places: the student him or herself, the university and its faculty, and the prospective hiring company. I didn't mention the student's parents in any of this, but I'd like to make a comment on that first.

Parents generally want their kids to be more successful than they are. How they define success varies significantly. Not in a specific discipline, perhaps, but a businessman will probably view his son's or his daughter's success based on finances, a history professor will most likely view his child's success based on academics, and so on. This obviously contributes to the problem for the humanities: as noted about, a surveyed audience says that wealth is important to them. This makes sense, as there are far more people working professionally in business than in the humanities, and the business world is much more visible on TV, the internet, etc. In short, it's the default path of "success" as defined by the majority of society. Of course everyone wants to be successful, so people without exposure to variant paths of "success" default to it. Anyway, most of that aside is to say that ultimately, the student will decide what he or she wants to do on his or her own, but that will be defined greatly by where they are coming from. Back to the student, university, and company and what they can each do to save the humanities.

The student needs to be aware that he or she probably will not spend a lifetime critiquing Shakespeare and Chaucer unless he or she continues on in academia. This is a perfectly fine path, and it's the one which the vast majority of the self-selected sample that reads this site aspire to pursue. Most of the students, however, won't be doing that, and that's a fact. Given this, the student in their 4 or so years needs to make an honest effort to associate their discipline with "real world" tasks. It's easy to do. The main thing that needs to change here is the veil on these subjects needs to drop.

We need professors and students who are REALLY able to connect the dots, not just say that the dots are able to be connected. Students say that they are good at communicating because they've been studying English: what they really mean is that they are good at writing about a subject they like on their own time. Most of them are going to have problems communicating with people who aren't in their discipline, and this needs to be evolved. Humanities students should be encouraged (and able, and given the opportunity, and even forced) to share their work with people outside of their disciplines in order to learn to interact with people who aren't specializing in thematic elements of 13th century French poetry. It's the only way that a student will really be able to learn how to make themselves relevant to the rest of the world.

The hiring companies also have an obligation here. I know of at least one major (100,000+ employee) company that simply starts out people who have a hard-science degree at a higher salary, even for jobs that aren't directly related to their degrees. They either do this on a hunch or based on their experiences with how these individuals perform in the company. If it's the former, they need to give the humanities a shot. It should offer exactly what they say that they're looking for. If it's the latter, then the humanities need to hit the gym.

I think that there is a distinct place for the humanities in the 21st century, I really do. I think that the skills are applicable in many, many different areas. We, and I speak inclusively of humanities students, alumni, and teachers, need to do a better job of achieving the widely applicable goals that we say our specialization offers. Once we're done with that, we need to do a better job of convincing the rest of the world that the skills are relevant.

[jacib]

Do you feel that arts and humanities are fields that anyone can study regardless of financial background?

I ask because many liberal arts colleges/programs are having a hard time in an increasingly technological/math/science oriented world. Many feel that the liberal arts is only for the wealthy (who can rest on their laurels and study whatever they choose).

Here's a link to a recent NYT article called "Making College Relevant" that addresses this issue.

Making College Relevant--NYT

Did you mean undergraduate or graduate? I'm not sure they're two different issues, but the two posters interpreted them differently. I assumed you meant undergraduate.

In any case, from what I've seen of "business" programs, I'd prefer to hire a good history/social science student over a business student. Obviously I'm biased, but seriously, what is an 18 year old kid doing in a management class? I helped a kid write an essay about different motivation techniques and she absolutely did not under the basic psychology at work. Nor did she get the economics (I don't mean numbers, I mean like supply and demand). And even if she had, she would still have to remember it 4 years later when she graduated. Seriously, all kids in business programs should have to start with the tools like psychology, stats, and basic economics before they can move on to taking business classes. It should be treated like an interdisciplinary program. I also think Pre-Law Programs should be give different names, like "Law and Society" or something.

While I don't think college should be turned in a vocational school, I do think that people should be prepared a little more for dealing with real problems in college; for example, I think everyone should have to take some basic stats. Perhaps some sort of philosophy class which teaches people certain logical fallacies (if only to have an educated voting population. Ad hominem attacks should be unconvincing...). Someone somewhere on this board said they took a "Latin for Scientists" course and I think that's exactly the kind of course that should be encouraged. The art of the persuasive essay. Sociology of this particular place where we all go to school. What is global warming anyway? Web page making. America's place in the 20th century. Foreign language. I am a strong believer in the core education, which sounds a lot better than "distribution requirements". I think that educated people should have a certain shared knowledge, and that includes things like Rousseau and Bentham and Thucydides and Weber. College should challenge you. I think it cuts the other way too, and that all the English kids should have to take science, math and computer science classes. If I had my way, everyone would have to take at least one Art History survey class too.

[jacib]

And also a class teaching students about "them", that is the people who are not "us". They seem to suffer so much/make so many bad decisions over there.

[katalytik]

i can understand value of humanities but things are often tied to money. if people dont need funding, then study whatever you want..... but we cannot get upset over the fact that society now values certain topics over others

[JerryLandis]

Pretty much all of my friends studying in the humanities are from comfortable backgrounds, not necessarily rich, but just not struggling. On average, my friends studying sciences come from less privileged backgrounds, and will probably have more money than I will in the future. I guess that (please excuse the blanket statement) people from poorer backgrounds who go to college probably see it more as a career building opportunity, a chance to move up into a higher income bracket. Meanwhile, people whose families have long been part of the middle class and whose parents went to college are more likely to see college as a general learning experience and simply as a requirement for middle class adulthood.

I personally come from a pretty comfortable background, with parents who paid my tuition for me and will be okay if I wind up unemployed for a bit after graduating (God forbid). I'm a history major. Frankly, I never really thought about what I wanted to do with my life, what profession I wanted to have, until relatively recently. I majored in what I thought was interesting, assuming that I would wander aimlessly onto some kind of career path once I had gotten into my final years of college. My parents never put much pressure on me to make huge sums of money (just to marry a doctor), and let me do whatever I felt like without ever having to make plans for the future. I'm sure that families with less money would be able to be so lenient and carefree like mine has been, so it would make sense in my mind for people from poorer backgrounds to gravitate towards subjects with more practical applications.

[sometimesiexist]

In general, I think people who to go four year colleges come from more privileged backgrounds than those who do not. For one reason or another, they are able to go to college for four years (at least) of their life. I come from a low middle class family with four kids, and two parents who barely finished high school, and the three of us who are college age (or older) just elected to do what we thought was interesting and important, my brother studied math and physics, my sister elementary education, myself philosophy. My sister being the only one who got an actual vocational degree. All three of us worked between 20-35 hours a week while in college, all three of us have acquired at least 20 grand in debt, and all three of us are happy with ourselves, despite having to make it on our own the second we graduated high school. We all worked toward paying for all of our bills and college since 18, and all had jobs when we turned 16 in order to save money/ buy cars/ pay for incidental things like going to the movies.

There are many who also did these things, and did even more, went into more debt, worked two jobs etc. Yet, while attending my liberal arts college, I didn't meet very many of them. Most could at least call and ask for grocery money if they needed it. Or had money directly deposited into their accounts once or twice a month by mom and dad. I never had those luxuries, and still was determined to study the classic "do you want fries with that?" discipline. On the flip side, I see very many well off students in the humanities, but also in the natural sciences, and economics (the closest my university gets to business). I also have noticed that I am probably the only one of my friends whose parents never went to college, let alone graduated.

Those are the breaks, but I would assume that vocational schools, and two year colleges get a lot more lower socio-economic status people than even a four year science or business program would get, let alone a four year degree in something that is seen as an extraneous discipline like classics or philosophy.