That line is from a Simpsons episode that aired about ten years ago. It looks pretty prescient now. This article in the New York Times details one of the unexpected side effects of our current economic hiccup — universities are cutting back on their liberal arts programs in favor of courses of study that offer more clearly defined paths to employment. The last paragraph is really the thesis of the piece: “The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.””
Obviously this is being driven by student demand — it’s not everybody these days who can afford to spend four years reading Kant and arguing about which Eisenstein movie is the most important — but it strikes me as pretty tragic. I think of a liberal arts education as being the basis of creating an interesting individual, the kind of person who’s fun to sit next to at a dinner. I think it’s a shame that fewer people are going to have that kind of experience and become that kind of person…and fewer people are going to get my jokes, most of which require an understanding of The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Of course, my priorities were always probably a little bit different. I went to the University of Chicago, where they told us straight away that they weren’t going to show us how to make a living but rather how to make a life.
What’s interesting about this story is what kind of long-term effects will this downturn have on American letters? Nobody ever got into writing for the money, and now, I would imagine, there’s even more incentive to find a job that will be in demand. Between this pressure and the uncertainties in the publishing world at the moment, I have to wonder if we’re going to see fewer people writing or a marked decrease in the quality of written work. Does anyone else have this fear? Will emerging platforms like blogs and self-publishing ebooks entice new, different writers?
[Edit: Of course, it may lead to there being more writers than ever, as people flock to graduate programs in creative writing to prolong the period before they have to get "real work." Who knows?]
(Thanks to Paria for the link.)
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As a graduate of a liberal arts college (with a degree in English, and another in Creative Writing), I find the turn toward “more practical” fields of study just depressing. I have plenty of friends who studied English or Philosophy or Dance, and then went on to become lawyers, teachers, writers, nurses, midwives, doctors, chefs, etc. I know that my liberal arts education prepared me for a life of critical thinking, and that is so valuable.
As an English major and lifelong reader, I’ve always been a vehement believer in the importance of a liberal arts education — one that teaches you to think critically and to open yourself up to different perspectives. A good liberal arts education makes you more curious, more thoughtful, more self-aware, and more empathetic to other people’s points of view. And I think the effects spill over into our politics and culture. During the George W. years (thank God they’re over), I spent a lot of time wondering why so many Americans — even ostensibly educated ones — behaved so much like lemmings. I truly believe that our high schools and colleges have something to do with it. If we were all taught better critical thinking skills, if we were encouraged from a young age to think about the world and our place in it, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten into such a mess. So the idea of all those Business and Marketing majors depresses me on two fronts — it makes me sad to think of so many people missing out on an experience that I found really life-changing, and it makes me worried about our collective future. Okay, end of rant. I just get really, really upset about this topic.
(Patrick, thanks for the thanks. And great blog post, as always.)
As a philosophy major, I too have always valued and believed in an education in liberal arts. On the other hand, I’ve also always appreciated the truth behind the humor of the titular joke. Philosophy, I would argue, always has value, but at the end of the day an employer will not want a worker standing around pondering the metaphysical questions. This is a good example of the difference between existential value, what we find beautiful in a sunset or a line of poetry, and market value, what keep our pockets and our stomachs full. Also, I think we should lay our anxieties to rest because, whether federally funded or not, the Great Books can be found at our local (and hopefully independent) bookstores to enlighten our lives anytime.
Well, the American economy is being downsized and with it our nation’s wealth is reduced. Therefore, some of what we’ve always taken for granted, may now be considered little luxuries, and be less affordable or valued, or simply stopped – the people who would sustain such will number less & be poorer.
We are a nation deeply in deep from we the people down to our govt. We don’t have the home equity and credit card lines as before which allowed us to live beyond our means when we didn’t have the cash. Now, our fed govt is burdening us with additional borrowed spending which will mean inflation and long-term higher taxation for the foreseeable future.
What’s really depressing, though, is that no matter how bright you are, a bachelor’s degree in the humanities or an MFA in Poetry is going to severely limit your job options–and if you’re like me, you have a $35k student loan to boot. You can write and think deeply all you want, but it’s also smart to have a more well-rounded education/resume unless your path is professordom.
On the other hand, this economy may weed out writers who write simply because they can. Instead, we may find that writing naturally selects those who may have trained in fields other than letters who write now because the words will burn inside us even if we try to smother them.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. My friend Cory and I had an idea awhile ago to create a special job board for smart people. The basic concept was an employer would post a job saying “I need a smart person for this job, somebody who can write and analyze and has some interpersonal skills. No previous experience in the field necessary.” People could then apply, maybe with an alternative resume of some sort. I still think the idea could work. There are a lot of smart people out there who don’t apply for jobs because the job description says “Minimum two years of marketing experience necessary.” Well, other than certain tasks which aren’t very hard to learn, that really doesn’t mean much. Better to have a really smart person in the job learning it than a dumb-dumb who has “two years of marketing experience.” (That’s not to say that there aren’t smart people with two years of marketing experience.) Maybe that’s my personal prejudice. It’s sort of like the sports concept of drafting the best athlete available, regardless of what position he plays, with the idea that you can make the best available athlete into just about anything. (I think Jason Kottke did a post about this a while back.)
Of course, none of this applies to writing. In the end, writers will probably fall back into the familiar world of day jobs, as they have since art was pushed into the marketplace. I just worry that the day jobs might start to be difficult to find, too.
Oh Patrick, I hope to always get your jokes. When can I sit next to you at dinner?
No worries. All rumors of Miss Havisham’s cougaric nature are greatly exaggerated. Fear not my bookish slave. Fear not.
I suggest: Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
Note: Gradgrind College of facts and figures looms large. Of Mr. Gradgrind:
“He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.”
It’s all about tests and memorizing facts-not thinking. This is an old problem.
I’m taking a history class (because I’m the kind of person who is nerdy enough to take college classes in my spare time) and the professor is constantly in awe of the fact that so many of the students don’t know any of the references that he makes to classical texts. The truth of the matter is that you have to want to learn those things now, and I’m seeing more and more students who are more concerned with passing a class than expanding their knowledge. The point of “gen ed” classes is supposed to be exposing you to various experiences, but not everyone sees the benefit of speaking another language or understanding why the French Revolution happened, they simply view them as something to get out of the way. It’s sad to see so much of that information fall by the wayside, but, as the NYT article pointed out, the humanities are having trouble defining why they are important, so now the oboe player sitting in class behind me doesn’t care who Louis XVI is because he see how it effects him in any way. There will always be a few of us who care, but there are only so many jobs working at independent bookstores, and they are interests that society continues to devalue.
P.S. Patrick, please start your job website.
i am a philosophy grad. from the moment i graduated, i realized i should have taken a field that has practical applications to science. that was in 1996. although i found a job at a bank where i was able to stay for 7 years and excelled, banking was just not my field.
i took up MBA classes… went into nursing… 13 years later, i find myself unemployed and looking for entry admin jobs in a hospital or other healthcare clinics.
what lies ahead for me? i will surely take the first available offer (possibly $10-16/hour) and be thankful for it. I will probably be afraid to leave that job and remain at that rate range for some time. maybe i will retire as a supervisor… BA in Philosophy – what a joke.
jtpogi, it is unclear why you majored in philosophy. It does not appear that you were trying to learn how to make a life, which is more important than making a living; and why you would waste money and years you can’t re-claim.
Economically, it is idiotic to go into $100,000 debt (assuming $20 grand a year for four years, PLUS interest of course!) and spend four precious years that you will never get back unless you clearly know what you want from your life. Thus, it is eminently sensible to go into engineering, and also maths and science; because more money simply translates into more opportunities to live the life you want to. Half-hidden from our conscious, let’s never forget that the value of money is subordinate to the value of time–that it is only a means to use our time better.
Not only are these fields more employable, but they are the (albeit often dry) toolbox for modern wizards. When you think of electricity, you may think of your battery going out. Don’t. Think of how incredible it is that phenomena so removed from our common experience form the basis for life-transforming technologies. Um, that’s all.