In all my dealings with the arts, the goal of any artist is to make the personal universal, to take a personal inspiration, fulfill that for your self and at the same time make it so that everyone can somehow relate their personal self to it. This is why people can appreciate art, because there is room for interpretation and what you take away from it (consciously or not) is based on who you are as a person. Two people can look at the same painting or listen to the same piece of music and know that they may take away two very different ideas about it, but that’s okay, people can accept that fact (although they may not like it). In fact one artist may look at another artists work and see or hear something that inspires them to create a piece of art for others to view or listen to, and another, and another, and so on and so forth. This is the beauty of studying the arts; you learn that whatever you take away from that piece of art is something that is important to you, something that matters to you, because if it didn’t, you would get something entirely different and that will be very different for everyone because no two people are the same.
So my question is, what makes studying humanities and humanistic texts any different? What if we looked at it as a piece of art that will help us find out what is important to us and what we care about? Studying humanities and humanistic texts can be seen as just one more venue of getting to these conclusions so that we can act upon our thoughts and be inspired. It may take more time to do so because we may actually have to read something, instead of just observing it, but as the saying goes…Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
If the Humanities Can't Save Us ... Then Who Will Save the Humanities?
Stanley Fish contends that while the production of humanistic texts may have some relevance to the world at large, the academic study of those texts has nothing useful to offer aside from personal enjoyment. And it seems he may have a point. In the 21st Century where technology is king, do you really want to be stuck in an ivory tower for the rest of your life reading King Lear for half the salary of your former roommate who became a successful computer programmer and drives a Porsche?
Unfortunately, if you plan to head out into the rumored post-collegiate "real world" armed with nothing but a humanities degree and a healthy dose of naiveté, your job opportunities will be severely limited. Many humanities majors either have to find a job outside of their field of study or else head to graduate school, which means incurring even more costs (and debt!) for a smaller salary when you finally obtain your dream job as a criminally underpaid associate-assistant professor of socio-literary interdisciplinary history at State U. Congrats on the dream job! But wow--it sure took a lot of money to get there. According to CNNMoney.com, the average tuition at a four-year private institution is $23,712 in 2007-2008. And even public schools aren't that cheap--$6,185 on average, and that's just for the in-staters!
I think I'm starting to see Stanley Fish's point. With costs like these, it's not a question of how the university can justify the costs, but how can we, the humanities students? According to Stan Katz in the blog Brainstorm, "Salaries in the social sciences are on average 7.5 percent higher than in history." Ouch. And don't forget that history professors' salaries are still higher than the other humanities'! Things are looking grim for us humanities majors. First we have to incur all this debt, and then we're paid too poorly to get out of it? Even if we decide to jump ship and abandon this sinking humanities boat, our other options are pretty slim as well. The blog Study Hacks presents the findings of a study done by CollegeGrad.com (complete with this nifty pie chart to put things into terrifying perspective) that has some (not so) shocking results: When hiring college grads, 42% of potential employers say that the grad's major is the most important criteria. And I'll hazard a guess that a resume with just about any humanities major plastered on it isn't quite dressed to impress. Not only is our boat sinking, but we don't even have a life raft. Yikes!
So what is there to do? The already tough job market keeps getting tougher, and we humanities majors have the worst of it. Sure, we may have skills in writing and critical thinking, but can we program computers or manage a business? How can we use our precious humanities skills to our advantage? In her comment to the first blog post, Lauren provides a perfect example of how to make the most out of a humanities degree. Even though it is a humanity, a degree in dance can be parlayed into a viable career in dance therapy, which not only pays the bills but also helps others. So it seems that humanities do have uses, after all! Especially when combined with another discipline, the things that we learn during our course of studies in the humanities department aren't as useless in the "real world" as Dr. Fish suggests.
But then again ... aren't universities supposed to be places of learning and education? Why then are we so concerned with what our degrees can do for us? Is learning for learning's sake no longer enough? College has become almost a requirement in this modern age. As recently as a hundred years ago universities were still bastions of the elite, yet nowadays just about anyone can go to college--and most of us have to in order to remain competitive in the workplace. And that's what it all boils down to: The workplace. The issue at the heart of this debate isn't the humanities themselves; the issue is that college is now merely a stepping-stone to a high-paying career. In terms of high-paying career potential, the humanities are at the bottom of the university food chain.
What do you think? Can a humanities degree land you a good job--or is that even the point? Is it worth the ever-increasing cost--both to the students and to the universities--to keep supporting the humanities departments? Are we students of the humanities solely for the sake of our futures, or for some other reason? Can the humanities really save us? If they can't ... then who (or what) can save the humanities?
Unfortunately, if you plan to head out into the rumored post-collegiate "real world" armed with nothing but a humanities degree and a healthy dose of naiveté, your job opportunities will be severely limited. Many humanities majors either have to find a job outside of their field of study or else head to graduate school, which means incurring even more costs (and debt!) for a smaller salary when you finally obtain your dream job as a criminally underpaid associate-assistant professor of socio-literary interdisciplinary history at State U. Congrats on the dream job! But wow--it sure took a lot of money to get there. According to CNNMoney.com, the average tuition at a four-year private institution is $23,712 in 2007-2008. And even public schools aren't that cheap--$6,185 on average, and that's just for the in-staters!
I think I'm starting to see Stanley Fish's point. With costs like these, it's not a question of how the university can justify the costs, but how can we, the humanities students? According to Stan Katz in the blog Brainstorm, "Salaries in the social sciences are on average 7.5 percent higher than in history." Ouch. And don't forget that history professors' salaries are still higher than the other humanities'! Things are looking grim for us humanities majors. First we have to incur all this debt, and then we're paid too poorly to get out of it? Even if we decide to jump ship and abandon this sinking humanities boat, our other options are pretty slim as well. The blog Study Hacks presents the findings of a study done by CollegeGrad.com (complete with this nifty pie chart to put things into terrifying perspective) that has some (not so) shocking results: When hiring college grads, 42% of potential employers say that the grad's major is the most important criteria. And I'll hazard a guess that a resume with just about any humanities major plastered on it isn't quite dressed to impress. Not only is our boat sinking, but we don't even have a life raft. Yikes!
So what is there to do? The already tough job market keeps getting tougher, and we humanities majors have the worst of it. Sure, we may have skills in writing and critical thinking, but can we program computers or manage a business? How can we use our precious humanities skills to our advantage? In her comment to the first blog post, Lauren provides a perfect example of how to make the most out of a humanities degree. Even though it is a humanity, a degree in dance can be parlayed into a viable career in dance therapy, which not only pays the bills but also helps others. So it seems that humanities do have uses, after all! Especially when combined with another discipline, the things that we learn during our course of studies in the humanities department aren't as useless in the "real world" as Dr. Fish suggests.
But then again ... aren't universities supposed to be places of learning and education? Why then are we so concerned with what our degrees can do for us? Is learning for learning's sake no longer enough? College has become almost a requirement in this modern age. As recently as a hundred years ago universities were still bastions of the elite, yet nowadays just about anyone can go to college--and most of us have to in order to remain competitive in the workplace. And that's what it all boils down to: The workplace. The issue at the heart of this debate isn't the humanities themselves; the issue is that college is now merely a stepping-stone to a high-paying career. In terms of high-paying career potential, the humanities are at the bottom of the university food chain.
What do you think? Can a humanities degree land you a good job--or is that even the point? Is it worth the ever-increasing cost--both to the students and to the universities--to keep supporting the humanities departments? Are we students of the humanities solely for the sake of our futures, or for some other reason? Can the humanities really save us? If they can't ... then who (or what) can save the humanities?
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