On Humanities, and maybe also Liberal Arts, and probably not Sciences

My dad was one Humanities GenEd away from graduating with a STEM degree when he dropped out of college in the early 80s. I know this because we got stuff in the mail constantly trying to get him to pay for one more course and finish his degree. He showed me the letters each time an academic year was about to begin. I never understood why he didn’t just take a course; we lived like a mile from the college. On the one hand, he was running a sole proprietorship, and an extra Humanities elective would not help him at all. On the other hand, he’d have a degree instead of being a college drop out. This was my first experience with Humanities.

What are Humanities, anyway? The Heller piece delves into it, but the answer is not cut and dry. I have a bachelor’s degree in English. Some schools would label it Liberal Arts. Some would call it Humanities. None, to my knowledge, would call it Science. My college roommate got his degree in Economics. Which I am pretty sure our school labeled Science. Other schools would have called it Business, Liberal Arts, and I’d imagine somebody, somewhere would call it Humanities. Maybe not. The point is that universities can’t even agree on a definition, so how can we expect employers or the general public to?

I’m not going to call it out by name, but a famous, prestigious university that I swoon over (hint- a basketball blue blood) offers Creative Writing as a minor. Only as a minor. Not as a major. Not as a Liberal Art or Humanity. Absurd. Insanity. They can’t someday hire me as for their Creative Writing faculty, because they don’t even really offer it. What’s the world coming to?

Maybe we can start by blowing up the straw man argument for ending Liberal Arts and Humanities: there are no real jobs for people who have “fake” degrees. To which, I always begin my knee jerk retort with “there are no useless degrees, only useless people.” So somebody went to college and got an English, History, or Philosophy degree while getting fired by a different coffee shop every six months from age 16 to like 30. There are a ton of people who fit that description. Why, oh why, do people condescendingly blame the degree? Not that the person who holds it can’t hold a job. It is the “useless” degree’s fault, obviously. What kills me is that many of the people who hold this opinion either never went to college or are themselves so inarticulate that their totally not useless degree and job are basically running numbers through Microsoft Excel and looking busy. Yes, shame on college for producing people with “useless” degrees.

From seemingly the founding of Oxford to like 1980, college was kind of something rich kids did after high school that correlated but was not the causation for financial success as an adult. Seemingly nobody, or at least not enough people, realized this is the perfect example of correlation not equaling causation. Going to college doesn’t make you smart or guarantee you to be successful. People, often with inherited wealth of sources of passive income, went to college and got degrees in stuff like Latin and Greek Translation so they could contribute something to society other than being the beneficiary of passive income. Not because translating Ancient Greek was the path to success. How the hell the masses didn’t realize this and instead thought “go to college, make money, if you don’t you’re a failure” and hammered that home to the entire Millennial generation is a failure of our parents I will never understand. The result was that a bunch of useless people got degrees and somehow the message got muddied and it became degrees are useless. Also the classic college experience of joining Greek Life, volunteerism, and being networked with alumni for success at some point was replaced by get okay grades, play video games, and then bitch when you don’t have the life skills or social skills to get a job. Sorry if the truth hurts.

My wife has an English degree, too. She’s a lawyer. Tons of lawyers have degrees in English, History, or Political Science. “Useless” degrees, indeed. Not to mention, tons of C Suite Executives have Liberal Arts or Humanities degrees instead of business majors. Truly, useless. Why do colleges even offer such useless things?

This century, an argument has arisen that Humanities are “Old Dead White Men Studies” degrees. There is some truth to this. If you want a degree in literature that is not focused on white guys who died decades, centuries, or millennia ago, good for you. But understanding Plato, Shakespeare, heck, even the Bible, is fundamental even if your Liberal Arts or Humanities degree is specialized to avoid such topics. You can’t truly understand modern writing and literature if you don’t understand the classics. They’re called classics for a reason.

Part of it is that there are and will continue to be fewer college-age people. With fewer asses in seats, STEM and Business have less to worry about than potentially less lucrative majors. This is reality. As more kids select trade schools and stuff like that, the trend is not likely to reverse any time soon. It is somewhat ironic that employers are chomping at the bit to hire anyone who can write and communicate with even minimal competence.

I dropped out of business school. It wasn’t for me. Not because I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body, or because I somehow lack business sense. If anything, the opposite. I went to business school to appease my family, not for my personal enrichment. That’s why I dropped out, and why I went back and got the degree I wanted and should have been getting to begin with. If this sounds like you, consider just saying ‘To hell with mom and dad’ and getting the Liberal Arts or Humanities degree you actually want. It is better to do that than to be just another business or STEM drop out.