A Degree in Humanites | Richashell.com

About MUM Maharishi University of Management (MUM) in Fairfield, IA is a private university featuring Consciousness-Based℠ Education. The accredited traditional curriculum offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in the arts, sciences, humanities, and business, but also integrates self-development programs. Innovative aspects include the Transcendental Meditation® program, one course at a time, and organic vegetarian meals. Visitors Weekends are held throughout the year. Maharishi University of Management (http://www.mum.edu) granted degrees to 285 students representing 54 countries.

HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

GETTING THAT JOB
Do not make too much of this one article because there are many caveats, but it is such an anomaly that careful consideration must be given to it. At the least, the article powerfully suggests that humanities and social science studies in college develop habits of thinking that help a career even in a high-tech industry like AT&T.

The surprising finding is that humanities and social science majors were more successful than business, science and math, and engineering majors, in that order.

However the darkside is the number of humanities majors has actually been falling since the 1970s. The remarkably insignificant fact that, a half-century ago, 14% of the undergraduate population majored in the humanities (mostly in literature, but also in art, philosophy, history, classics and religion) as opposed to 7% today has given rise to grave reflections on the nature and purpose of an education in the liberal arts. The college teaching of literature is a relatively recent phenomenon. Literature did not even become part of the university curriculum until the end of the 19th century. The teaching of literature came into its own early in the 20th century, with the formation of literature departments.

DEGREE IN THE HUMANITIES

2013 Humanities Indicators
For a comprehensive look at the state of humanities in the United States, explore the Academy’s Humanities Indicators. With its partners, the Academy has compiled statistical data on the condition of the humanities and made it freely available for use in research and analysis. Humanities data Indicators | Departmental Survey

Congratulations, class of 2014: You’re totally screwed
College costs more and more, even as it gets objectively worse. Only people worse off than indebted grads: adjuncts By Thomas Frank May 18 2014

Welcome to the wide world, Class of 2014. You have by now noticed the tremendous consignment of debt that the authorities at your college have spent the last four years loading on your shoulders. It may interest you to know that the average student-loan borrower among you is now $33,000 in debt, the largest of any graduating class ever. According to a new study by thePew Research Center, carrying that kind of debt will have certain predictable effects. It will impede your ability to accumulate wealth, for example. You will also borrow more for other things than people without debt, and naturally you will find your debt level growing, not shrinking, as the years pass.

As you probably know, neither your parents nor your grandparents were required to take on this kind of burden in order to go to college. Neither are the people of your own generation in France and Germany and Argentina and Mexico.

But in our country, as your commencement speaker will no doubt tell you, the universities are “excellent.” They are “world-class.” Indeed, they are all that stands between us and economic defeat by the savagely competitive peoples of Europe and Asia. So a word of thanks is in order, Class of 2014: By borrowing those colossal amounts and turning the proceeds over to the people who run our higher ed system, you have done your part to maintain American exceptionalism, to keep our competitive advantage alive.

Here’s a question I bet you won’t hear broached on the commencement stage: Why must college be so expensive? The obvious answer, which I’m sure has been suggested to you a thousand times, is because college is so good. A 2014 Cadillac costs more than did a 1980 Cadillac, adjusting for inflation, because it is a better car. And because you paid attention in economics class, you know the same thing must be true of education. When tuition goes up and up every year, far outpacing inflation, this indicates that the quality of education in this country is also, constantly, going up and up. You know that the only way education can cost more is if it is worth more.

In sum, you paid nearly sixty grand a year to attend some place with a classy WASP name and ivy growing on its fake medieval walls. You paid for the best, and now you are the best, an honorary classy WASP entitled to all the privileges of the club. That education your parents got, even if it was at the same school as yours, cost them far less and was thus not as good as yours. That’s the way progress works, right?

Actually, the opposite is closer to the truth: college costs more and more even as it gets objectively worse and worse. Yes, I know, universities today offer luxuries unimaginable in the 1960s: fine gymnasiums, gourmet dining halls, disturbing architecture. But when it comes to generating and communicating knowledge—the essential business of higher ed—they are, almost all of them, in a frantic race to the bottom.

According to the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty, only about 30 percent of the teachers at American colleges these days are tenured or tenure-track, which means that fewer than a third of your profs actually enjoy the security and benefits and intellectual freedom that we associate with the academic lifestyle. In 1969, traditional professors like these made up almost 80 percent of the American faculty. Today, however, it is part-time workers without any kind of job security who are the majority of the instructors on campus, and in general these adjuncts are paid poorly and receive few benefits. That is who does the work of knowledge-transmission at the ever-so costly, ever-so excellent American university: Freelancers. Contract laborers. [snip]

Thomas Frank's piece (quoted in that message) references this one by David Graeber: Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit It's much longer and absolutely worth reading.

2/18/15 We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.
Dr. Loretta Jackson-Hayes is an associate professor of chemistry at Rhodes College in Memphis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/18/we-dont-need-more-stem-majors-we-need-more-stem-majors-with-liberal-arts-training/

11.28.14 'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'
Nichole Gracely has a master’s degree and was one of Amazon’s best order pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she’s homeless.
I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon. When the Hachette dispute flared up, I “flew a sign,” street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: “I was an order picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now, I’m homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps.” I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.
I don’t know what the picture of the average American homeless person is, but I’m sure it wouldn’t include me. I graduated college. I have been published in a scholarly journal and a social-justice oriented website. I have completed my MA in American Studies. I ditched plans to pursue a PhD because it clearly wasn’t going to be a viable career option: I did not appreciate the so-called privilege to become volunteer labor and work for less than minimum wage as a graduate student, and then maybe, if I were so fortunate, become an adjunct professor. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was living a fantasy, thinking that a student of the humanities would be tolerated, and paid decently, in the corporate world of the modern university. I could never afford to perform an unpaid internship and that damaged my long-term career prospects. I had to work at jobs that paid money, jobs like the one at Amazon, while I went to school and took out loans.

8.25.13 The Adjunct Crisis and the Free Market
Margaret Mary Vojtko, a veteran instructor of French at Duquesne University, died broke and humiliated on her front lawn this month. Last week her friend Daniel Kovalik memorialized her in a wrenching op-ed essay, and for the first time Americans outside academe began to notice, en masse, adjunct faculty in the United States, who now make up a majority of college instructors. Margaret Mary’s story put a face on labor practices that should be the collective shame of American academe.

8.4.14 Getting a PhD in the Humanities Could Wreck Your Life

10/30/13 As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry
[ . . .Some 45 percent of the faculty members in Stanford’s main undergraduate division are clustered in the humanities — but only 15 percent of the students.]
[ . . .the percentage of humanities majors hovers around 7 percent — half the 14 percent share in 1970. As others quickly pointed out, that decline occurred between 1970, the high point, and 1985, not in recent years.]
[ . . . “There’s an overwhelming push from the administration at most universities to build up the STEM fields, both because national productivity depends in part on scientific productivity and because there’s so much federal funding for science,” said John Tresch, a historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, since the recession — probably because of the recession — there has been a profound shift toward viewing college education as a vocational training ground.]

"What's the Point of Humanities? What I Tell Engineering Students."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/06/20/why-study-humanities-what-i-tell-engineering-freshmen/

What’s the point of the humanities? Of studying philosophy, history, literature and “soft” sciences like psychology and poly sci? The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, consisting of academic, corporate, political and entertainment big shots, tries to answer this question in a big new report to Congress. The report is intended to counter plunging enrollment in and support for the humanities, which are increasingly viewed as “luxuries that employment-minded students can ill afford,” as The New York Times put it.

Socrates teaching the humanities.

Titled “The Heart of the Matter,” the report states: “As we strive to create a more civil public discourse, a more adaptable and creative workforce, and a more secure nation, the humanities and social sciences are the heart of the matter, the keeper of the republic—a source of national memory and civic vigor, cultural understanding and communication, individual fulfillment and the ideals we hold in common. They are critical to a democratic society and they require our support.”

I find this a bit grandiose, and obscure. I have my own humble defense of the humanities, which I came up with a couple of years ago, when I started teaching a new course required for all freshmen at Stevens Institute of Technology. The syllabus includes Sophocles, Plato, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Keynes, Eliot—you know, Greatest Hits of Western Civilization.

I love teaching the class, but I don’t assume that students love taking it. So on the first day of class I ask my wary-looking students, “How many of you would skip this class if it wasn’t required?” After I assure them that they won’t hurt my feelings, almost all raise their hands.

When I ask what the problem is, they say they came to Stevens for engineering, computer science, physics, pre-med, finance, digital music production, etc. They don’t see the point of reading all this old impractical stuff that has nothing to do with their careers. When I ask them to guess why Stevens inflicts this course on them, someone usually says, smirking, To make us well-rounded.

Whenever I get the “well-rounded” response, I want to reply, “Does ‘well-rounded’ mean, like, chubby?” But I don’t want to offend overweight students. Instead I say, “I don’t really know what ‘well-rounded’ means. Does it mean being able chitchat about Shakespeare at cocktail parties? I don’t care about that.” Then I give them my pitch for the course, which goes something like this:

We live in a world increasingly dominated by science. And that’s fine. I became a science writer because I think science is the most exciting, dynamic, consequential part of human culture, and I wanted to be a part of that. Also, I have two college-age kids, and I’d be thrilled if they pursued careers in science, engineering or medicine. I certainly want them to learn as much science and math as they can, because those skills can help you get a great job.

But it is precisely because science is so powerful that we need the humanities now more than ever. In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you’re given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism.

The humanities are subversive. They undermine the claims of all authorities, whether political, religious or scientific. This skepticism is especially important when it comes to claims about humanity, about what we are, where we came from, and even what we can be and should be. Science has replaced religion as our main source of answers to these questions. Science has told us a lot about ourselves, and we’re learning more every day.

But the humanities remind us that we have an enormous capacity for deluding ourselves. They also tell us that every single human is unique, different than every other human, and each of us keeps changing in unpredictable ways. The societies we live in also keep changing–in part because of science and technology! So in certain important ways, humans resist the kind of explanations that science gives us.

The humanities are more about questions than answers, and we’re going to wrestle with some ridiculously big questions in this class. Like, What is truth anyway? How do we know something is true? Or rather, why do we believe certain things are true and other things aren’t? Also, how do we decide whether something is wrong or right to do, for us personally or for society as a whole?

Also, what is the meaning of life? What is the point of life? Should happiness be our goal? Well, what the hell is happiness? And should happiness be an end in itself or just a side effect of some other more important goal? Like gaining knowledge, or reducing suffering?

Each of you has to find your own answer to these questions. Socrates, one of the philosophers we’re going to read, said wisdom means knowing how little you know. Socrates was a pompous ass, but there is wisdom in what he says about wisdom.

If I do my job, by the end of this course you’ll question all authorities, including me. You’ll question what you’ve been told about the nature of reality, about the purpose of life, about what it mean to be a good person. Because that, for me, is the point of the humanities: they keep us from being trapped by our own desire for certainty.

Postscript: My Stevens colleague Garry Dobbins, a philosopher, likes to give me a hard time, and I him, but I’m always provoked by his take on things, like this response to my post: “As to the Humanities being to teach us a healthy skepticism, we might all agree that this is indeed one of the consequences of such an education; but if this is necessary, as you make it out, because learning science alone we do not learn the importance, or necessity of ‘uncertainty, doubt and skepticism,’ something strange and even perverse has befallen the study of science! Those taking seriously the study of the history of science, for instance, will know that there was a time when science assumed the cultural pre-eminence it still occupies among us precisely because it did not teach dogmas, or as you put it, ‘certainty.’ On the contrary; scientific studies from the early modern period down to the early twentieth century, anyway, were liberal studies. Surely the justification of study of the Humanities, history, literature, philosophy and the rest, is not fundamentally different than the justification for the study of science. There are forces at work in human life, whether material or spiritual, which we seek to master, so far as possible. The language in which we express our knowledge of physical forces obeys somewhat different logical rules to that in which we express our knowledge of economics for example: but this doesn’t mean that the one is less knowledge, or logical, or important, than the other, surely! That you speak of the kind of knowledge to be gained by close study of Shakespeare, Thucydides, or Plato, as ‘impractical’ surely goes to show a misunderstanding as to what is practical in a human life. Unless you can show good reason to believe Socrates mistaken in thinking that self-knowledge is only reliable foundation for a good life.”

I responded: “Garry, you’re right that science if properly taught should incorporate skepticism. But science is becomingly increasingly dogmatic and arrogant in our era, which is why we need the humanities to foster a healthy anti-dogmatism.”

Response from Karl

We had this debate here at UC Santa Cruz a few years back when the University tried to cut Shakespeare Santa Cruz, a nationally recognized part of UCSC theater arts program.)

Some background: UC Santa Cruz has had a reputation of being the hippy campus of the University of California. Over the last decades UCSC has tried to shake that image and now has very highly ranked programs in many scientific disciplines, such as astrophysics and astronomy.

The argument we made, and which was supported by much of the scientific faculty, was this: A person may have the most creative scientific or technical idea in the world, but that idea is worthless unless that idea can be conveyed clearly and its worth clearly articulated.

The humanities, and in particular art, literature, and theater, are all about conveying things from one mind to another. The great authors and philosophers of the ages not only give us ideas but they show us how to express those ideas to others.

A scientific or technical student who studies humanities will be much better armed in the conflict of ideas than a student who has not.

A student who has a background that includes humanities is more likely to create a more compelling proposal for funding or backing for a venture.

A person who has a background that includes humanities is more likely to be able to interact constructively and creatively with his/her peers.

And when it comes to promoting the results of our work, a person with skills learned from the humanities has a much better chance of convincing others that the products are useful and worth having. (By-the-way, we did save the theater program.)

--karl--

Humanities Survey

http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/resources/survey.aspx

The Humanities Departmental Survey is a collaborative effort to collect and analyze information from humanities departments across several academic disciplines. Project participants, including representatives from national humanities organizations and disciplinary associations such as the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association, developed a survey instrument designed to bring consistency to already-existing data collection efforts in the humanities. The long-term goal is to create original multidisciplinary trend data that can be used to produce indicators of the state of the humanities in higher education.

The survey was administered during the 2007-2008 academic year to a national sample of approximately 1,400 departments in four-year colleges and universities. The disciplines surveyed are: art history, English, foreign languages, history, the history of science, linguistics, and religion. The survey gathered a wide variety of data for each discipline, including the number and nature of faculty; the distribution of teaching loads; the number of undergraduate majors and minors; and other aspects of the student experience.

The data collected via the survey are analyzed in a report prepared by the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, which served as data host for the project. Two related essays provide additional background and discussion of the findings. The report and essays can be viewed and/or downloaded free of charge using the links to the right.

The Humanities Departmental Survey received funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Teagle Foundation.

Humanities Departmental Survey

Overview Essay by Arnita Jones and John Hammer

Click for entire 2007-2008 Humanities Departmental Survey report

Click below for individual sections of the Survey: