It’s common to hear defenses of the liberal arts framed in economic terms. How the MFA is the new MBA etc. This is a mistake. To frame it all using economics is a losing battle. University is much more than “job training”. Most young people will move through many different kinds of jobs in their lives. What they need is to discover their own minds, what they are good at, what they aren’t, to learn some skills, but also to contextualize their lives in the long history of the world and the nation, learn how power works, how to write and speak, how to give and receive critical feedback. If we were to design higher education around the size of the first paycheck out of college, the only thing we’d teach is oil drilling technology.
Should it continue to dwell predominantly as a defensive response to those who mistakenly deride the economic outcomes of a humanities education, it risks being subsumed by similar terminology and rhetoric. Such an exclusively reactionary focus, rather than mitigating erosion, threatens a continued dwindling of the imaginative, interrogative and empathetic impulses core to the humanities that deserve enhancement and celebration even if devoid of immediate monetary value. The power of the humanities is best revealed on our shared pursuit of common and essential questions about what it means to be human. What constitutes a good life? How do we know the truth? How do we preserve democracy? The foundational role of the humanities in a civil society stems from the connections made between the lessons learned from history, literature and philosophy and the significant moments in our personal lives.