Frank A. Boyd, Ph.D.
Frank Boyd is Vice President of the Higher Education Practice at McAllister & Quinn. Frank brings 26 years of experience in higher education as a faculty member and academic administrator.
It is hard to avoid the steady stream of stories about the decline of the humanities. We’ve all seen the headlines about institutions that have chosen to dismiss humanities faculty, regardless of tenure status, or cut humanities programs from the curriculum entirely. No disciplines have been spared, but the most common targets have been philosophy, religious studies, classical studies, and foreign languages.
But some colleges and universities are bucking these trends by resisting cuts and instead restructuring or redesigning their curricula. How are institutions managing this process? What are the implications for faculty and students? And how are some institutions finding the resources to revise humanities programs in new and creative ways?
Expansion and Contraction in the Humanities
The so-called crisis in the humanities has intensified recently but it is nothing new. For those of us who have been in and around higher education for the last few decades, there has never been a time when someone wasn’t announcing the demise of the liberal arts and humanities in particular.
Concerns about the state of the humanities began to frequently appear in the mid-twentieth century, when the percentage of humanities majors hovered around 10%. But thereafter, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences chronicles how the percentage of students majoring in the humanities grew quite rapidly in the 1960s through an explosion in college enrollment that was fueled by the GI Bill. Ultimately, the percentage of students majoring in the humanities peaked at around 18% in the early 1970s. The number of humanities majors began an arithmetic decline in the 1980s that has returned the percentage of humanities majors to the level that prevailed before 1950: about 8%.
These enrollment patterns have been affected by broader financial pressures on higher education and by the shifting cultural landscape in the United States. Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, described the interaction of these broad forces thusly:
Periods of great cultural and economic change have often put tremendous pressure on the humanities, because at such times, people agree less on what counts as relevant, let alone as momentous.
Erosion of interest in, and support for, the humanities has taken place in the context of a growing cultural critique from across the political spectrum. As David Brooks explains in the December 2024 issue of The Atlantic, race and class have been eclipsed by education as a significant political cleavage in the United States. Accordingly, the ascendent conservative populists in the United States have devoted considerable energy to maligning higher education and the so-called elite institutions of learning. Much of the ire is reserved specifically for the humanities, which are seen as a luxury of the privileged and antithetical to “real America.”
The workforce (and the world) continues to demand skills from the humanities
Even as the number of humanities majors has declined over the past decades, business titans have shared a profile of preferred job candidates that centers their education in the humanities. George Lee, co-lead of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute told Forbes Magazine that, “Some of the skills that are really salient to cooperate with this new artificial intelligence in the world are critical thinking, understanding logic and rhetoric, the ability to be creative.” Robert Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer of BlackRock has said that he is looking for liberal arts graduates that have “nothing to do with finance or technology.” Both executives specifically cite heightened importance of writing and oral communication skills, creativity, and other soft skills for BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
The market value of humanities graduates may be further enhanced by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI is paradoxically diminishing the demand for entry-level employees with computer and other technical skills, even as demand rises for graduates who understand the ethical, social, and cultural requisites and implications of this new technology.
This perspective is increasingly expressed by high-profile business leaders. Mark Cuban, the tech billionaire, posted on X, “I said this years ago and I’ll say it again; in an AI world, being trained in those liberal arts can be very valuable.” If this is true, then how can higher education in America deliver?
How are schools restructuring and investing in the humanities?
Some institutions are committed to creating and sustaining innovative humanities programs, even in the face of financial constraints and hostile cultural environments. Two relevant examples are from Bowdoin College and the University of Redlands. Bowdoin, with the support of the National Humanities Center, offers a team-taught course entitled, “Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” Four faculty representing STEM, humanities, and social science disciplines explore how AI technology must also employ the analytical skills of humanists. Professor Fernando Nascimiento cites the example of Facebook’s 2018 algorithm that was designed to curate a user’s information-feed to privilege what is “meaningful” to them, when “meaningful” was actually operationalized as “emotional.” It has long been understood that the emotions which most easily evoke a reaction are anger and fear. His students, armed with the analytical tools of the humanities, are studying the structure and function of AI in a way that will be crucial for the future of the technology.
The University of Redlands has a program in the Spatial Humanities as part of the University’s Center for Spatial Studies. Faculty and students use geographic information systems (GIS) technology that allows two- or three-dimensional analysis of questions in history, religion, anthropology, education, and the arts. Faculty have ongoing scholarly projects that study the sociocultural aspects of Indigenous American tribes in California, Nevada, and Arizona. There are others examining the secondary school systems east of Los Angeles.
The initiatives at Bowdoin and Redlands represent a variety of programs that connect faculty and students with contemporary issues that demonstrate the relevance of the humanities for the world of today. The constrained budgets of many schools would make it difficult to introduce similar programs or even invest in the revision of existing ones. However, there remain private foundations that invest in the strengthening and development of humanities programs. The Mellon Foundation has long supported the humanities and in recent years has expanded the scope of institutions who receive their funding; the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations support colleges committed to liberal education.
From the federal government, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) continues to offer programs like the NEH Initiatives that supports the development of new or revision of existing programs. The NEH Connections program seeks to expand the study of the humanities by encouraging collaborative partnerships between humanities faculty and their counterparts from other disciplines.
About McAllister & Quinn
McAllister & Quinn is a premier federal grant consulting and government relations firm. Based in Washington, DC, McAllister & Quinn’s unique approach has helped college and university clients secure over $1 billion in federal and foundation grant funding. For more information about how McAllister & Quinn partners with institutions, please Contact Frank Boyd to schedule a conversation.