Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
The Review

The Humanities as We Know Them Are Doomed. Now What?

By Eric Hayot July 1, 2018
The Imminent Death  of the Humanities 1
Simon Brown, Courtesy of Benrubi Gallery, NYC

Humanists are accustomed to thinking of their disciplines in crisis. Indeed, crisis may be one of the profession’s most reliable bellwethers. Since I entered graduate school, in the mid-1990s, I do not recall an era in which the language of crisis — pedagogical crisis, theoretical crisis, institutional crisis — was not at the center of our shared lexicon.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Humanists are accustomed to thinking of their disciplines in crisis. Indeed, crisis may be one of the profession’s most reliable bellwethers. Since I entered graduate school, in the mid-1990s, I do not recall an era in which the language of crisis — pedagogical crisis, theoretical crisis, institutional crisis — was not at the center of our shared lexicon.

The past few years have seen some interesting pushback against this crisis talk. Enrollments are not endlessly declining: According to the federal National Center for Education Statistics, the number of bachelor’s degrees in the humanities as a proportion of all degrees was 17.1 percent in 1970-71 and 17.6 percent in 2005-6; this at least suggests that the canon wars, the rise of theory, or any of the other changes in the literature fields between 1970 and 2005 have not produced much change in student interest. Similarly, employment outcomes from undergraduate majors are, while not as good as those for students in engineering or economics, nonetheless not that bad, in terms of both actual employment and lifetime income — which puts paid to the myth of the English major spending a lifetime working at McDonald’s or Starbucks. That these arguments have come into the public eye, thanks to the work of colleagues like Michael Bérubé and journalists like Nate Silver, is a good thing.

As for Ph.D. programs, any claims about a crisis in the number of teaching jobs in English and foreign-language fields must confront the fact that the number of jobs advertised in the MLA’s annual Job Information List (JIL) has fluctuated, since 1975-76, from lows of around 2,200 jobs a year to a peak of around 3,800. In the chart below, for instance, we see a drop around the dot-com bust of 2001, followed by a steady increase that peaks in 2007, when roughly 3,500 jobs were advertised in the English and foreign-language editions of the JIL. And then, of course, come the 2008 crisis and its aftermath.

The big negative shocks in the early 1980s and mid-1990s were followed by recoveries. Will the same happen this time? If so, then talk of a crisis is overblown. And yet the data also show that the overall trend in job advertisements since 1975-76 is downward. Even if hiring recovers from this recent shock, faculty members in literature and language have reason to be pessimistic about long-term trends.

The number of undergraduate majors in the humanities has been subject to similar fluctuations. As shown below, the low point of humanities degrees as a percentage of overall degrees came not in recent years but in 1985-86, when such degrees were only 13.5 percent of the whole. By 1990-91 they were back at 15.8 percent, and then they rose through 2005-6, reaching a peak at 17.6 percent. Yes, things have declined lately, but the data on bachelor’s degrees do not support the idea that the humanities have been perpetually in crisis.

What catches the eye about the chart of jobs advertised in the JIL is the remarkably rapid drop between 2007-8 and 2009-10 and the steady decline since. Every year since 2013-14 has set a successive low for the total number of jobs advertised, and the total number of tenure-track jobs advertised is less than half of what it was a decade ago. One might also be concerned by the decline in the number of humanities bachelor’s degrees awarded since 2005-6. Both declines suggest that we are at a relative low point, and that the actual situation has changed — that we may be in a real crisis, and not just a rhetorical one.

These charts offer a vision of a way out of this darkness: We can wait. Previous peaks have always come back down to valleys, and the valleys have risen back to peaks. The percentage of overall majors in the humanities has been fairly steady since the mid-1970s. If we can just hold on for a bit, things will work themselves out, as they always have. There are good reasons, political and social, for shedding the habit of melancholy and letting go of the noble fantasy that we are the survivors of the historic rear guard. Things have been more or less fine for about 40 years.

Part of the reason they have been fine, however, is because humanists have fought. Things were not just fine on their own.

This is the good news — the overall institutional position of the humanities is relatively historically stable, in no small part because of the efforts of humanists. The bad news is that things are different today. There’s good reason to believe the humanities aren’t coming back. Without action we humanists stand to lose a great deal. This crisis will define and shape us.

Consider what has happened to enrollments. While the financial factors that caused the decline in the number of jobs advertised since 2007-8 have been ameliorated — public funding for higher education is back, in many states, to its pre-2008 levels, and endowments have recovered — other factors are causing a rapid and historically unusual decline in undergraduate enrollments and majors in the humanities.

ADVERTISEMENT

This decline will be responsible for a highly unusual double shock, in which an already shaken Ph.D. job market not only fails to recover but worsens. The results will be, I fear, devastating, for graduate students as well as for departments and programs.

At many institutions, the decline in humanities majors since 2010 is over 50 percent, a fact that I can barely bring myself not to surround with flashing lights.

This general decline in undergraduate humanities enrollments does not correspond to a decline in undergraduate enrollments overall or in the liberal arts more generally. It has taken place in a relatively short period of time — not since 2008, but since 2010 or 2011, which is what makes it hard to see, given that much of the data we have for historical enrollments are at this point a year or two (or more) behind the times. At many institutions, the decline in humanities majors since 2010 is over 50 percent, a fact that I can barely bring myself not to italicize, put in all capital letters, and surround with flashing lights.

David Laurence, of the MLA’s office of research, summarized some of what is happening in a 2017 MLA-convention presentation. Laurence’s work, shown below, depicts the number of bachelor’s-degree completions in English, history, languages other than English, and philosophy and religious studies from 1987 to 2015. This long-term view may mitigate some anxiety — we are, after all, still above where we were in 1987 in absolute terms.

ADVERTISEMENT

But local stories give a clearer picture of what Laurence described as “alarmingly steep” declines. Where I teach, at Penn State, the number of humanities majors fell between the autumn of 2010 and the autumn of 2015 by about 40 percent across all disciplines. Laurence’s research shows shockingly large declines at hundreds of institutions. To speak of English alone, if we compare the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2015 with the average number of degrees conferred from 2000 to 2010, we see the following changes:

  • Out of 258 doctorate-granting institutions, 190 (nearly 75 percent) saw declines in the number of bachelor’s degrees granted. Of those, 125 had declines of 20 percent or more, and 54 had declines of 40 percent or more. At 66 institutions, the number of bachelor’s degrees granted increased. The number of 2015 English graduates across all doctorate-granting institutions was 79 percent of the 2000-10 average.
  • Of 438 master’s-degree-granting institutions, 264 (60 percent) saw declines. Of those, 178 had declines of 20 percent or more, and 95 had declines of 40 percent or more. At 172 institutions, the number of bachelor’s degrees granted increased. The number of 2015 English graduates across all master’s institutions was 87 percent of the 2000-10 average.
  • Of 258 bachelor’s-degree-granting institutions, 180 (70 percent) saw declines. Of those, 129 had declines of 20 percent or more, and 64 had declines of 40 percent or more. At 77 institutions, the number of bachelor’s degrees granted increased. The number of 2015 English graduates across all bachelor’s-degree-granting institutions was 80 percent of the 2000-10 average.

Let me put it more plainly: At many, many of the colleges where we work, the number of humanities degrees awarded has dropped precipitously. In 2015 about 9,300 fewer English majors graduated from the colleges in the MLA study than in an average year from 2000 to 2010. The recent and rapid decline in the number of majors suggests that the humanities have become disconnected from the general ups and downs of university funding, resulting in a second shock, in which the enrollment drops are extending and solidifying the effects of the 2008-15 period. (Preliminary data recently released from the NCES suggest the situation continues to deteriorate. According to analysis by Northeastern’s Benjamin Schmidt, the number of English B.A.s awarded fell by 10 percent from 2015 to 2017.)

ADVERTISEMENT

When an English department goes from 414 majors in 2005 to 155 in 2015 (as did the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s), or from 126 to 55 (as did Harvard’s), what department head can justify increasing the size of the tenure-line faculty? On what grounds can we even argue for hiring replacements for our retiring colleagues? And if departments reduce their hiring, instead of bringing it back to previously normal levels (which were already not enough to employ all the graduating Ph.D.s on the tenure track), what will happen to our graduate students?

To make things worse: In this new situation we will not have the same allies we had before (during the financial crises of 2001 and 2008). Enrollments in business, in science, and in some of the social sciences seem to be increasing. (At Penn State, the department of economics graduated twice as many students in 2015 as it did in 2009.) The humanities are institutionally more alone and more vulnerable than they have ever been, more at the mercy of a university’s financial decisions or a new dean’s desire to prove his or her toughness by consolidating departments or reducing faculty size.

To my colleagues involved in Ph.D. programs, I say something simple and hard: Unless you are placing most of your students in the professorial jobs for which you are training them, you need to rethink what you are doing. We cannot go on allowing ourselves to accept students who believe that they will be the ones to make it, when we see so clearly that the job market is a matter not of individual talent but of structural violence, of a system whose primary ideological function is to absolve the individuals who participate in it from any moral responsibility for its effects.

A couple of years ago, I was talking with someone who was chair of a large English department. “I feel so worried about the profession,” she told me, “that sometimes I just think to myself, ‘Oh, well, at least I only have five years to retirement, so I won’t have to watch it all fall apart.’”

ADVERTISEMENT

Sometimes I feel that way myself. Many of us, having invested much of our lives in these fields, look at what’s going on and feel scared or sad. Part of the problem is that the sheer scale of the collapse makes it feel impossible to combat, and so despair leads to a kind of learned helplessness: There’s nothing I can do. At least I’ll be dead before it’s all over.

But it doesn’t have to end, even if it does have to change. No one ever said you would get to do the job in the same way for all 40 years of your career. No one ever said that large-scale social changes wouldn’t change your working conditions. And now they have. It is time to be creative, time to look for new ways to connect with our students, and help them love what the humanities can do for them. There’s still time to fight.

This essay is adapted from an article in the MLA’s journal Profession.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Eric Hayot
Eric Hayot is a professor of comparative literature and Asian studies at Pennsylvania State University.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.
Pano Kanelos, founding president of the U. of Austin.
Q&A
One Year In, What Has ‘the Anti-Harvard’ University Accomplished?

From The Review

Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg
Illustration of an unequal sign in black on a white background
The Review | Essay
What Is Replacing DEI? Racism.
By Richard Amesbury

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin