Is College Working? The Decline of the Humanities!

As a campus educator who has taught students on more than 30 campuses around the country, I see how stressed students are to compete for grades, jobs, and organizational positions. Most students seem more focused on achievement than on their personal life search and intellectual journey. They are, of course, not to blame as a transactional culture has become overwhelming but we have much to fear for the future of the university and the intellectual culture of our country.

A recent study makes us question whether college is actually working to produce the results expected from such an expensive and time-consuming project. Sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, in their book Academically Adrift, report that 45 percent of college students have not improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years, and 36 percent still have not improved after four years. What are these students paying so much for?

The cost of a single year in college has soared over the past generation. ” title=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/average-student-debt-2525_n_1073335.html” target=”_blank”>the average college student debt (for those who took out a loan) was $25,250. By 2012, outstanding student loans reached the $1 trillion mark, surpassing the total U.S. credit card debt. ” title=”http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf” target=”_blank”>Recent College Graduate Unemployment and Average Annual Income (by Major)

It is not surprising that Engineer and Computer/Mathematics majors make more than those whose major was in the Humanities, Psychology/Social Work, or the Arts. However, Business majors, once dominant among the upwardly mobile, now have a much higher unemployment rate than Education majors, so not everything is predictable.

This trend, while apparently accelerating during the Great Recession, has been under way for more than a generation. During the early 1970s, the effect of college overexpansion and a stagnant economy dealt a serious blow to the Humanities, as there were now few academic positions available. From 1970-1982, for example, while the total number of undergraduate degrees increased by 11 percent, Major Decline (%) History 62 English 57 Philosophy 51 Modern Languages 50

Academic shifting, in addition to affecting our intellectual culture, impacts moral judgment. Studies have shown that college education has a positive influence on moral judgment, but this effect is significantly weaker for business students and is largely absent for accounting students (Cohen, Journal of Business Ethics, 2001). There is, of course, great importance to Mathematics and the sciences, but somehow the Humanities have gotten lost in the process.

Harvard Professor Michael J. Sandel takes a different approach. He notes with alarm that America has transformed from a market economy, in which monetary considerations were confined to economic issues, to a “market society,” which greatly expands the areas subject to the bottom line of economics. This has highlighted the gap between rich and poor and damaged the possibility of equal access to the political system. ” title=”www.utzedek.org” target=”_blank”>Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder & CEO of ” title=”http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Ethics-Social-Justice-Yanklowitz/dp/1935104144/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320275675&sr=1-1″ target=”_blank”>Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century” is now available on Amazon. In April 2012, Newsweek named Rav Shmuly