The Humanities: What Went Right?

By Mark Bauerlein. There’s no denying it. The humanities have been through a crisis, a period in which, according to the Humanities Resource Center Online of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, degrees went from 17.7 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to 6.7 percent. The absolute number of degrees awarded in the humanities declined, from 99,280 to 65,423—during a period when total undergraduate enrollments at American colleges, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, increased by over 80 percent. The vice chancellor of a major public-university system boldly proclaimed, in the pages of The New York Times, that “the liberal-arts era is over.” Read more...