A Puzzling Pattern in the Humanities

By Alex Usher. Big news in Alberta the other day: the University of Alberta has decided to cut fourteen (14!) programs, in the humanities. That’s on top of a programs cull just two years ago in which seventeen programs – mostly in Arts – were also axed! Oh my God! War on the humanities, etc, etc.
Or at least that’s the way it sounds, until you read the fine print around the announcement and realise that these fourteen programs, collectively, have 30 students enrolled in them. The puzzle here, it seems, is not so much “why are these programs being cancelled” as “why on earth were they ever approved in the first place”. More...