A recent article by Nathan Heller in the New Yorker paints a rather bleak picture of a higher-education landscape in which the humanities are eclipsed by STEM-focused career training. Increasingly, and especially at our nation’s most storied universities, students view courses in areas like literature as “hobby-based,” primarily for those who can afford the luxury of diversion. To many of them, the study of humanities seems unrelated to the marketable skills that are in demand in the world—a waste of time and money. I’ve been teaching political science and interdisciplinary humanities at a community college in Austin, Texas for thirteen years, and I couldn’t recognize my own experience in Heller’s account.
