Where the Humanities’ Death Knell Doesn’t Ring True

According to countless recent headlines, American college students are struggling. Our “best and brightest” are no longer being asked to read or are incapable of doing so, and more and more students rely on AI to complete their assignments. Despairing reports of the “death of the humanities,” it seems, have not been greatly exaggerated.

But these dark trends, though certainly worth noting, do not tell the whole story. Despite the seeming lack of rigor across higher education, or perhaps because of it, select humanities programs are on the rise.

Enrollment at Thomas Aquinas College, a Catholic Great Books institution, has grown 50% since 2014, a stark contrast to the 7% decline reported by most schools over the same period. The brand-new University of Austin, meanwhile, drew 100 prospective students the day applications opened. Purdue University’s Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Certificate program attracts more than 7,500 students on an annual basis, and the University of Tulsa’s Great Books Honors College, only in its second year, has become the third largest college on campus, enrolling 23% of the university’s student body.

These programs assign different texts and rely on different pedagogies, but they share a deep commitment to intellectual training in the humanities. The rigor of their educational standards has earned them independent recognition from Princeton Review’s Best Colleges list, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s (ACTA) What Will They Learn?^® and Hidden Gems projects, Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges compendium, and more.

They are also touching a chord with students. ACTA spoke with the directors of several of these exceptional programs and discovered that they are, perhaps surprisingly, quite popular among students with “practically minded” majors. At Purdue, one of the nation’s top research universities, most undergraduates major in business or STEM. But a vast majority of Purdue students, when given the option, choose to fulfill their general education requirements through Cornerstone’s liberal arts sequence. Similarly, the students enrolled in the University of Tulsa Honors College are often pursuing degrees in mechanical engineering, biology, or the computer sciences, but view their 12-hour Great Books curriculum as an asset, not an obstacle.

The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program at the State University of New York–Buffalo prepares students for careers in law, politics, and business. “Too often, students are presented with the false choice of learning about the humanities or developing technical skills in more career-oriented programs,” says Ryan Muldoon, director of the PPE program, which currently enrolls 90 students. Yet, a “liberal arts education works best when these are seen as complements, not substitutes.” 

The noncompetitive nature of these humanities programs is surely part and parcel of their success, for while they initiate students into the rich fields of philosophy, history, and literature with care and passion, they do not seek to solve the humanities “crisis” by making more philosophers or historians. Their aim is simple: to welcome students into a community of learning and to make them more human as a result. “We aren’t trying to draw students away from STEM, healthcare, and business,” insists Melinda Zook, director of Purdue’s Cornerstone program. Her goal is rather “to see that [they] gain the skills and values of learning.” These programs are delivering what only the humanities can: not only quantitative skills, but qualitative strengths like thoughtful, collaborative discourse and the ability to analyze arguments that, like most of life’s many conundrums, rarely fit neatly into one discipline or sector. According to Professor Zook, today’s young people “need to find their voice, their individuality, their creativity as citizens, employees, and as adults facing a myriad of crucial decisions. A chemistry or accounting class can teach them many things, but not these human skills and values that come with exposure to the liberal arts.”

This broad perspective on education challenges students to think smarter, harder, and more critically. In keeping with the best of the humanities tradition, it ensures these experiences redound to students’ benefit as human beings, which includes professional or technical training and yet goes deeper too. This expansive vision of student success extends far beyond the classroom. Jennifer Frey, director of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa, puts it plainly: “We do not educate students for a career but for a flourishing life, and therefore we are engaged in formation.”

Is it any surprise that the members of Gen Z—wrestling with a society-wide crisis of loneliness and an agonizing search for meaning that is a perennial feature of the human condition—find this quest more compelling than the usual fare of disjointed distribution requirements and niche course offerings? And while the ability to find a job ranks high among students’ concerns, rising enrollment at the likes of Cornerstone prove that, properly pursued, the age-old questions of “Who are we?”, “What is the good?”, and “How do we achieve it?” are as fascinating as ever to college students today.

These programs show that the apparent “death of the humanities” is not an excuse for despair, but an opportunity for innovation; their successes should encourage other institutions not so much to copy their methods, but to find inspiration in them. If faculty and administrators adapt the insights of such programs to the needs of their unique institutions, a resurrection of the humanities may be just around the corner.