There’s no question that the arts and humanities are in a crisis. Every year since 2012, the number of students earning undergraduate degrees in the humanities has decreased. While national trends have shifted many times in the last century, this most recent decline seems rooted in something more permanent. An increasingly digitized and technological world is seemingly incompatible with disciplines like philosophy, english, art and history.
An example is the PST Art initiative, funded by the Getty, which is now in its fourth iteration of shows across southern California. This year’s theme? Art and Science Collide. While many exhibits continue to center art and aim to challenge the idea that science is the only inherently truthful and moral force, the initiative is making a statement that art cannot sit on its own.
We can find other examples here at Whitman College. In 2021 the college proposed a number of cuts to academics, largely targeting arts, humanities and languages. STEM programs receive more funding on a federal level as well, so it’s no surprise that new majors like Brain, Behavior & Cognition have emerged while the Dance department struggles to remain afloat.
At a moment when our federal government is putting science in jeopardy, both rhetorically and financially, it might seem unwise to question why we have run away from the arts and humanities. Such a question is necessary, however, if we are to prepare ourselves for life after Whitman.
While STEM fields are important, it’s our political will and not a lack of technological progress, that is keeping us from solving the climate crisis. Researchers miraculously found a vaccine for COVID-19, but it’s our social health that is still reeling from the pandemic.
A liberal arts education forces students to write, think critically and gain an appreciation for alternative ways of knowing. Rather than shift away from the arts and humanities, we must embrace them, for it is historians who can tell you how vaccine skepticism has a long history in the United States and rhetoric majors who will be most prepared to challenge our current federal government.
Shifts are a result of worries about whether the liberal arts education can survive. Thus, alongside an emphasis on STEM, students are increasingly made familiar with campus resources like the Career and Community Engagement Center. Rather than education for the sake of accessing ideas that shape our lives, ideas have been replaced by skills and how they can be made useful for potential job recruiters.
If you have chosen to major in a non-STEM field, it is no longer enough to learn about, for example, radical black feminism. We must now think about how such a class can be translated into the workforce. For those of us who want to work in schools, museums, studios or community organizing spaces, such translations indicate that Whitman has higher hopes for you.
But such professions are what truly makes a difference in this world and, additionally, it’s okay that you’re in school without much of an idea of what to do next. While a focus on careers is partially a response to the increasingly diverse student body, which often has different demands of their education, there are also ways to think more collectively and find value in an education that teaches us the untranslatable.
The effort to emphasize the value of STEM and preparing for a career is ultimately about a definition of success that is tied to climbing the economic ladder. There is a cultural mindset that, individually, we can pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and that colleges are pouncing on the opportunity to help you. Even when the value of the arts and humanities are seen, it is too often through a lens that has zoomed in on the skills that such disciplines offer.
To use a previous example, radical black feminism is a lot less threatening to the status quo when it’s merely a hypothetical engagement in the classroom. We need colleges and their students that understand a protest to be just as educational as the classroom by taking the lessons we learn and putting them into action. This might not be compatible with economic success, but perhaps colleges shouldn’t be either. An embrace of the arts and humanities, which redefine success, is necessary in a moment when political, social and cultural solutions are essential.