A Classics professor on the decline of the humanities
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Issue #140: remembering Susan Wojcicki, doodling for your kids, and the definition of mastery
By Harris Sockel
Here’s a quote I can’t stop thinking about, from one of the most-read stories on Medium last month:
“This moment has been a long time coming. I’ve imagined it for many years, long before this current crisis. The fact is, I’m an expert in a dying field.”
That’s Classics professor Brian S. Hook coming to terms with losing his job. His university cut his department after enrollment dropped 25% in four years. “I was trained to help students learn to read Latin, to read literature and history… to think creatively and critically,” he explains. But that was a hard sell. Students wanted to major in something that would immediately land them a job.
And I don’t blame them! College costs over $100K on average (40% higher than a decade ago). Gen Z-ers, proud members of the “toolbelt generation,” want skills they can sell. Fifty years ago, most college students majored in either education, history, or some form of social science. Today? It’s economics, government, and computer science (the top majors at Harvard for the fifth straight year). Even if you don’t end up working in any of those fields, studying them will help you speak the lingua franca of tech, and thus get a job. The number of English and history majors nationwide has dropped by about a third over the last decade.
What’s interesting to me, though, is how culture’s obsession with humanities hasn’t fallen off… it’s just migrated. Subjects like history and literary criticism are content now, Hook argues. “I’m sure there are ways to monetize [my expertise as a Classicist] on YouTube or TikTok,” he writes, ”but that’s not education,” it’s entertainment.
Elsewhere on Medium…
- Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube who lent her garage to the founders of Google way back in 1998, died on Friday. Hunter Walk, Wojcicki’s direct report and protege, remembers her as an advocate who saw leadership potential in him before he saw it in himself.
- Nanie Hurley draws whimsical cartoons for her daughter every morning to stave off separation anxiety: “If you have a toddler who hates going to school… you might want to try the ‘one picture a day to keep the tantrums away’ idea. It worked for us.”
Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about perfection
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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