The Interfolio Blog

A recent New York Times article entitled "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Work" has many in the higher education system in an uproar. The article argues that as tough economic times loom, many liberal arts programs will be asked to justify themselves, and are likely to see a major decrease in student enrollment, as students try harder to get degrees directed toward a particular industry training. 

Yet as a prominent community college blogger points out, many colleges are experiencing rapid growth in liberal arts programs as more and more high school graduates turn to community colleges for two years of less expensive general courses before transferring to larger, more expensive universities. 

In addition, liberal arts programs (as the Times article points out) still do a much better job of preparing students in basic skills like critical thinking, writing, research and analysis than most professional programs. 

The question is, how do we arm liberal arts graduates with the same business-worthy portfolio as their BBA counterparts? How do we prepare humanities graduates to consider a wider range of relevant fields?  

University career centers can be incredibly helpful to humanities majors. The English major who looks at the list of on-campus recruiters and concludes that the career center has nothing to offer them is missing huge opportunities.  Internships, mentoring programs, networking opportunities, and teaching effective self-marketing and job search skills are all essential and most career centers do a very good job of providing these services.

The challenge to our universities is not to encourage more enrollment in professional programs and cuts to humanities, it's to arm those humanities majors with the tools to take their degrees out into the professional world, where we've no doubt they'd find success.