Introduction

During the last few decades generally, and since the 2008 financial crisis specifically, the humanities discipline has been placed under tremendous scrutiny. “What are you going to do with that (fill in the blank—e.g., history) humanities degree?” is commonly asked at dinners, networking events, meetings, and other gatherings both on and off campuses of higher education institutions across the United States. Parents, students, board members, administrators, faculty, and just about every other stakeholder have all asked some form of that question. With a lack of a clear answer to that question, there is no surprise that the number of humanities majors has declined during the last decade. Two recent examples include the Modern Language Association (MLA) reporting that 651 foreign language programs have been closed recently and the American Historical Association (AHA) noting a 30 percent drop in history enrollments since the 2008 Great Recession.¹ As Brian C. Rosenberg, president of Macalester College, noted, “This wasn’t a gradual decline; it was more like a tidal wave.”²

Figure 0.1 summarizes why the number of humanities majors has declined during the last decade. Parents, students, and higher education stakeholders believe that professional degrees in business, nursing, and engineering will provide students with a clear career pathway to success. Success is often defined as declaring the perfect major, to land that perfect job that leads to that perfect life. This paradigm, however, often falls prey to that which no one has control over—reality. Today’s students enroll in college for very practical reasons: to improve employment opportunities (91%); to make more money (90%); and to get a good job (89%).³ Thus, the fundamental belief held by many is “if students do A (graduate from college) they should get B (jobs and money).” The path to success should resemble the left line in the image: a linear trajectory to wealth, professional attainment, and career achievements.

Figure 0.1 Success

The fact that business majors now account for about one out of every five bachelor’s degrees and the number of majors in almost every humanities field has declined since 2008 demonstrates the preference for a linear career path.⁴ As Fareed Zakaria wrote, “This dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future.”⁵ The problem with this mental model is that the path to success for most resembles the right line in the image. Nonlinear career pathways, serendipity, and being able to adapt to market conditions are more often the hallmarks of a professional navigating today’s ever-changing global marketplace. This dichotomy between desire—a linear career path—versus reality—a nonlinear trajectory—succinctly summarizes the reasons behind the continual decline of the humanities.

This dichotomy exists because of numerous factors such as the rising cost of education coupled with a diminishing field of well-paying employment opportunities, allowing graduates to repay their student loans. As Forbes noted,

One of the primary issues facing higher education is the rising cost of education balanced against the benefit of a college degree. As valuable as a college education is, the cost is often the first and most important factor people face in weighing the value of universities.⁶

Since “many recent graduates are underemployed and face massive student loan debt,” people want a guaranteed career path that provides a high-paying salary with benefits.⁷ This desire for a return on investment (ROI) is compounded by outdated assumptions about college students, namely that most are 18- to 22-year-olds fresh out of high school. According to the Lumina Foundation, “that’s no longer the reality as 38% of college students today are older than 25, and 58% work while in college (about 40% of community-college students and 20% of four-year students work 20+ hours per week). Another 26% are raising kids.”⁸ It’s no wonder then that college students are demanding an ROI.

With the sole focus of securing employment after graduation, this current mental model needs to be viewed as a powerful determinant of choices and behaviors, an automated algorithm if you will, dictating how students have responded to global events.⁹ The irony in the current mental model, so many college students use is that the career prospects of humanities majors has never been greater.¹⁰ Bard College president Leon Botstein noted in a May 24, 2019, interview published in The Wall Street Journal that “Liberal arts graduates do extremely well, compete very successfully in a rapidly changing world. They acquire the skills of improvisation, of learning, of adaptation, of articulating who they are and what they want.”¹¹ Three such examples are history majors who become well-paid lawyers or judges after completing law degrees, philosophy majors who leverage their analytical and argumentative skills on Wall Street and international-relations majors who thrive as overseas executives for large corporations.¹² Research has demonstrated that chief executives leverage their liberal arts and humanities education throughout their entire career.

For example, one 2008 survey of 652 U.S.-born chief executives and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies found that 92 percent held bachelor’s degrees divided among three categories of academic majors: 37 percent held an engineering or computer technology degree, 33 percent majored in business or finance, and the remaining 30 percent graduated with a liberal arts or humanities degree.¹³ Senior executives who graduated with a humanities degree will routinely proclaim that their major taught them how to “think critically, communicate clearly, analyze and solve complex problems, appreciate others, understand the physical world, and prepared them to learn continuously in order to work with others and on their own to meet the challenges of the future.”¹⁴ Humanities majors and graduates need to understand that the demand for their skills set continues to remain both relevant and lucrative within the 21st century workplace. As Mark Schneider and Matthew Sigelman noted in Saving the Liberal Arts, “by the time liberal arts majors with advanced degrees reach the ‘peak earning ages,’ 56–60, they earn on average $2,000 more per year than those with advanced professional degrees in law or medicine.”¹⁵

Since the 2008 financial crisis, however, higher education institutions have struggled to address this dichotomy while trying to find answers to other issues such as declining state revenue, managing tuition costs, increasing student retention and graduation rates, recruiting from a shrinking pool of 18-year-olds, developing online programs to reach new students, and maintaining campuses with grounds and building that require constant upkeep. As a demonstration of how financially unhealthy higher education is in the United States both Moody’s and Fitch ratings issued a negative outlook for the sector for 2019. Fitch director Emily Wadhwani noted that lower-tier institutions are especially vulnerable and “could suffer disproportionately from near-term constraints on tuition growth, price sensitivity, longer term demographic shifts, and increasing uncertainty on federal and state regulatory and funding support.”¹⁶ For those institutions struggling financially, options include consolidating programs, restricting course offerings, hiring freezes, furloughing staff, transitioning some faculty from tenure track to adjunct positions, and reducing campus services that students rely on such as mental-health services or library hours.¹⁷ In a growing number of cases, consolidation of campuses through mergers, acquisitions, or affiliations is a necessity. So too are closures. More than 100 for-profit and career colleges closed between the 2016–17 and 2017–18 academic years alone, while 20 nonprofit colleges shuttered during that period, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.¹⁸ Future outlooks continue to remain bleak as evidenced by Clayton Christensen who suggested that 50 percent of U.S. colleges and universities will close or go bankrupt during 2014 to 2024.¹⁹ Subhash Kak echoed similar sentiment and observed that “unless universities move quickly to transform themselves into educational institutions for a technology-assisted future, they risk becoming obsolete.”²⁰ Amid a dynamic, hypercompetitive, and ever-changing landscape marked by continuous technological disruption, thousands of institutions are seeking ways to adapt. This adaptation will play a critical role in helping the humanities remain relevant to the 21st century workplace.

As higher education institutions look to create, implement, and assess new strategic initiatives in order to remain competitive, they first need to recognize that, for the most part, they have failed at three tasks related to the humanities. First, colleges have failed at helping those outside of the academy understand the term humanities as well as their relevance to the 21st century workplace. Second, institutions have fallen far short in helping students translate their humanities education and undergraduate experience for future employers. Finally, universities need to vastly improve the guiding principles of their career preparation for students and alumni. Launching and navigating a career in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) global marketplace demands that higher education institutions implement a sophisticated, savvy, and dynamic plan to help students achieve and sustain professional success.

The retail market can attest to just how disruptive today’s market is. In February 2019, American discount footwear retailer Payless ShoeSource announced it was closing all of it 2,100 stores throughout the United States. A few months later in May, the discount clothing manufacturer Dress Barn announced it was closing all of its 650 U.S. stores. “According to data from Coresight Research, American retailers have announced plans to close 5,994 stores in 2019. That’s 140 more than were announced in all of 2018, but short of the more than 8,000 announced in 2017.”²¹ One observer noted,

The pace of disruption in retail is widely acknowledged. Yet, the pace of change inside retailers continues to lag. Many retailers find themselves trapped in a cycle of continuing to chase consumer trends. Without bold action, the retail landscape will continue to be scattered with bankruptcies.²²

A similar observation can be made for higher education. The pace of disruption in higher education is widely acknowledged. Yet, the pace of change inside higher education continues to lag. Many colleges and universities find themselves trapped in a cycle of continuing to chase consumer trends. “Higher education will need to adapt if they want to survive.”²³ Without bold action, innovative thinking, or creative problem-solving, the higher education landscape will continue to be scattered with mergers, acquisitions, and closures. And the humanities will become irrelevant to the 21st century workplace.

But implementing creative problem-solving is often met with resistance within higher education. As Kate Ebner and Noah Pickus observed, “innovation is about seeing new possibilities in old problems. To do this, academic leaders must have a clear-eyed view of the issues and a willingness to define the challenge creatively.”²⁴ Identifying the issues, defining the challenges, and proposing solutions are all invitations to personal and professional growth for higher education administrators “if they are willing to grow.”²⁵ But from the vantage point of many, it appears that such willingness remains a distant dream. Cathy N. Davidson declared that “Our educational systems, so far, look as if the Internet hasn’t been invented yet. Scratch most conventional academic departments and you see little hint of restructured courses, let alone restructure thinking.”²⁶ The continued belief held by higher education officials that they are doing an excellent job prohibits the realization required to present new solutions in order to maintain relevance.

In the first episode of the HBO television series The Newsroom, Jeff Daniels plays the news anchor Will McAvoy who sits on a panel on a university campus. A college student stands up and asks the panel to answer the question, “What makes the United States the greatest country in the world?” In his response, McAvoy leverages both logic and emotion to illustrate that the United States, despite the perception held by many, is not the greatest country in the world anymore. McAvoy goes on to state that “the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.” Higher education leaders need to recognize the disconnections that exist in order to illustrate the relevance of the humanities to the 21st century workplace. A 2014 Gallup-Lumina Foundation study found that while 96 percent of chief academic officers of colleges and universities believe that their institutions are “very or somewhat effective” at preparing students for the workforce, only 11 percent of business leaders “strongly agree.”²⁷ Leaders of higher education institutions have a huge disconnect between the results of their efforts and the end product via graduates as assessed by business leaders. Colleges and universities can ill afford to be out of touch with the needs of employers. Administrators and faculty need to recognize the needs of the business community and develop programs to address them. Doing so would demonstrate to students that their tuition would result in a return on their investment.

Writing in Forbes, Ryan Craig noted,

Unless and until colleges and universities are able to document that liberal arts programs actually produce the outcomes we’ve taken on faith, this exodus will continue and liberal arts programs will be increasingly a plaything for rich kids (who’ll use connections to get good first jobs, so it doesn’t matter what they study).²⁸

Craig went on to suggest that institutions need to do a far better job of providing assessments that point to the necessity of critical thinking, problem-solving, and situational judgment to potential employers as a way to convince people of the value of the humanities to the 21st century workplace. As Purdue president Mitch Daniels has said, “higher education has to get past the ‘take our word for it’ era. Increasingly, people aren’t.”²⁹ Now, more than ever, college and university administrators need to talk with employers.³⁰ Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), stated, “it’s critical for colleges to show they’re taking the public’s concern about their value seriously, and giving graduates the capacity to deal with a future that none of us can fully predict.”³¹

The Relevance of the Humanities to the 21st Century Workplace provides a blueprint for higher education to faculty, boards, presidents, senior leaders, parents, students, recent graduates, and other stakeholders. Blueprints are quintessential to any construction project. Also considered a set of vital communication tools, blueprints ensure that anyone involved in the project will understand what is required of the finished project. In the world of service organizations, blueprints can support innovation and diagnose problems in operational efficiency, highlighting disconnects between what is offered and what people experience. Upon examining the state of humanities today, it becomes rather obvious that six disconnects exist. The Relevance of the Humanities to the 21st Century Workplace provides a blueprint that higher education administrators, faculty, and stakeholders can use in order to improve how people view, interact, and use the humanities in today’s VUCA global marketplace.

The Six Disconnects

• Chapter 1—The Explanation Disconnect: Colleges have done a poor job helping people outside the academy understand the terms liberal arts, humanities, liberal education, and liberal arts colleges. To address this explanation disconnect, institutions can help individuals outside of higher education clearly understand the humanities by implementing four strategies. First, schools need to clearly define the terms liberal, arts, and education. Second, institutions need to communicate what subjects are included in the definition of the humanities. Third, schools must explain the difference between a liberal arts college and a liberal arts education. Finally, colleges and universities must provide a clear and compelling explanation of the terms liberal arts and a liberal education. These four strategies form the foundation for helping people understand the relevance of the humanities to the 21st century workplace.
• Chapter 2—The Comprehension Disconnect: Liberal arts and humanities faculty, as well as presidents, boards, and other stakeholders, misunderstand the relevance of the humanities to the workplace. To address this comprehension disconnect, institutions can help individuals outside of higher education clearly understand the value of humanities majors to the workplace by implementing various strategies. First, schools need to tell the compelling stories of CEOs and other senior executives that graduate with a humanities major. Second, institutions must explain how there is no one specific business pedigree that individuals need to get to the corner office. Finally, colleges and universities must illustrate to students that employers value skills and credentials far more than they do one’s academic major.
• Chapter 3—The Translation Disconnect: Higher education institutions need to do a far better job helping humanities majors, as well as majors in other subjects, translate their value to the marketplace. To address this translation disconnect, colleges and universities can help humanities majors translate their value to the marketplace via a clear, concise, and compelling story by implementing four strategies. First, colleges need to help students uncover the one word that would serve as the focus of their personal story. Second, institutions should teach humanities majors how to develop their value proposition—a statement in less than seven words that illustrates their current position in the marketplace. Third, schools should assist humanities majors in defining their success factors so they can place them at the top of their resume and use them in interviews. Finally, colleges and universities need to provide opportunities for humanities majors to craft a personal statement that summarizes how their skills, knowledge, and experiences are relevant to the workplace.
• Chapter 4—The Perception Disconnect: Administrators, faculty, and staff need to think differently and provide humanities majors with a different perspective on different career opportunities. To address this perception disconnect, higher education institutions can help humanities majors expand their career horizons by implementing three strategies. First, colleges need to illustrate to humanities majors that they have three career paths available to them: knowledge, issue, and skill. Second, institutions should teach humanities majors about the wide spectrum of employment opportunities outside of the academy. Finally, faculty need to have an honest conversation about graduate school with those students interested in applying.
• Chapter 5—The Vocation Disconnect: In order for humanities majors to maintain relevance in the 21st century workplace, institutions need to implement three specific strategies that will improve how faculty explain the various factors involved with launching a career and pursuing a vocation. First, institutions need to provide internship or apprenticeship opportunities for humanities majors. Second, colleges should incorporate the study of grit into their curriculum so humanities majors can understand this vital element involved with long-term career success. Finally, faculty should include discussions of recent evidence illustrating the different winding career paths available to college graduates.
• Chapter 6—The Cultivation Disconnect: Institutions need to help humanities majors increase their self-awareness in order for them to engage in self-determination and prepare for life after college accordingly. To address this cultivation disconnect, higher education institutions can help students increase their self-awareness in today’s VUCA global marketplace by implementing five strategies. First, colleges need to introduce, and then explain, the five areas of well-being as students make the transition from campus to career. Second, institutions must incorporate more discussions of the relationship between self-awareness, self-discipline, and the development of one’s self. Third, schools have an obligation to create programming that allows students to engage in self-determination. Fourth, colleges and universities need to include the theory and practice of positive uncertainty as part of the student experience. Finally, higher education institutions must provide lifelong learning opportunities for their alumni.

The challenges of automation, artificial intelligence, and yet to be invented technologies will continue to disrupt how people live, work, and learn. With colleges and universities slow to acknowledge the realities of today’s issues, higher education leaders need to have a bias toward action and commit to explaining the relevance of the humanities to the 21st century workplace.³²