Conclusion

In October 2019 Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller was asked about the power of storytelling as discussed in his new book Narrative Economics. In reflecting on the power of story as it relates to economics Shiller stated “Compartmentalization of intellectual life is bad.”1 Shiller and other “prominent economists are making the case for why it still makes a lot of sense to major (or at least take classes) in humanities alongside more technical fields.”2 In short, studying the humanities can help students maintain relevance for an ever changing 21st century global marketplace. This book provided an outline of strategies higher education institutions can use to help maintain the relevance of the humanities to the 21st century workplace.

• Chapter 1—The Explanation Disconnect detailed ways to help people outside of the academy understand what the humanities are.
• Chapter 2—The Comprehension Disconnect illustrated the need for humanities faculty, as well as presidents, boards, and other stakeholders to better comprehend the relevance of the humanities to the workplace.
• Chapter 3—The Translation Disconnect discussed how 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.
• Chapter 4—The Perception Disconnect explained how administrators, faculty, and staff need to think differently and provide humanities majors with a different perspective on different career opportunities.
• Chapter 5—The Vocation Disconnect provided strategies to help faculty explain the various factors involved with launching a career and pursuing a vocation.
• Chapter 6—The Cultivation Disconnect highlighted the need for institutions to help humanities majors increase their self-awareness and engage in self-determination in order to prepare for life after college accordingly.

Just as students must explore new ways of mastering and certifying their command of in-demand skills, colleges must explore new methods of informing students of employer needs and potential earnings outcomes and providing active career coaching for students to maximize the value of their educational experiences.3

Bard College president Leon Botstein noted such in a May 24, 2019, interview published in The Wall Street Journal that “The humanities and the arts have made a bad case of defending themselves. On some level they’ve been excessively professionalized, and they’ve hidden behind academic language.”4 Botstein also observed: “Too many colleges simply have a curriculum that’s an imitation of a graduate school—by departments. Students come with curiosity, and that curiosity doesn’t fit neatly into a departmental boundary. They’re interested in issues.” To address that Bard has “hired so many terrific people who are not professional academics.”5

Mark Schneider and Matthew Sigelman complimented Botstein’s thoughts when they wrote in Saving the Liberal Arts:

Schools must offer more opportunities for students to build in-demand skills through strategic curriculum development, the development of work-based learning opportunities such as internships or co-ops, and stronger ties with local employers. This may be a particularly difficult challenge for colleges and universities that have tended to structure themselves around departments focused on traditional or broad-based skills.6

Additionally, maintaining the relevance of the humanities to the 21st century workplace will also compete with other issues that colleges need to resolve such as “bringing clarity to credentials, reckoning with racist histories and reforming remediation can help attract and retain today’s students.”7 The task before higher education institutions is indeed daunting, but if the humanities are to remain relevant to the 21st century workplace, much work remains to be done.

With that in mind, let us turn our attention in this conclusion toward the work that humanities majors can do to help themselves. While higher education institutions continue to find ways to better serve their students, the number of challenges facing college administrations continues to rise. Implementing anyone of the strategies outlined in this book, regardless of cost, will most likely be a herculean task at even the most progressive of colleges. Higher education institutions are simply reluctant change no matter how much they profess otherwise. Therefore, a conclusion that details steps humanities majors can do themselves seems like a useful approach.

Since this publication provided six strategies for higher education institutions, here are six for humanities majors to use in order to remain relevant in the 21st century workplace. Even if presidents, boards, administrators, faculty, and staff implemented each of the strategies here, and every one worked perfectly, there still remains work for the humanities major to do.

• Self-Reliance: Humanities majors should commit to a high level of self-reliance. With the rise of helicopter parents, young professionals lack the level of self-reliance required to navigate the chaos of today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous global marketplace. The job of any parent is to ensure that their child can live without them. Stop relying on others and start making your way in the world through an ability to demonstrate competence, a compelling display of autonomy, and an unmatched level of relating to others. Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted: “A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.” Happiness is indeed a choice. We choose to be happy. But we also choose to identify the source of our happiness. When we want to be happy, we look for strong positive emotions like joy, enthusiasm, and excitement. Unfortunately, research shows that this isn’t the best path to happiness. According to multiple studies, the more value people placed on happiness, the less happy they became. For example, research led by the psychologist Ed Diener reveals that happiness is driven by the frequency, not the intensity, of positive emotions. When we aim for intense positive emotions, we evaluate our experiences against a higher standard, which makes it easier to be disappointed. If you want to experience joy or meaning, you need to, as Kierkegaard suggested, look inward in order to shift your attention away from happiness and toward projects and relationships that bring joy and meaning as byproducts.
• Discover Leisure: Engage in something merely because you enjoy it. As author K. J. Dell’Antonia wrote in The New York Times, “The opportunities are there, but the will to take advantage of them, to make choices for reasons other than profit or productivity, has to be yours.” Whether you are a freshman who just declared a humanities major or a graduate five years removed from commencement, realize the value of engaging in something merely because you enjoy it in order to listen to yourself.8 If you want to be relevant to the 21st century workplace, select a major that makes you happy and engage in leisure activities that allow you to develop your current self into a future self that is autonomous, creative, and collaborative—three skills that will remain important for employers across all industries in the future.
• Run the Numbers: Before you commit to any college know the numbers. Take the time to really understand your financial aid package. Grants generally do not need to be paid back. Loans have to be. How much will your out of pocket costs be? How much will your parents have to contribute? Figure that out for one year and then multiply by four. Can you afford to be that much in debt at the age of 22? Do your parents have the cash required or do they have to borrow money? Can they afford to do so? The 2018 report Decoding the Cost of College: The Case for Transparent Financial Aid Award Letters reviewed 11,000 financial award letters and found confusing jargon and terminology, omission of the complete cost, vague definitions, and inconsistent bottom line calculations as just some of the key findings.9 If you want to be relevant to the 21st century workplace, have an understanding of your own finances. Doing so will help you become financially literate. You can be a humanities major and graduate with very little debt if you are savvy about analyzing how much college will cost you.
• Best v. Right: Successful people spend a good deal of time comparing their best option to the right one. This is an important stepping stone to use as people will often be blinded by the allure of the “best” of something instead of the “right” one. This is often the case with the selection of what college to attend, major to select, or company to work for. People believe that they need to go to the best school. The best school provides the best education and the best opportunities to get the best job for the best career to have the best life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Successful people know that identifying the right option, not the best one, is the stepping stone. The latest research regarding this topic can be found in Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants, who observed: “We strive for the best and attach great importance to getting into the finest institutions we can. But rarely do we stop and consider whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.” That type of thinking can be applied to almost anything in life. When making a decision, are you focused on the best option or the right one? As Coach Herb Brooks said when building the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team: “I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right ones.” Selecting the right players allowed Brooks to build a team that would go on and upset the Soviet Union and eventually win the gold medal.
• Realize No One Knows: In his column “Graduates, Are You Ready for the Most Important Secret in the Whole Wide World?” Wall Street Journalist Jason Gay wrote:

Nobody really knows what they’re doing. Life is a series of leaps and educated guesses. Sometimes, uneducated guesses. We can practice, prepare, and read all the instruction manuals, but we’re really all making this up as we go along. Even the people who seem like they know what they’re doing—they don’t know what they’re doing all the time.10

If you want to be relevant to the 21st century workplace, help everyone you encounter as much as you can. Since no one really knows what they are doing, any help you might be willing to provide would make you a valuable team member. Also, if you accept that no one knows what they are doing, that means you don’t either. So commit to lifelong learning, continue to challenge yourself to grow, and travel outside your comfort zone as much as possible.

• Feel Deeply: In the 2006 American comedy-drama road film Little Miss Sunshine, Steve Carell’s character Frank is a professor and preeminent scholar of Proust. Toward the end of the movie, he tells Paul Dano’s character Dwayne

when Proust gets down to the end of his life, he looks back and he decides that all the years he suffered—those were the best years of his life. Because they made him who he was. They forced him to think and grow, and to feel very deeply.11

If you want to remain relevant to the 21st century workplace, feel deeply. Travel outside of your comfort zone. Take on new challenges. Attempt a job that you think might be out of your skill set. Grow. Think. Feel. Doing so just might help you be that person that others want to work alongside.

The humanities will remain relevant to the 21st century workplace if higher education institutions address the disconnects outlined in this publication. Additionally, now that humanities majors know the disconnects, they can leverage their own self-reliance and search for answers as they travel down the path to relevance in the 21st century.