There is a case to be made for the humanities at USC

The dominant professional culture at USC seems to shun the significance of the humanities. Professional schools like the Marshall School of Business and the Viterbi School of Engineering do not have foreign language requirements. Meanwhile, the German department has been dismantled, and the language major was removed in 2008. 

Programs in science, technology and entrepreneurship have grown in popularity, a trend made  evident with the recent opening of the new Iovine and Young Hall. But as the University’s reputation in business and engineering grows, programs in the humanities seem to quickly lose attention. 

This long-standing debate over the crisis of the humanities is not exclusive to USC. Since 2008, a drop in almost every humanities field was reported by the U.S. Board of Education, noting that history majors compose less than 45% of what they did in 2007, while the number of English majors has been cut almost in half since the ’90s. 

The 2019 budget proposed under President Donald Trump’s administration proposed the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency dedicated to supporting research, education and public programs in the humanities. Princeton and Stanford  universities have established programs recruiting high school students who are interested in the humanities, but numbers have still dropped. 

Although there are benefits to USC’s decision to place more emphasis on professional studies, what’s looked over in these efforts is the enrichment the humanities bring to one’s education. There is the valid concern that studying the humanities will yield a smaller range of job opportunities post-graduation. 

While an undergraduate humanities education may not hone the same technical skills as coding, they emphasize the development and mastery of other skills: reading and writing as well as creative, critical and quantitative thinking skills, more so than  STEM courses can teach.

They are essential in our increasingly interconnected global world, as the humanities encourage empathy for different cultures, histories and approaches to examining the world. They reveal how humans have tried to make moral, spiritual and philosophical sense of the societies and spaces around them through various mediums and creative endeavors. Humanities boils down to the study of storytelling: examining the artistic, historic and cultural products of the past and applying such knowledge to make informed predictions and projections about the future. 

The humanities are essential in promoting an interest and concern for the political and ethical dilemmas of today. A background in history assists not only in one’s ability to analyze current events but also in considering the tougher questions regarding right versus wrong and seeking change. 

It was also reported in 2016 that humanities majors demonstrate greater civic duty than other majors. According to U.S. Department of Education data for the class of 2008, 92.8% of humanities majors had voted in an election within a year of graduation; the same was true for 83.5% of STEM majors. It is clear that students with a background in verbal and critical skills may feel more ready to be civically and politically involved.

When reflecting on the role of scholarship, it is important to consider how a minimized focus on the humanities strays from higher education’s earliest intentions. Universities are spaces dedicated to more than trade and seeking job opportunities. They are centers for scholarship, spaces to openly question and critique, bastions of creative expression and home to the next generation of leaders and members of our global community. 

USC has in many ways done its part to ensure a humanities education in its students academic pursuits through the General Education program. It is ultimately, though, within the culture of the school — one that is undeniably wrought with concerns over professional application and ambition — that ought to concern itself with maintaining the integrity of the University through the continued appreciation, practice and study of the humanities.