{"id":7724,"date":"2013-10-02T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T16:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=7724"},"modified":"2013-10-03T12:14:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T19:14:51","slug":"humanities-trade-a-recent-harvard-study-says-enrollment-in-humanities-is-on-a-sharp-decline-how-is-it-holding-up-at-camosun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/10\/02\/humanities-trade-a-recent-harvard-study-says-enrollment-in-humanities-is-on-a-sharp-decline-how-is-it-holding-up-at-camosun\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanities trade: a recent Harvard study says enrollment in humanities is on a sharp decline. How is it holding up at Camosun?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A report released by Harvard University in June has stirred up some debate on the state of the humanities in education. The report focuses on the change in humanities majors enrollment at Harvard since the 1960s, a whopping 50 percent decline. Whether this is representative of other postsecondary institutions in North America is not really the issue. The real question is this: does it matter? And what does this have to say about our views of the value of humanities in education?<\/p>\n

A closer look at the American data shows that humanities enrollment was at an all-time high in the 1960s, so using these numbers as a baseline is misleading in claiming that interest has declined. The impact of changing demographics also doesn\u2019t necessarily mean there\u2019s less interest in general. Canadian statistics show obvious changes over the last two decades.<\/p>\n

More Canadians today have postsecondary qualifications than ever before: compare 64 percent of the population aged 25 to 64 in 2011, to not quite 40 percent of Canadians over 25 in 1991. Women have been a large part of the shifting demographics, as they branch out of \u201ctraditional\u201d fields of study, such as education, nursing, and office administration, and into business, science, and trades. The top field today is \u201cbusiness, management, marketing, and related support services,\u201d in which women hold the majority of degrees in Canada.<\/p>\n

Here at Camosun, in the 2012-13 school year there was 3228 students enrolled in trades and technology, down slightly from 3373 in 2011-12. The school of arts and science had 4992 enrolled students, down from 5149 the previous year; humanities falls under arts and sciences at Camosun, but so does many other things, making a quick comparison difficult. Paula Young, chair of humanities at Camosun, says that while some areas of the humanities are experiencing a decline–like Canadian history–other areas, like philosophy, are seeing increasing numbers of students enrolling in them.<\/p>\n

A fair trade?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to put an immediate value on skills and career training. Government funding for postsecondary education is generally based on economic factors: the areas that need skilled workers are the areas of study that receive the incentives, such as grants for trades and healthcare.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College’s Eric Sehn (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eric Sehn, Camosun\u2019s dean of trades and technology, says the trades programs are closely tied to the job market.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s no money to launch large projects, then tradespeople aren\u2019t coming to school, because of course to have apprentices they must have an employer in order to come to school,\u201d says Sehn.<\/p>\n

The BC government is focusing strongly on this kind of training. The current labour force isn\u2019t meeting demands, due in part to the retiring baby boomers. Because of large projects such as the government shipbuilding strategy, Sehn says the demand for tradespeople is spiking as the supply of trained tradespeople goes down.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the push is on to try to get more and more people interested in the trades,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you look at the language coming out of government, they have a list of very strong emphasis on skills and on trying to deal with that trades gap. We\u2019ve got a new trades building coming at Camosun, which is very, very exciting for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The applied programs have government backing because they fill obvious workplace needs. So how do we put dollar values on other skills that don\u2019t produce immediate measurable results?<\/p>\n

Economic analysis and comparison doesn\u2019t work very well for valuing humanities programs. The nature of the courses is broad instead of focused, hence the term \u201cliberal arts,\u201d and it\u2019s hard to measure strong critical thinking skills by generalized workplace earning potential.<\/p>\n

The human advantage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Humanities traditionally study the human experience: language, history, philosophy, and the arts. But educators argue that the skills learned in these courses go beyond the subject matter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College’s Dominic Bergeron (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dominic Bergeron, dean of arts and sciences at Camosun, says humanities are \u201cthought-process related, critical-thinking related, writing related, reflecting related.”<\/p>\n

Bergeron also believes that the humanities definitely offer valuable skills in the workplace.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou question potential employers, they all say that they need students that know how to think, that students need to apply critical thinking, students that know how to write, how to question, and all of that. Well, where does that come from? It comes from courses that will allow students to question,\u201d says Bergeron, \u201cand you find these courses in humanities.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are skills needed in any job. So why are people so biased against, for example, philosophy or history majors? One reason might be the transition into the workplace. Nobody wants to face that fear of being in debt and jobless right out of school.<\/p>\n

An article from 2001 (\u201cLiberal arts degrees and the labor market\u201d) showed that younger humanities graduates were far more likely to be unemployed for a longer time after completing schooling than those in applied programs. The data showed, however, that once established, they tended towards less unemployment in the long term. After age 45, the initial trend was reversed, with applied program graduates seeing a rise in unemployment lengths.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a narrow focus on career-only schooling that might have educators worried that students themselves aren\u2019t placing enough value on humanities programs. The Harvard report offers a suggestion to \u201carrest and reverse the decline of concentrator numbers by focusing on freshmen.\u201d This implies an assumption that student attitudes might be remedied with some better public relations, but is it necessary to focus on majors when many non-majoring students pick these courses as options and minors?<\/p>\n

Tia Neal, a Camosun student taking prerequisites for the dental hygiene program, including humanities courses, feels that her English requirements will not be much of an asset in the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the program because you know you\u2019ll have a good career and it is pretty short,\u201d she says. \u201cI did not like having to take English, I don\u2019t think it will help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another student in the same program, Sarah Csumrik, partially agrees. Csumrik doesn\u2019t think the dental hygiene\u2019s humanities course requirement would necessarily help her career, but she has a different opinion of their value.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like English and humanities courses,\u201d she says. \u201cI think they help you in life, you should be able to know how to voice your opinions and argue them, and write.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Camosun student of undecided major who is interested in the sciences, Cory Walker has fond memories of humanities classes in high school, but isn\u2019t sure if they would fit his schedule or be needed in future studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Camosun I\u2019m definitely going to UVic. I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019ll study, something in biochem or physiology, maybe clinical research,\u201d says Walker. I\u2019d like to get a job right when I\u2019m done school. Isn\u2019t that what everybody wants?\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding a balance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Camosun has set up a new diploma in Arts and Sciences to try to bring these disciplines together, especially for those students who don\u2019t have yet have a career focus. The program allows students to choose their own courses and hopefully absorb as much as they can from different areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many students come here and know exactly<\/i> what they want to do?\u201d asks Bergeron. \u201cThe proportion of students is quite low. So they\u2019re able to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the options available to draw in students to a variety of courses, Bergeron hopes that they will see humanities courses as empowering, not limiting.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployers would like to have students knowing about A, B, C, and D, and have some competencies in different things,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s perfect. But there\u2019s this \u2018soft skills\u2019 that comes into play that employers want, and it\u2019s not so much about, \u2018What do you know?\u2019 It\u2019s more about how to be. You cannot read that in a book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, says Bergeron, society will always need the thinkers to go along with the creators and builders.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need people who know how to look at problems. Trades and other things will create problems we need solutions to, that we don\u2019t have solutions to right now. We need the thinkers, we need the people who are behind that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Sehn agrees, and asks an important question about the purpose of postsecondary education. \u201cIs the purpose to create good citizens who have well-developed critical-thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and all those important things, or is it about training people to take on specific applied skills that the society needs at this time? And the answer to that question is yes, we need both of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A report released by Harvard University in June has stirred up some debate on the state of the humanities in education. The report focuses on the change in humanities majors enrollment at Harvard since the 1960s, a whopping 50 percent decline. Whether this is representative of other postsecondary institutions in North America is not really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-october-2-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7724"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7800,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7724\/revisions\/7800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}