How Humanities Lost Their Way: Complicity, Collapse, and the Future of Higher Education

The slow demise of the humanities in American higher education is often blamed on external forces: budget cuts, shifting cultural values, or the rise of vocational and STEM-focused learning. But part of the uncomfortable truth is that the humanities helped dig their own grave. Through years of overpromising, overproducing PhDs, and failing to connect with the public, many humanities departments now find themselves fighting for survival on campuses that once revolved around them.

It didn’t have to be this way. For decades, disciplines like literature, history, philosophy, and classics stood at the intellectual core of universities. However, starting in the 1970s, graduate programs began enrolling far more students than the job market could absorb. The implicit message was: if you’re intelligent, passionate, and persistent, you’ll find a place in academia. Many faculty members encouraged this dream without grappling with the hard economic facts.

“There was this sense that loving books and earning a PhD meant you'd naturally land a tenure-track job,” says retired professor Dr. Marion Blake. “We kept telling students to pursue their passions, even as the number of faculty positions was shrinking every year.”

The result? Thousands of bright, dedicated graduates were funneled into an academic job market that could only place a fraction of them. Some were adjuncting for years, with low pay, no benefits, and no job security. Others left academia altogether, disillusioned and burdened by debt. Humanities departments rarely helped them transition to alternative careers, reinforcing the false notion that a “real” success story meant staying inside the ivory tower.

Compounding the problem was how humanities programs often sold themselves to undergraduates. While they were right to emphasize critical thinking, communication skills, and ethical reflection, they rarely grounded these claims in practical outcomes. Prospective students and their families, under financial pressure and navigating rising tuition, wanted to understand the tangible benefits of a humanities degree. Instead, they often encountered vague justifications or jargon-laden defenses.

“We wanted to preserve the sanctity of the discipline,” says Dr. Kamal Singh, a historian-turned-nonprofit strategist. “But in doing that, we lost the ability to speak to ordinary people about why these subjects actually matter.”

That disconnect also showed up in how some programs presented themselves culturally. Internal academic debates became increasingly arcane, and public engagement was treated as secondary. Even as many departments tried to address vital issues like race, gender, or colonialism, their insular tone alienated broad audiences and opened them up to attacks from across the political spectrum. Critics, especially on the right, accused humanities departments of fostering political indoctrination, while even some allies lamented a growing lack of accessibility and cohesion.

Meanwhile, university administrators began making decisions through a corporate lens. Under pressure to maximize efficiency and demonstrate "return on investment," they redirected funds toward programs that drew large enrollments or external grants. Humanities departments with shrinking numbers became easy targets for cuts. Tenure lines were frozen, departments merged, and course offerings slashed.

Despite this decline, there are signs of resilience. Emerging interdisciplinary fields like digital and environmental humanities are reshaping how students engage with the past and present. Online lectures, public scholarship, and podcasting have allowed scholars to bypass traditional gatekeepers and connect with broader audiences. The passion for understanding what it means to be human has not disappeared; it’s just found new platforms.

The future of the humanities will depend on how willing departments are to reform themselves. That means confronting past mistakes: the overproduction of PhDs, the failure to prepare students for diverse careers, and the reluctance to engage in meaningful public discourse. It also means reasserting the humanities’ place in solving the grand challenges of the present: artificial intelligence, climate change, social fragmentation, and democratic decay.
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If the humanities are to survive, they must do more than look backward with nostalgia. They must recover their original ambition, not as a credentialing path for elites, but as a set of disciplines devoted to human flourishing, moral vision, and intellectual freedom.