Crisis in the Humanities, Panel
Is there a Crisis in the Humanities? by Lakshi SivagnanamJanuary 12th, 2011 – Senior College members return back to the Faculty Club at the University of Toronto for Senior College’s weekly seminar series. This week’s presentation consisted of a panel discussion on whether there is a crisis in the Humanities. The presenters are all accomplished scholars: Janet Paterson, Germaine Warkentin, Joseph T. O’Connell and Nick Mount.
Paterson starts off the panel discussion by stating her position: she does not believe there is a crisis in the humanities at the University of Toronto. She demonstrates her position by exploring the following two questions. The first question: is there currently a crisis in the Humanities at the University of Toronto – is this simply a myth or is it reality? The second question: what are some of the forces that influence the future of various disciplines in the Humanities?
Beginning with the first question, Paterson states the typical definition of a crisis revolves around some sort of drastic decline or deterioration. For instance, we ought to look at whether there are dramatic declines in student population, decline in enrollment, in educational experience, decline in the degree of scholarship, etc. In some universities there is evidently a crisis in the Humanities. For instance, last October in 2010, the president of the University at Albany decided to eliminate French, Italian, Classics, Russian and theatre programs. These programs were completely eliminated so in that respect, there is a crisis in the Humanities for students attending Albany University.
However, within the University of Toronto, Paterson does not think there is a crisis in the Humanities. The Humanities have the largest number of students: 30,000 students. Science is next closest with 29,000 students, followed by Social Science that has 25,000 students.
It is important to underscore the fact that there are 30,000 students at U of T attending Humanities programs. Some departments in the Humanities, e.g. English, History, Philosophy, have very large numbers of students. In English, for instance, they have more than 6000 students.
Not only that, but many of U of T’s Humanities departments and programs are the very best in the world (from the point of view of research, reputation, awards, etc). Objectively speaking the University of Toronto’s Humanities departments have amazing strength. This is not to say that the University of Toronto does not face challenges. Some of these challenges have been around for 20-25 years and are not recent. But as a whole the Humanities is a sector that is exceptionally strong on the basis of the number of students, quality and variety of programs, and the very high quality of research and teaching that is produced.
Moving onto the second question, “What are some of the forces that influence the future of various disciplines in the Humanities?”An accurate answer would be very broad but the usual variables are the following: government policy, support for funding, allocation of resources to research, economic factors, demographic changes within student populations at universities, and leadership within the university.
Paterson would like to stress the importance of strong leadership within individual disciplines. Leadership is the ability to adapt and change accordingly with the times. To illustrate her point of the true importance of leadership, Paterson relays the story of the Department of Classics.
Classics started as a discipline in the 3rd c. B.C.E. Quickly there were canons and traditions established that lasted till about 1975. In 1980, the President of the American Philological Association pointed out that a number of the Classics departments were not doing well. They were losing students and realized that their Department of Classics had become vulnerable, despite the longstanding traditions.
So what happened? It became clear to the Chair of Classics that there was an urgent need to rethink not only the relevance of the discipline but the very meaning of the discipline of Classics. Changes were proposed whereby the traditional prerequisites of Latin and Greek for all Classics courses were eliminated. More and more students emerging from high school did not take either Latin or Greek; hence found Classics unsuitable.
This modification, of course, triggered a big reaction. It took ten years and two Chairs to completely transform the Department of Classics. Many new courses were created. Latin and Greek were not completely eliminated. Rather they were kept as prerequisites for students who excelled in Classics and wanted to pursue it in graduate school.
They kept the tradition and at the same time, they reinvented themselves. Both the undergraduate and graduate programs were revamped. Paterson’s conclusion is that while there have been some difficulties in some areas of the Humanities; it is possible to face the challenges as the Department of Classics demonstrated. The departments in the Humanities must remain collectively vigilant and face challenges creatively with a sense of mission and purpose.
The next presenter on the panel was Germaine Warkentin, who goes back to Paterson’s first question of whether there really is a crisis within the Humanities at the University of Toronto. But to answer this question, Warkentin says, we must first look at the Humanities in terms of their history and function in modern universities.
Warkentin does not believe that the University of Toronto is immune from this concern spreading through universities in general. The concern is that current circumstances suggest that the history and function of the Humanities have little relevance to the intellectual needs of students and teachers today.
Warkentin has been following this debate over the Humanities internationally for some months now. The debate over the Humanities has two facets that are interrelated. The first is the problem caused by the many unsatisfactory ways that universities all over the world are funded. The burden of paying for university is often on the taxpayers, students, donors, etc. In the early 20th century, universities served only a small elite. So, while the problem of funding existed even then, the level it has reached at the present moment calls for immediate attention. Modern universities draw upon all classes of society and aim to provide a truly “universal” university which has a place for the Social Sciences, Sciences, and the Humanities.
However it has been difficult to develop a model of financing that suits this level of universality. Warkentin maintains that the answer to this scramble for resources has led to this imposition of a model of financing and administration unsuited to support any of the disciplines. This, of course, is the business industrial model. This model weighs the success of any human activity strictly in terms of the market and the balance sheet. In such a model, a subject that has a small market, e.g. 15th Century English, eventually makes its departure. The unfortunate implication of this is that it appears the market is what determines the value of the subject, not the intrinsic value of the course itself.
Warkentin wants to highlight that the Humanities are a public good. The bulk work of the Humanities is demonstrated at the undergraduate level. The solid critical skills that emerge from the traditional Humanities disciplinary fields: History, Philosophy, the study of Literature and Language, etc., are skills that students carry forever. Warkentin calls these traditional fields the Classical Humanities and argues for their enduring value. Becoming familiar with them is what a student should be doing in his or her first years of university; despite whether or not that student chooses to pursue business, medical school, etc. after their undergraduate education.
Warkentin suggests that the University of Toronto may be a great place for producing great ideas but not the best place for implementing those great ideas. However if we wanted to remedy this problem, then we should set our sights on two objectives Warkentin identifies.
The first is that we must focus our attention fiercely on devising a different financial model for financing the universities than offered by the business industrial model. This is a desperate need. The second objective should be to focus our initiative intensely on the undergraduate experience; giving it a wide range but at the same time a safety net of solid historical and philosophical learning. The Classical Humanities may be the key of rescuing the Humanities from their current low profile.
The third panel presenter, Joseph T. O’Connell, addresses the topic through focusing on his own department, Religion, and the state of Humanities in foreign areas, in particular South Asian Studies. O’Connell starts off by stating that Religion studies at the University of Toronto share whatever burdens the faculty of Arts and Sciences have. There have been very few appointments in the Department of Religion and O’Connell worries about the future of graduates pursuing a Religion doctorate.
Religious study is aware that the overall conditions in Canada and United States have shifted to a point where there is less support for it in the Humanities. O’Connell reveals that while there is always concern that, as a less classical department of the Humanities, the department of Religion might be more subject to contractions down the road, the department of Religion at U of T is doing well.
However, there are challenges. The absence of mandatory retirement makes the situation much more critical for the new generation of scholars as senior faculty members might tend to stay longer, especially with the current recession. Nevertheless, O’Connell maintains, that the impact of the economic recession that has already seriously disrupted American universities has not yet hit Canadian Religious Studies. There have been small closures in some universities but that is often due to internal problems.
O’Connell reveals that so far U of T’s Department of Religion has not shown signs of this. However the future for religious studies in Canada is problematic because efforts to compete with science and technology, especially for funding, are tough for the Humanities and religious studies in particular.
O’Connell states that one can anticipate that in the future there will be fewer replacements for retiring religious studies scholars and more competition. However enrollment in Religious Studies at the University of Toronto seems pretty good, so one can hope that the number of students interested in Religion will help against any contractions in the Department of Religion later down the road.
The fourth panelist is Nick Mount. Mount echoes the general stance of the other panelists – during his experience in the English department for the last ten years he does not think he has witnessed a crisis in the Humanities. In 2005, English (at U of T) had 3000 students in its programs. As of last September, the department had 4000 students. English appears to have more students than any other departments in the Arts and Sciences. This is not just at the University of Toronto – there are other universities in Canada that have 20,000 students in their English departments.
Mount says that there are other signs that the Humanities are not doing so badly. Despite the recession, the fact that we are still able to place the same number of our doctoral students in tenure positions reveals the strength of a degree from the Humanities.
Mount argues that universities are not experiencing a crisis within the Humanities specifically. Instead the gradual erosion of support for undergraduate instruction in all disciplines (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Sciences) is pretty much equal.
There are many causes for this. One of them is the sheer number of students U of T has. In 1991, we had 42,000 students and today we have over 75,000 students. Mount declares that universities have successfully convinced everybody that university education is necessary for a successful life. Consequently, we have become the victims of our own propaganda where more and more people are now coming into university, both young and old.
The cause that the university administration talks most about is the decline in government funding. The president of U of T stresses that Ontario lags behind in funding for higher education and the province is funding less and less of our budget. This is all true but there are also causes that are not mentioned. Mount reveals that when he first arrived at U of T in 2001, the regular teaching load in the department of English was two and half courses. Not long before, the teaching course load was three courses. Today the teaching load is two full courses. Over the same period while the government reduced spending by a quarter, U of T itself cut its teaching ability by a third by reducing the teaching load.
This situation is actually worse because after you deduct leaves, graduate teaching, etc. the average taught by regular faculty is just under one full course a year. The average salary is $140,000. What this reveals is that we are not teaching accordingly to the high numbers of students we have. In many different ways universities are directing fewer resources towards undergraduate teaching. However less and less money is reaching the classrooms and what it goes to instead is what we now call “student services”. Student services are a relatively new concept and an entirely new cost.
What’s happened is that universities have become mini cities – societies that are expected to provide a full range of services that typically cities are expected to provide. Universities nowadays do not only provide students with classes but also health services, career centers, etc.
The reason for this new idea of the university is simple, Mount states. Large classes in which students cannot get to know their professors on a one-to-one basis is compensated for by the University of Toronto offering a range of student life initiatives and boutique life learning experiences, which are supposed to mitigate the reality of large classes.
However, Mount asks, the question remains of whether we have reached a point at which the effect has become the cause of our problem. Have resources directed towards student resources or anything else to compensate for the sheer size of our classes begun to reduce resources for teaching? Looking at it from that perspective, one can wonder if maybe the question of whether there is a crisis in the Humanities should be re-phrased to whether there is a crisis in governance at the University of Toronto, something all four panelists generally seemed to hint at.