The study of rhetoric and logic can help enhance social skills. Similarly, myriad novels dig into the essence of loyalty, betrayal and cooperation, offering insights that can be useful across a wide array of social situations. Drama and music also contribute to developing communication and team skills, and the study of the arts spurs personal creativity. A second key reason to pursue a college education in the humanities is that the labor market seems to reward humanities majors handsomely.
According to the meticulous research undertaken by Douglas A. Webber, an economist at Temple University, the 75th percentile of humanities majors make nearly as much as the median business or computer science graduate over their lifetimes. Thus, majoring in the humanities can, and frequently is, a passport to a prosperous career, much in contrast with the conventional wisdom, especially at a time when some of the fastest-growing companies are pushing the boundaries of what technology can do by integrating scientific and humanistic disciplines, such as computer science and linguistics, for instance.
A third fundamental reason to major in the humanities in general, and in the study of languages and literatures in particular, is that the U. According to the Census Bureau , by the year , more than half of all U. The cultural and political repercussions of these changes are already being felt. It makes sense now more than ever for colleges and universities to expand course and major offerings that enable students to develop an updated sense of what it means to be "American.
Equally important will be to help students understand how diversity can contribute to collaboration, creativity, innovation and better outcomes in the workplace, as research has repeatedly shown.
The humanities entail the study of the human world and society from a critical perspective. This field includes popular majors like English , history , and philosophy. In these disciplines, students investigate humanity itself hence the name , applying critical methods to help them understand literature, art, and the past, as well as human morality, culture, and values.
Each humanities discipline relies on unique interpretation methods. Historians use the historical method, which can be further divided into branches like cultural history, quantitative history, and oral history. Meanwhile, English and foreign languages use textual criticism to interpret sources, and philosophy applies conceptual analysis and experimental approaches.
Most universities break down the humanities into different majors and group them together in a humanities division within a College of Arts and Sciences. Some colleges combine artistic majors with the humanities, meaning visual and performing arts majors like music, painting, and dance would fall under the "arts and humanities" umbrella. Certain humanities disciplines may even straddle the boundary between humanities and social sciences.
For example, many universities consider history and linguistics social sciences rather than humanities subjects. But how exactly do these two fields differ? The humanities and social sciences are two components that make up the liberal arts along with the arts and natural sciences. Although both disciplines investigate the human world and society, each relies on different methods and poses different types of questions.
Whereas English and philosophy majors critically analyze literature and ethics, economics and anthropology majors study society using more quantitative approaches. Unlike social science majors, humanities majors rarely use mathematical or statistical data in their analyses.
Rather, they make interpretive and theoretical arguments about their subjects. That said, some fields blur the line between the humanities and social sciences. History, for example, is a core humanities discipline that often relies on quantitative research and methods normally used in sociology and political science.
The humanities also boast a longer history than the social sciences. While social science disciplines date back to the 19th century, the humanities were studied long before then by the ancient Greeks and other classical-era scholars.
During the Renaissance, the studia humanitatis "studies of humanity" became an integral part of the European education system. With a focus on classics, philosophy, history, and rhetoric, the humanities aimed to transform students into educated citizens. Popular humanities majors include English, history, religious studies, philosophy, and art history. One common explanation does line up with the data fairly well, at least in part: that students fled the humanities after the financial crisis because they became more fearful of the job market.
The chart below shows, in individual panels, a few dozen of the most common majors. The fields that have risen in the past decade are almost entirely STEM majors, including nursing, engineering, computer science, and biology.
Quantitative social sciences like economics and psychology have held steady, while fields in closer proximity to the humanities like political science, sociology, and anthropology have shown declines, especially since The chart below shows the most common groups of majors; the full data and analysis code for this article is online. T his may seem like a roundabout way to present the conventional wisdom that STEM majors are the only safe bets in the modern economy, and the humanities are dying out because kids no longer have the luxury of a useless major.
If the whole story were a market response to student debt and the Great Recession, students would have read the census report numbering psychology and communications among the fields with the lowest median earnings and fled from them. Or they would have noticed that biology majors make less than the average college graduate, and favored the physical sciences.
Most year-olds are not econometricians, and those that are were probably going to major in economics anyway. The census has been asking about college majors for almost a decade now and aside from a few obvious points—engineers make more money than journalists—the results are most surprising for how trivial the differences between most majors turn out to be. Finance and computer-science majors make more; biology and business majors make about the same.
But most of the differences are slight—well within the margins of error of the surveys. One analysis actually found that humanities majors under the age of 35 are actually less likely to be unemployed than life - science or social- science majors. Other factors, like gender, matter more: Men with terminal humanities B. Being the type of person inclined to view a college major in terms of return on investment will probably make a much bigger difference in your earnings than the actual major does.
In other areas of the economy, we view these kinds of differences with equanimity. The difference between humanities majors and science majors, in median income and unemployment, seems to be no more than the difference between residents of Virginia and North Carolina. If someone told to me not to move to Charlotte because no one there can make a living, I would never take them seriously.
But worried relatives express the same concerns about classics majors every day, with no sounder evidence. But although it would be better if students knew the actual data about majors—or, at least, if there were some psychology-major jokes to go along with the ones about art historians—the idea that students should choose majors by trying to guess what the job market will reward several years later is often nuts.
There are some consistent trends; nursing remains a solid bet for the risk averse. Other majors, though, may prove greater gambles. As humanities degrees have fallen at elite schools, degrees in computer science have climbed much more quickly than at other schools. In the top 30 universities, according to U. Set aside fears about what this will do to cocktail conversation down at the yacht club; how will students know when the United States is precisely three years away from having the right number of Ivy League graduates who can write the quicksort algorithm on a whiteboard?
Need Help? Get Involved! View Events Calendar. Also, those who have a passion for ideas and culture, and who enjoy reading would be ideal for this program. If you are looking for a well-rounded education that will prepare you for a variety of careers, then this program is right for you!
Humanities also complements such areas of study as Business, Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, and the natural sciences.
0コメント