Are the academic humanities even collapsing outside the US? The U.K. has five times as many history graduates as the US with a fifth of the population. Presumab

Are the academic humanities even collapsing outside the US? The U.K. has five times as many history graduates as the US with a fifth of the population. Presumably someone is teaching those students. Going from massive efflorescence and overproduction of PhDs to very large overproduction of PhDs doesn’t seem that big a deal. If people want to analyse pop culture as literature and undergraduates don’t find the classes appealing how is that a problem? I’m sure if you want to study classic literature now it’s much easier than it was in 1950 or 1970. There are certainly as many tenured instructors as in 1950, probably more than there were in 1970. And if you want to treat Sicario, Bloodborne or Collateral as literature who’s stopping you? The chances of these series being remembered in 50 years are low so the secondary literature will be almost entirely forgotten but if people are enjoying themselves no harm. The collapse of the academic humanities is at least in part retreating up there own hole. English as the study of great art, timeless topics and eternal verities is reasonably healthy, if a sideline in the academic humanities beside Bourdieu, Foucault and Nietzsche but it’s possible to study great books of difficult at university. If you just want to study it Harold Bloom and others in the same tradition wrote books and they can still be read. Going from 20x the number of scholars in 1950 to 10x is not an extinction event.