Perhaps the diminishing interest in humanities is linked to the poor job market for humanities degrees? From the article: >But with the recession having helpe

Perhaps the diminishing interest in humanities is linked to the poor job market for humanities degrees? From the article: >But with the recession having helped turn college, in the popular view, into largely a tool for job preparation, administrators are concerned. And I am concerned for the administrators. Who has the money to go to Stanford to get a degree that offers very limited career opportunities at pay levels that will never recoup your college costs? Only the most foolhardy or the richest will do this. I am concerned that the administrators apparently do not realize this. Just for fun, here's a link to the tuition and fees page of Stanford: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/tuition-fees_12-13 http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/tuitio... Now, who wants to pay upwards of 20k a semester after housing, books, tuition and expenses to get a degree in "Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language", "German", "philosophy", or "world languages and culture"? How long will it take to pay back your student loans? 40+ years on a philosopher's salary. Will your crippling debt hinder any other aspects of your life, like getting married or buying a house? Hopefully, not. College tuition is so high, that the decision to pursue a degree that does not virtually guarantee a decent paying job is financially and almost morally untenable, unless you already have substantial liquidity. But the academics, as smart as they are, just don't seem to make the connection: >“Both inside the humanities and outside, people feel that the intellectual firepower in the universities is in the sciences, that the important issues that people of all sorts care about, like inequality and climate change, are being addressed not in the English departments,” said Andrew Delbanco, a Columbia University professor who writes about higher education. Only a very small subset of people go to college to 'change the world' or 'tackle pressing issues', most go to make a better life for themselves somewhere down the line. It's really hard to correlate study in Renaissance French literature and hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt with a better life. This article really paints the picture that people who handle administration for colleges, and professors who study college trends, really don't see the cost benefit analysis aspect of it at all. Or maybe they just value degrees far more than they are actually worth. --- Sorry, that was too long and I think I've got to cut myself off there.