As anyone who has scanned recent U.S. education headlines knows, the humanities face a crisis of legitimation amidst a tech-driven economy in which the mantra of ‘job preparedness’ seems to have trumped the traditional academic notion of humanist scholarly inquiry. Faced with the task of defending the relevance of their field of study, academics have justifiably cited the critical thinking skills that are gained via a humanities education.
More often than not, however, many of these very same academics proceed to undermine this eminently legitimate point by claiming that a university education should bear no relation to vocational concerns. Indeed, whenever anyone parrots out this shaky line of reasoning, I find myself pondering the following question: In what sense has the American university ever stood entirely apart from concerns about employability?