Tag Archives: American Reserach Universities

Digital Age Ruminations: The U.S. Humanities and Employability Concerns

By Andrew Urie

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.

Saint Anselm Col­lege, a tra­di­tion­al New Eng­land lib­er­al arts college.

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?

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