The Relevance of Humanities to the 21st Century Workplace

Introduction

During the last few decades generally, and since the 2008 financial crisis specifically, the humanities discipline has been placed under tremendous scrutiny. “What are you going to do with that (fill in the blank—e.g., history) humanities degree?” is commonly asked at dinners, networking events, meetings, and other gatherings both on and off campuses of higher education institutions across the United States. Parents, students, board members, administrators, faculty, and just about every other stakeholder have all asked some form of that question. With a lack of a clear answer to that question, there is no surprise that the number of humanities majors has declined during the last decade. Two recent examples include the Modern Language ...