LIBERAL EDUCATION

The Humanities and the Mission of Liberal Education

Khoa Sands
TCR Emerson Prize Winner
Princeton Class of 2026
 
The humanities are in crisis. Across the country, enrollment in humanities fields is at an all-time low. The priorities of students, universities, and the government have shifted toward STEM fields: The Washington Post reports that as computer science majors increased by 34 percent over the past five years, history majors declined by 12 percent, and English majors by 23 percent over the same time frame. Last February, a lengthy New Yorker article proclaimed “The End of the English Major.”
 
There are many reasons for this decline, from shifting student preferences to federal funding for STEM, and the incessant messaging that the humanities are useless and that studying the liberal arts will leave students broke and unable to find jobs. And then, of course, there are the constant culture wars within humanities fields themselves, from the continued relevance of the Western canon to the debate over historical “presentism.” In the background of all this is the slow but steady decay in academic standards, evidenced by rampant grade inflation and the frightening lack of academic writing skills among students—despite the consistent efforts of university writing centers.
 
The decline of academic standards and writing and the decline of humanities nationwide are connected. Both are rooted in a conception of the mission of higher education as a training ground for future workers. Under this idea of the university, it is no wonder that fields like engineering and computer science are significantly more popular than the humanities—the professional applicability of an applied sciences degree is far more self-evident than that of an English or history degree.
 
This model of higher education has become so culturally ubiquitous that most attempts to defend the humanities are attempts to defend their utility and pragmatic applications. The value of the humanities must be in their ability to develop useful skills like critical thinking, communication, argumentation, and writing. However, these skills are difficult to quantify, and one may doubt how well many students have been trained to actually write and think critically. In addition, the study of big humanistic issues is necessary for any leader, in business, government, or otherwise. But we cannot all be leaders, and limiting the study of humanities to would-be leaders would directly contradict the spirit of liberal education.
 
The humanities in general—and scholarly excellence in particular—cannot be successfully defended by utilitarian calculations of marketability or career applications. What is needed is a higher idea of higher education itself, centered on the pursuit of wisdom, and of truth as its own end. Simply preaching the utility of critical thinking or the value of a specific social agenda birthed in the academy will never be adequate.
 
The popular societal conception of higher education is as a pragmatic means, most commonly towards career and money. However, money is not an end; it is the very epitome of a means. The maximization of optionality, credentials, or utility is not a true goal. The pragmatic university treats education as a means, highlighting specialization over broad philosophical inquiry, policy over politics, and professionalization over liberal education itself. Under this model, each course or assignment is simply a step toward the next grade, internship, degree, or job. It is obvious how this has led to a decline in academic standards, both in the academy as well as in secondary education. In high school, with the goal of college admissions perpetually around the corner, it is easy to do the bare minimum requirements to receive a good grade, without any true understanding. Schools are complicit in this, emphasizing courses (such as the AP curriculum) that teach toward tests and confessional writing (the very same kind common in the college admissions essay) over academic writing.
 
A more sophisticated model of the pragmatic university is the idea that higher education exists to build a better world. Under this model, the humanities serve some social agenda, usually a variant of modern progressive liberalism. This value of humanistic inquiry is still not the pursuit of truth as its own end but rather linked to the social goals embodied in that conception of building a better world. However, neither does this lend itself to scholarly excellence, as evidenced by the blatant and rampant political mischaracterization of the American Revolution in the "1619 Project."
 
What is the value of the humanities and liberal education? Liberal education exists to pursue truth for the sake of truth, to treat knowledge as an end in itself, and to orient ourselves towards the higher end of human flourishing, rather than towards pragmatic means such as money or career. Without this consideration of higher purpose beyond materialist careerism or socio-political agenda, liberal education and the humanities will continue to decline.