Rethink... the Humanities

Every year, fewer students are choosing to study humanities courses such as philosophy, history, religion, languages and literature. This collapse in demand has led many cash-strapped universities to close humanities courses entirely.

Instead, it’s the STEM subjects that are booming – that’s science, technology, engineering and maths - as students see these as a route to a well paid career and paying off tens of thousands of pounds in student debt.

Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception that humanities degrees don’t necessarily lead to a high salary. Cynics cruelly call some of them “Mickey Mouse degrees” and politicians have tended to promote STEM subjects. So should we be rethinking the humanities for a digital age?

Should we be rethinking the content of humanities courses and how they are marketed to students? Should humanities students also have access to modules in STEM subjects? Should we be taking a more inter-disciplinary approach (more on that rather ungainly phrase later).

And then what about artificial intelligence? Will the skills that humanities subjects teach - critical thinking, empathy, reasoning - be the ones that employers actually care more about than say coding or calculating over the next few decades? Will employers want to hire candidates that speak human, can tell stories, formulate arguments and empathise as an essential counter-weight to super intelligent technology? Might AI ironically end up saving our very oldest, dustiest subjects of inquiry?

Presenter: Ben Ansell
Producer: Tom Gillett
Editor: Damon Rose

Contributors:
Elif Shafik, Novelist and writer
Etan Shah, Chief Executive of the British Academy
Professor Sean Kelly, Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University
Dr Peter Sutoris, Associate Professor in Climate and Development at the University of Leeds
Marion Thain, Professor of Culture and Technology at the University of Edinburgh.