What a New Report About the Humanities Gets Right — and Wrong
Preview:
A recent report on the state of the humanities in higher education captures real enrollment declines and shrinking departmental resources, but misreads some of the underlying causes and overstates the case for crisis. Humanities majors have been declining for decades, accelerating after 2008 as students and families increasingly prioritized career-focused degrees in response to rising tuition and a difficult job market. The report correctly identifies funding cuts and administrative consolidation as contributing factors, but underestimates how much the humanities' own internal culture — including a drift toward highly specialized, jargon-heavy scholarship — has contributed to declining student interest. There is also pushback on the framing that the humanities are uniquely imperiled, given that many fields outside STEM face similar enrollment pressures. A more accurate picture requires separating legitimate structural threats from self-inflicted wounds, and distinguishing between elite institutions where the humanities remain robust and regional universities where cuts have been most severe.
Originally published: June 10, 2026
Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Position: Former Chancellor
Institution: University of California at Berkeley
Published by: The Chronicle of Higher Ed