Diya Gupta | Contributing Illustrator

In September, the College of Arts & Sciences launched a task force called “Social Transformation,” which considered how WashU could consolidate six of its humanities departments. This was a clear attack on the humanities that threatened to dilute the academic depth of each of these departments and weaken their power within the University. Thankfully, due to community concern over a lack of transparency surrounding the proposal, the dean of Arts & Sciences recently dissolved the task force. 

In spite of the task force’s dissolution, the proposal was a slap in the face to the programs that fought hard for recognition at WashU, like African & African American Studies (AFAS) and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Whether or not you read this proposed change as a cost-cutting measure or a cowardly bending of the knee to our comically underqualified Secretary of Education, this ordeal must inspire conversation about the core mission of WashU as a university in the United States today. As such, I want to articulate the importance of the humanities to WashU, the university system as a whole, and our society.

The idea of consolidating humanities departments should never have occurred at a university of WashU’s stature. Yet sadly, the university experience has become more of a business instead of a site of meaningful self-exploration that the humanities encourages. Consequently, we must make sure that WashU graduates are leaving with an understanding of how their 20 years in the education system contributed toward their own personal development. We have focused heavily on encouraging students to pursue a good career but not on what a humanities-informed education does to inform our career paths and enrich our lives. 

To become a well-adjusted person inside and outside of the classroom, humanities skills like argumentation, critical thinking, information synthesization, bias identification, and more are foundational. Engaging with the humanities also (hopefully) fosters the development of a rich, layered, and empathetic conscience. Furthermore, oftentimes we assume that being a citizen and a productive member of society are concepts that don’t need to be taught. But just the opposite is true: Well-informed citizens capable of understanding the historical context of political moments don’t spontaneously generate; they are molded by robust humanities programs informed by tightly held principles. Our hard-earned rights are effectively useless if we don’t have the education or moral awareness to wield them. An engaged electorate is created intentionally.

I fear that the true privilege of attending a top university today is access to an education that trains critical thinking and reading comprehension. I say fear, because really these skills should be widely present in the general population, but continue to decline. That doesn’t surprise me, given that every day, algorithms feed us an onslaught of highly addictive short-form content that neuters our ability to think critically. 

Increasing our focus on the humanities and critical thinking can also act as a bulwark against the constant bombardment of content we’re subjected to. To make their profit, social media companies want people to be doomscrolling comatosely. Just recently, MIT released a study documenting how ChatGPT is also weakening our writing skills. In short, these companies want us asleep. Accordingly, the ability to filter our media, think skeptically about artificial intelligence (AI), and write our own arguments has become paramount. 

A frequent criticism humanities majors hear is that their skills are not in demand in the job market (I distinctly remember being told that I’d make a charming barista after college). I’d like to counter this sentiment by noting that, with AI automation on the rise and the amount of entry-level white-collar jobs diminishing, the only response graduates can have is to make themselves so intensely human that an algorithm could never mimic their minds. Which is exactly what the market will be looking for in the coming years, according to the World Economic Forum. In their Future of Jobs report for 2023-2027, the WEF noted that analytical and critical thinking rank as the most common traits that companies are seeking out when hiring new talent.

Humanities classes also richly inform the academic experiences of non-humanities majors. It’s the WGSS class taken on a whim or the philosophy class that clarifies your values which make the college experience worth it. We need our doctors, engineers, businesspeople and especially those working in tech thinking critically about the effects of their decisions. 

With all of this in mind, it’s time for WashU to start sending its graduates to places other than the corporate world, as entry-level white-collar jobs decline. As a country, we have a list of existential societal ills that could run the length of this article. Our smartest college graduates should be working on fixing the housing crisis and mitigating environmental disasters, not writing market summaries and making slide decks. Put another way, we desperately need our graduates to think beyond maximizing shareholder value, which is the fundamental value of the corporate world. It’s time that we stop expecting top students to claw their way toward a limited number of positions at companies that don’t have our best interests at heart. If our smartest graduates are dedicating themselves to increasing the amount of eyeballs on content and optimizing returns on widget production, who is going to take up the mantle of building a better world? 

The classic response to this argument is that people who majored in the humanities and worked in the social sectors have historically made less money than their STEM counterparts, though this sentiment is perhaps inaccurate. And then the thinking goes, given the high cost of tuition at schools like WashU, it’s unreasonable to expect graduates to work for less money when they hold large amounts of debt. Something worth noting however, is that there are many students at top universities like WashU who can afford to pay full tuition. This is not a critique of privilege; I don’t blame families for setting their children up for success. Yet, due to their cushion, these students have the greatest potential to comfortably major in the humanities and/or work for the social good. Of course, I cannot expect students who have already taken out hundreds of thousands of dollars to take lower salaries for the social good. Though again, not every job in the social sectors pays less than those in STEM fields. No matter the case, with the college-to-office pipeline in a precarious position, we will be forced to find new modes of employment. The first place to start should be our most pressing societal issues. 

We should not be trying to cut educational opportunities that make this University a university. More than ever, WashU and other top universities need to cultivate students strongly grounded in the humanities in order to produce better communicators, thinkers, and citizens in our society and workplaces. For the sake of our collective humanity at this moment in history, we don’t have a choice.