I thin it refers to under grad and that in the us there’s a different system and likely less mismatch with labour markets. There were just more English grads than we needed for a while and now it’s gone back. Introducing survey sources for other students so you can major in stem but still study some lit might be good. People do brilliant things with lit but we also know from the stats that many of them just lost money ...
The thing I find most ridiculous about the reaction to this is the idea that you need to study the humanities at university to appreciate them. I studied Physics; I still read history and literature. You could shut every English literature department today and people will still be reading and writing literature tomorrow.
As someone who went all the way in College English, and has spent her life as an academic, I’m disappointed at the heavy reliance on one polemical source for this claim. Journalism isn’t scholarship. We’ve studied the fiscal, and “in kind”, return of the HASS disciplines (humanities, arts, social sciences)since Eliot was at Harvard. There are many iterated studies which canvas graduates’ salaries and lived experiences, with vastly different conclusions. And that’s before you explore the vast benefits to the primary, secondary and tertiary economies. This is a reductionist take, based on a dubious source. The conclusions drawn are specious.
You seem to want to measure a wider range of things over a different time span. The IFS is not polemical but widely recognised as the most independent and reliable source for this sort of data in the UK, after the ONS. It simply isn't possible to argue that the average UK English grad currently sees much return on their degree. Thus a correction to former levels of students is happening.
Hello. I share your distaste for words like “crisis” popping up perennially in discussions of English literature. Don’t you think all that crisis talk comes mostly from the need for dramatic headlines and shocking quotations - like the one from IFS in your article? (Zero value to an English degree: mighty rhetoric! Since that’s compared with a medical degree, I assume it means a PhD, which is a different discussion than undergrad Eng Lit. Too bad if that quotation circulates far and discourages highly valuable undergrad study.) In the U. S., the research is highly positive for salaries of Eng Lit grads over the career span, which makes sense. Eng Lit grads are CEOs, HR execs, recruiters, VPs of marketing, etc. Readers and thinkers are promotable and independent. Maybe the crisis is that headlines keep telling young people there’s a crisis surrounding something they might otherwise enjoy and find profitable. I think on that we agree: if we all stop running crisis headlines, might we tell stories of brilliant things people do after Eng Lit majors instead? Now, the PhD is another oyster....
I thin it refers to under grad and that in the us there’s a different system and likely less mismatch with labour markets. There were just more English grads than we needed for a while and now it’s gone back. Introducing survey sources for other students so you can major in stem but still study some lit might be good. People do brilliant things with lit but we also know from the stats that many of them just lost money ...
Will the war of the 'two cultures' narrative ever end?
Quite.
The thing I find most ridiculous about the reaction to this is the idea that you need to study the humanities at university to appreciate them. I studied Physics; I still read history and literature. You could shut every English literature department today and people will still be reading and writing literature tomorrow.
Yes exactly. The humanities are live and well, as readers of this blog well demonstrate!
As someone who went all the way in College English, and has spent her life as an academic, I’m disappointed at the heavy reliance on one polemical source for this claim. Journalism isn’t scholarship. We’ve studied the fiscal, and “in kind”, return of the HASS disciplines (humanities, arts, social sciences)since Eliot was at Harvard. There are many iterated studies which canvas graduates’ salaries and lived experiences, with vastly different conclusions. And that’s before you explore the vast benefits to the primary, secondary and tertiary economies. This is a reductionist take, based on a dubious source. The conclusions drawn are specious.
You seem to want to measure a wider range of things over a different time span. The IFS is not polemical but widely recognised as the most independent and reliable source for this sort of data in the UK, after the ONS. It simply isn't possible to argue that the average UK English grad currently sees much return on their degree. Thus a correction to former levels of students is happening.
Hello. I share your distaste for words like “crisis” popping up perennially in discussions of English literature. Don’t you think all that crisis talk comes mostly from the need for dramatic headlines and shocking quotations - like the one from IFS in your article? (Zero value to an English degree: mighty rhetoric! Since that’s compared with a medical degree, I assume it means a PhD, which is a different discussion than undergrad Eng Lit. Too bad if that quotation circulates far and discourages highly valuable undergrad study.) In the U. S., the research is highly positive for salaries of Eng Lit grads over the career span, which makes sense. Eng Lit grads are CEOs, HR execs, recruiters, VPs of marketing, etc. Readers and thinkers are promotable and independent. Maybe the crisis is that headlines keep telling young people there’s a crisis surrounding something they might otherwise enjoy and find profitable. I think on that we agree: if we all stop running crisis headlines, might we tell stories of brilliant things people do after Eng Lit majors instead? Now, the PhD is another oyster....