The State of the Humanities circa 2022

Robert B. Townsend & Norman Bradburn

D epending on one’s perspective, the situation for the humanities can ap-

pear either quite dire or in a state of renewal and vitality. In the four-year
colleges and universities that often set the terms of discussion about the
campo, the situation is troubling by almost any measure. Even prior to the pandem-
ic, humanities departments were being closed and students were gravitating to-
ward other fields in their selection of majors. Sin embargo, leaders in the public
humanidades (such as state humanities councils and academic centers for the pub-
lic humanities) look to a wider range of engagements with the humanities beyond
the academy and report that their programs and activities are quite robust (or at
least were so, before the COVID-19 pandemic). Since the Great Recession, estos
divisions have grown increasingly stark, as the downward trends in academia
have steepened, while visitation rates at other public humanities institutions–
such as art museums and historic sites–have showed a modest rebound.1 The
question remains: how are these trends related and which better reflects the long-
term health of the field?

As a starting point for this volume, this essay summarizes recent data about the
state of the field both within and beyond the walls of academia. One of the great
challenges lies in the gap between the public and academic sides of the humanities,
and a more fundamental question about what the humanities actually represent.
For the purposes of this essay (and for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’
Humanities Indicators project, which serves as the source of much of the informa-
ción), the definition we use is quite expansive. We include a broad array of activi-
ties in which Americans engage as part of their personal and work lives: for exam-
por ejemplo, early childhood reading; K–12 and higher education in humanities subjects;
later-in-life engagement with the humanities through books, the Internet, televi-
sión, and cultural institutions; as well as descriptive writing and technical reading
on the job. This definition captures the broader engagements of the public in a
variety of humanistic practices that extend beyond academic disciplines and re-
buscar. What it does not resolve is the relationship between the humanities as rep-
resented in the larger range of humanistic activities and the humanities represent-
ed in the academic disciplines. The latter are more self-consciously aware of their

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position in a field of activity under that label–though in our experience writing
about the field, that consciousness tends to be partial and secondary to their iden-
tities as members of disciplines–and they often supply personnel and material
to public humanities institutions. Whether that relationship is or should be uni-
directional (with academia training specialists who in turn develop and deliver
materials to a receptive public audience) or bidirectional (with the public shaping
and influencing the choices and activities of the professionals) is a recurring ques-
tion throughout this issue.

R egardless of what one might imagine as the ideal relationship between the

public and the academic humanities, one of the first challenges is the lim-
ited public awareness of the field as an organized form of activity. Early
exploratory work for a recent Humanities Indicators survey of the general public
proved instructive in this regard; it suggested that Americans have diverse–and
often errant–conceptions of what the term humanities means. When asked to de-
fine it, most respondents fell back on labels and words that would be familiar to
faculty or public humanists. But we also found that a substantial number of Amer-
icans hear the term and connect it to other concepts, including good works (semejante
as giving blood or charitable giving). Others thought the term could or should
encompass anything that has to do with human beings, including science and
medicine.2

Regardless of how a member of the public might pour meaning into the term
when they hear the word humanities, they are likely to engage with some human-
ities content and humanistic practices on a regular basis. Many of them watch
historical documentaries, read books, search for and engage with humanities
content on the Internet, and engage in ethical decision-making, even if they may
not conceive of those activities under a singular umbrella term. But their engage-
ments tend not to align in ways that will seem meaningful to academic humanists.
Por ejemplo, we found the patterns of engagement are more likely to fall along
modes of engagement than disciplinary content: frequent readers tend to read
both fiction and nonfiction, people who watch historical documentaries also tend
to watch documentaries on other humanities content, and those who look to the
Internet for one type of humanities content are more likely to look there for oth-
ers. En cambio, those who watch historical television shows appear no more like-
ly to engage with historical content in other forms than other Americans. The re-
sults of the survey serve as an important reminder that the conceptual boundar-
ies and distinctions that often seem quite meaningful to practitioners in the field
rarely carry outside of academic debates.

While the findings underscore fundamental differences between the ways
humanities practitioners think of the field and the ways the public engages with
él, the survey also offered evidence about the positive relationship between the

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Dédalo, la Revista de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes & SciencesThe State of the Humanities circa 2022

humanities and the public. Substantial shares of Americans reported engaging at
least occasionally in some of these activities, particularly watching shows with
historical content and reading fiction and nonfiction books. And when these ac-
tivities are wrapped together under the umbrella term humanities (and further de-
fined as “studying or participating in activities related to literature, idiomas,
historia, and philosophy”), more than 80 percent of American adults hold very
positive views about the field. These positive attitudes extend from the personal
and societal benefits to the public to the need to learn the subjects of the human-
ities.3 Taken together, the survey results seem to confirm the positive stories from
those who engage with the public humanities.

But that is not the story that one is likely to read in the higher education me-
es, where the focus tends to center on the field as an academic enterprise. En esto
sphere, the humanities tend to be defined more narrowly, in terms of areas of re-
search and study at an advanced level, typically in one of the disciplines associated
with the field.4 Here there is ample cause for concern, most visibly in the trends of
students earning degrees in the field. De 2012 a 2020, the annual number of hu-
manities bachelor’s degrees awarded fell almost 16 por ciento, with some of the larg-
er disciplines, such as history, losing almost one-third of their majors. Al mismo
tiempo, the number of degrees awarded to students in the STEM fields has grown sub-
stantially: por ejemplo, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering
and in the health and medical sciences increased by more than 56 percent over the
same period. Como resultado, the humanities have greatly diminished as measured by
their share of students earning undergraduate degrees. As of 2020, the humanities
were conferring less than 10 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, the lowest level on
record (ver figura 1). Given that faculty members in humanities departments often
rely on those students to make a case for departmental resources, they can hardly
be blamed for feeling endangered, just as administrators may look at those trends
and wonder if they need the same number of faculty members in the department.

The reasons for the recent declines in humanities majors remain understudied
but appear more complex than the explanations that typically appear in the me-
es. In many of the articles reviewed for this essay, the problem seems reduced to
two variables: rising college costs and student debt, on one side, and relatively low
earnings for humanities graduates, en el otro. These factors undoubtedly play a
part, especially given how often the earnings of humanities majors are juxtaposed
with those of STEM majors in news articles on the subject. But this earnings dif-
ferential has been true for decades and seems unlikely to be the only explanation
(though in the context of sharply rising college costs and debt levels, it should not
be entirely discounted). The median earnings of humanities graduates are cer-
tainly lower than those of their counterparts from many of the STEM subjects, pero
they are still substantially higher than among those who never earned a college de-
gree. Además, when one looks at less tangible measures of job and life satisfac-

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151 (3) Summer 2022Robert B. Townsend & Norman Bradburn

Cifra 1
Humanities as a Share of All Degrees Awarded at Level, 1988–2020

45%

40%

35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

Associate’s, 26.9%

Bachelor’s, 12.5%
15.1%

Doctoral, 8.9%

Master’s and
Professional, 4.3%

11.1%

5.3%

41.0%

9.7%

7.2%

2.7%

1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008

2012

2016

2020

Fuente: National Center for Education Statistics, IPEDS Completions Survey, https://nces
.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data/survey-components/7/completions.

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tion for humanities graduates, one finds ample evidence that they are as satisfied
with their jobs and their lives as college graduates from almost every other field.5
So where might the problem for college majors lie? Consider a few other possi-
ble factors. The number of students earning dual enrollment credits while in high
school as well as AP credits from tests in humanities subjects has skyrocketed over
the past two decades. This is occurring at the same time that the number of stu-
dents earning associate’s degrees in the humanities and liberal arts in communi-
ty colleges has grown to unprecedented levels. Como figura 1 muestra, while the hu-
manities have been losing ground at every other degree level, they have been ris-
ing sharply among those earning degrees from community colleges. While these
credits create less expensive routes into and through a four-year college degree,
they can have the unintended effect of diverting students around the introductory
courses at four-year colleges and universities that have traditionally served as an
entrée into a college major.

Dédalo, la Revista de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes & SciencesThe State of the Humanities circa 2022

A separate variable that turns up in recent surveys of college alumni from the
humanities indicates that they are among the least likely to see a connection be-
tween their college major and the jobs they take after earning their degree. en un
2019 survey, less than one-third of the humanities graduates in the workforce
thought there was a close connection between their job and their degree.6 There
are many intangible virtues of studying in the field–such as the value of exploring
a subject for its own sake–but as tuition relative to postcollege earnings reach-
es historic highs, promoting these less tangible values might not be enough. En
the very least, faculty members might consider greater transparency in their syl-
labi and class work, helping students to see that they are also gaining important
“transferable” skills in their classes–research, organización, and written and oral
communication–and not just specific content knowledge.

The demographics of those entering study in the humanities also remain a sig-
nificant issue for the field. The share of students from minoritized groups earning
degrees in the humanities is close to the average among all college graduates, par-
ticularly at the undergraduate level (ver figura 2). That sets the bar exceptionally
bajo, sin embargo, because there is a lack of diversity in the college student popula-
tion as a whole. Only among students receiving associate’s degrees is the share of
students from minoritized groups (Alaska Native, American Indian, Asian Amer-
ican, Negro, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander), en 44
por ciento, near the total share in the population; from there it falls to 34 por ciento
among those receiving bachelor’s degrees and 18 percent among those receiving
PhDs in the field, less than half the share in the population overall.

The differences between degree levels speak to a challenge for the field, pero
also an opportunity. If the field could attract more students earning associate’s de-
grees and develop mentorship and retention programs that aided them from one
degree level to the next, it could improve on both the numbers of students earning
bachelor’s and doctoral degrees and the enduring lack of demographic diversity
within the field.

While the specific causes of the recent declines in humanities majors remain
murky, the effects of those declines on the academic professions that educate
those students appear clearer. De 2008 a 2010, academic job ads posted with
scholarly societies in the field fell more than 30 por ciento (much of that during the
Great Recession, but with further losses in the years since).7 In some of the larg-
est fields, such as the modern languages, job openings have continued to decline,
while others had only modest recoveries followed by additional declines during
the pandemic. While many doctoral programs in the field have started to cut back
admissions, the field still conferred almost 5,500 PhDs in the United States in 2020
(9 percent higher than the number awarded in 2008). Given the sustained nature
of this job crisis, many of the largest disciplines have turned to promoting career
training and employment options for PhDs beyond academia.

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151 (3) Summer 2022Robert B. Townsend & Norman Bradburn

Cifra 2
Share of Degrees Awarded to Minoritized Groups, 2015–2020

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

44% 44%

Traditionally Minoritized Groups as a
Share of the U.S. Population, Ages 20–34, 2018 (45%)

34% 34%

24% 28%

18% 22%

Associate’s

Bachelor’s

Master’s

Doctoral

Humanities

All Fields

Fuente: National Center for Education Statistics, IPEDS Completions Survey, https://nces
.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data/survey-components/7/completions. Nota: Values can differ
slightly due to rounding.

T his returns us to the value of a thriving humanities enterprise outside of

academia. Por décadas, the National Endowment for the Humanities and
its state affiliates have supported thousands of institutions ranging from
small local historical societies to museums and nonprofits with large multimillion
dollar budgets. A recent effort to develop a pilot census of humanities organiza-
tions turned up 45,752 institutions, incluido 24,022 libraries and archives, 8,033
museums, y 13,654 historical institutions.8

These organizations have provided employment opportunities for humanities
graduates, but more than that, they have provided another vital public face for the
campo. In the national survey on the humanities, almost half of Americans report-
ed they had visited art and history museums at least “sometimes” in the previous
año. Much larger shares of Americans engaged with the humanities through tele-
visión, the Internet, and podcasts, though we do not know the source or quality of

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Dédalo, la Revista de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes & SciencesThe State of the Humanities circa 2022

the information they were consuming.9 All that speaks to broad national interest
in output and activities from the humanities.

But one notable area of concern for the field is the declining amount of time
Americans spend reading for personal interest. De 2003 a 2018, the average
time spent reading for leisure fell from twenty-two minutes to just sixteen min-
utes (compared with an average of almost three hours watching television and
nearly thirty minutes playing games and using computers for leisure).10 To the
extent reading remains a fundamental aspect of the humanities enterprise–espe-
cially for the teaching of the humanities at colleges and universities–the waning
of that particular capacity in the populace should be a significant concern.

The trends and findings here need an important caveat: they only represent
points of time in the past. We both have been studying the field long enough to
watch dire predictions about the state of the field turn around, occasionally into
fragile states of optimism. The declines in humanities majors and the job crisis
for PhDs of the present had their precursors in the 1970s, and the programming
developed to address those changes often evaporated as the trends reversed. El
field would be better prepared for the future if it drew lessons from its past, construido
structures and institutions that could carry through waves of crisis and optimism,
and forged strong and enduring relationships across all the institutions that rep-
resent the humanities.

about the authors

Robert B. Townsend oversees the Humanities, Arts, and Culture programs, el
Washington, CORRIENTE CONTINUA., oficina, and the Humanities Indicators at the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. Prior to the Academy, he spent twenty-four years at the Amer-
ican Historical Association as Director of Research and Deputy Director. He is the
author of History’s Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the
United States, 1880–1940 (2013) and author or coauthor of more than two hundred
articles on various aspects of history, higher education, and public humanities. Él
is Co-Principal Investigator of the Humanities Indicators.

Norman Bradburn, miembro de la Academia Americana desde 1994, is the Tiffany
and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow
at NORC at the University of Chicago. He also served as Provost of the University
(1984–1989), Chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences (1973–1979), y
Associate Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences (1971–1973). He is the author
of Building Better Arts Facilities: Lessons from a U.S. National Study (with Joanna Woron-
kowicz and D. Carroll Joynes, 2015), Thinking about Answers: The Application of Cognitive
Processes to Survey Methodology (with Seymour Sudman and Norbert Schwarz, 2010),
and Polls and Surveys: Understanding What They Tell Us (with Seymour Sudman, 1991).
He is Co-Principal Investigator of the Humanities Indicators.

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151 (3) Summer 2022Robert B. Townsend & Norman Bradburn

notas finales

1 According to the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the share of the public that
had visited a museum or historic site increased 4.4 percentage points from 2012 a 2017,
while the share visiting art museums increased almost 3 percentage points. See Na-
tional Endowment for the Arts, A NOSOTROS. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002–
2017: A First Look at Results from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (Washington,
CORRIENTE CONTINUA.: National Endowment for the Arts, 2018), https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/
files/2017-sppapreviewREV-sept2018.pdf.

2 Humanities Indicators, The Humanities in American Life: Insights from a 2019 Survey of the Pub-
lic’s Attitudes & Compromiso (Cambridge, Masa.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
2020), 4.
3 Ibídem., 30–32.

4 Ver, por ejemplo, Benjamin Schmidt, “The Humanities Are in Crisis,” The Atlantic, Au-
gust 23, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face
-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/; and Kevin Carey, “The Bleak Job Landscape of Adjunct-
opia for Ph.D.s,"El New York Times, Marzo 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
03/05/upshot/academic-job-crisis-phd.html.

5 Humanities Indicators, The State of the Humanities 2021: Graduates in the Workforce & Beyond

(Cambridge, Masa.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021).

6 Original analysis by the Humanities Indicators of data from the National Science Founda-
ción, National Survey of College Graduates, 2019, published in The State of the Humanities
2021, 26.

7 Humanities Indicators, The State of the Humanities 2022: From Graduate Education to the Work-

fuerza (Cambridge, Masa.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2022).

8 Humanities Indicators, “Welcome to NIHO: Humanities Organizations by the Numbers,"
National Inventory of Humanities Organizations, https://niho.knack.com/niho#over
view/ (accessed April 5, 2022).

9 The findings in the American Academy survey of the public were quite similar to the re-
sults from a related survey by the American Historical Association. See American His-
torical Association, “History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National
Survey,” https://www.historians.org/history-culture-survey.

10 Original analysis by the Humanities Indicators of data from the U.S. Department of
Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey, available online at
“Time Spent Reading,” https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/public-life/
time-spent-reading.

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Dédalo, la Revista de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes & SciencesThe State of the Humanities circa 2022
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