Helping Humanities Ph.D.s Thrive Beyond Academia

Academia is well equipped to tell us what it did for us, not what it did not—hence how indispensable its methods are.

Packy McCormick: We live in a world where expertise can be justly claimed by anyone who can continue to prove it. Synthesis and storytelling are the keys to navigating that world. In a world with so much information available and fewer unquestioned experts, the ability to let large amounts of information wash over you, figure out where to dive deep... See more

There has been a concerted assault on all forms of learning that are not brutally utilitarian. The Modern Language Association’s end-of-the-year job listings in English, literature, and foreign languages dropped 21 percent for 2008-2009 from the previous year, the biggest decline in thirty-four years. The humanities’ share of college degrees is les

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No thinking person should be indifferent to our society’s disinvestment in the humanities.53 A society without historical scholarship is like a person without memory: deluded, confused, easily exploited. Philosophy grows out of the recognition that clarity and logic don’t come easily to us and that we’re better off when our thinking is refined and

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This underscores the wisdom of the traditional liberal education, which aimed to encourage students to develop their critical faculties and thinking skills. Success in business, as in most areas of life, depends upon being able to solve problems. If you can teach yourself how to solve problems, you have a bright career ahead of yourself. No matter

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The only way out from this rat race I can see is to re-create a safe space. When you are no longer consumed by the worry that is career sustenance and growth, at least a subset of folks might choose to work on what they think is important. Signalling will never fully die of course, but perhaps we can dampen it.

Its not a pure argument to reduce the ... See more