EDITORIAL: What brings value to a college? The campus? High-profile sports teams? Profitable departments and renowned faculty? These are all respectable and reasonable answers. However, one thing that is not mentioned in that list is the culture that surrounds the university — and if you ask us, it’s one of the most important things about a college or any space.
Culture is made by the humanities.
Art, philosophy, language and media are the pillars of what we call culture. How we treat each other, the values we hold, how we communicate with one another and where we are going as a society are all influenced by these areas of study.
Despite this importance, the humanities are often the first departments to have their funding reduced when money needs to be moved around. Things like athletics and STEM departments often get priority when it’s time to make cuts due to budget constraints. From a pure business perspective, this makes sense. Prominent sports programs draw money from advertisers and boosters, and STEM departments have an easier route to monetize their research and bring in outside funding. When you contrast that with most of the humanities, where it’s not easy to explain how they generate revenue, the decision seems easy. But in a world where it feels like things are becoming more hollow, unfamiliar and rife with misunderstanding, it’s never been more important to give the humanities space and funding.
The humanities have long been the butt of jokes from parents, car salesmen and just about anyone else whose main life concern is net income. However, if more people understood the things around themselves and where they come from, we as human beings wouldn’t be facing a lot of the issues that we currently are. Beyond the personal benefits to studying the humanities, the income disparity is vastly misrepresented in society. Students who graduated with a degree in the humanities have a median income that is either right around or above the national average.
People who believe that the humanities and arts are not a necessity on a college campus often point to the lack of money they bring in, but not everything that’s important to life can be measured in dollars. In Ireland, they have set up a system called The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA), where around 2,000 artists who meet the program’s eligibility requirements receive a weekly stipend of €325 ($362). Ireland did this because they realized the importance of culture and wanted to do what they could to preserve the rich and artistic one that they have. That’s an example we should follow.
Our government and public universities should prioritize culture and humanity; not just profit. If we continue to whittle away who we are and the study and practice of art, philosophy and history, just because it doesn’t make us enough money, we will soon be nothing.
