If I were a student today, would I still pick the humanities?

A thought experiment

Fortepan / Fortepan/Album083

If there is one mode of thought that defines human inquiry like no other, it is reflexivity. Self-reference is the supreme test for determining if a statement is free of contradictions. Anyone who denies the existence of truth is at least claiming that very statement to be true. Those advocating for ethical standards ought to lead by example. And if someone praises the humanities, shouldn’t this person be willing, in principle, to pursue them personally?

In a powerful declaration on the state of the humanities, Justin Smith-Ruiu last week laid out the circumstances under which a decision for or against “universitarian humanism” has to be made today: falling enrollment numbers, declining standards, AI, and a moment that he aptly describes as „the conjoint triumph of hyper-financialization at the level of institutional organization, and the hermeneutics of suspicion at the level of ideology.“ It is this mix of “hyper-quantification” and a “now-institutionalized, half-educated spirit of contempt” that leads academics, both inside and outside the university, to conclude that they should discourage their own children from following the path they themselves once pursued with such great enthusiasm.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not talking about people losing interest in their initial passions or finding they’re better suited for other fields as they get older. Instead, the point of my thought experiment is whether I, as a young person, would still opt for a humanities degree under today’s conditions. When I compare these conditions to when I was a student in the 1990s, the hiatus is impossible to miss: The politically imposed Europe-wide streamlining of degree programs into fully modularized bachelor’s and master’s programs, known as the Bologna Reform, had not yet taken place. It was a period marked by great scholarly autonomy. I recall advanced philosophy seminars where, week in and week out, we scrutinized the fairly obscure ‘minor Kantians’ and later produced a term paper that could easily qualify as a master’s thesis by today’s standards.

Even back then, however, it wasn’t exactly smart to assume that a life mostly marked by frugality and even precariousness would somehow end with a tenured, full professorship in a city where you actually wanted to live. And the few who (like me) managed to do so mostly found themselves in institutions that had little to do with their fond memories of student life, feeling more like underfunded, over-administered factories for grant acquisition and degree production.

In short, anyone opting for a degree in the humanities these days, especially with academic aspirations in mind, appears to be walking onto a sinking ship with their eyes wide open. On the other hand, not a day goes by without tech and business circles emphasizing that in the AI era, nothing is as important as that very last-mile-knowledge based on handling tacit knowledge and developing taste—‚skills‘ traditionally honed in a liberal arts education.

The humanities—capitalized or not

Throughout Smith-Ruiu’s latest essay, there is a distinction that could be rephrased as the Humanities, with a capital H, versus the humanities, with a lowercase h. What JSR intends to revitalize is Human Inquiry with a capital H—rigorous, erudite investigation of „universe-in-a-grain-of-sand topics“.¹ In contrast, humanities with a lowercase h would refer to the liberal arts integrated into hybrid, ‚business-schooly‘ degree programs. Always geared toward economic „whitewashing“ or „self-indulgent me-search“, JSR finds them lacking a mode of thought that locates the liberal essence of the humanities in the awe-struck exploration of the ambiguous and the transgressive in human existence.

It may be a secondary rationalization of my intellectual biography and academic CV to argue that, while this dichotomy captures something accurate, it shouldn’t lead to playing off traditional forms of human inquiry against transdisciplinary ones. I earned my master’s in philosophy and German language and literature, and my PhD in Kulturwissenschaft, but I took extra classes in rhetoric, art history, biology, and law out of sheer curiosity. Some of my most talented fellow students pursued history or philosophy with genuine dedication while majoring in fields like economics, law, and psychology. My frustration with the hermeneutics of suspicion prompted me to turn away from the repetitive, incredibly boring ‘critique of power’ in favor of economists studying cultural phenomena or computer scientists tackling philosophical questions. All this has convinced me to believe that degree programs that integrate career-oriented disciplines with philosophy (especially the philosophy of science and ethics) and the arts are worthwhile, ideally giving each a one-third share of the curriculum. The obvious objection that this inevitably leads to superficial, half-baked knowledge—as in the examples mentioned and dismissed by JSR—only holds water if teaching were to consist of nothing more than poorly executed, ahistorical service-provider science and if those aspiring to academia could no longer fully commit to humanities research, spending years in the archives to produce detailed monographs on highly specific topics.

Call me naive, but beyond a certain diagnostic power, there’s no reason to maintain this binary. Just as ‘pure’ versions of the humanities can indirectly provide ‘utility’—whether in the form of being able to handle the unknown, in the form of character building, or even just as a credential for entry into any kind of career—conversely, a sense of intellectual friction can be injected into transdisciplinary programs by cultivating the challenge of engaging with sources that do not confirm one’s own views and engaging in fearless debate.

What I’m getting at—and here I am aligning myself with JSR again—is that the question of whether I would choose to study the humanities again under today’s circumstances needs to be put another way: Where do the qualities of what once made a humanities education so precious thrive in today’s world? Is this kind of experience still achievable at universities today? If it is, at which institutions, in which departments, with which faculty members? If not, where and how does it happen instead? Any path—sometimes in niches within traditional institutions, sometimes even within ‚business-schooly‘ programs—is valid, provided it doesn’t compromise the essence of humanities research.

What do the humanities cultivate? And where?

When I ask myself what the real value of my studies was and what I’m still drawing from today, it is this: a conversational setting that enabled reflective, revision-ready, and fearless thinking, alongside an exploration of the world through reading, writing, and open-minded observation. By engaging with texts that exceed one’s grasp, talking with those who were already more advanced or a bit smarter than oneself, and through the transformative effect of aesthetic experiences. The university, with its seminars and libraries, created the opening, but it was eventually a circle of friends that defined the experience, as we talked through the night about books and lectures, movies, plays, and exhibitions.

To finally answer the original question: if I were to find such a place again today, I wouldn’t hesitate to take the risk of pursuing a degree in the humanities. If it were more of a transdisciplinary program that offered those kinds of opportunities, I’d prefer it.

And what about the post-university, para-academic communities that are technically viable today on a global scale and for which JSR advocates? To me, they represent a great learning opportunity for individuals whose life situations keep them out of the ivory tower. Moreover, I view them as a supportive community for those struggling with the diminishing freedoms within established institutions.

At the end of the day, what someone studies—if anything—is secondary to the daily decision of what one chooses to cultivate. „The humanities,“ JSR writes, „are democratic precisely because they do not come down to us through blood-ties, but must be cultivated anew over the course of an individual life.“ He’s right.

1. JSR, however, draws a line between his approach and a „churchy“ „Great Book fetishism,“ correctly noting that we „are so far, today, from the sort of capacious, generous, liberal disposition that enables any true humanism to see essentially the same genius at work wherever human beings are doing their human thing. We are so far today from any real receptivity to human creativity as such, to culture as such; to craft traditions; to oral traditions; to folk tales, lullabies, ditties, byliny.“