The U.S. has an abundance of good colleges and universities. Many, facing budgetary challenges, choose to eliminate humanities programs.

Those programs (esp languages, history, and other programs teaching about cultural distinctives and communication) can benefit national security, diplomacy, and trade.

But enrollment in those disciplines is trending downwards, in part because they cost the same as any other degree, require hard work, and don’t lead to obvious high-earning jobs.

The benefit to the nation is more people who can help us all understand other nations.

The cost to the individual is money spent on an investment with a very long and potentially thin tail.

I studied languages in high school and college: Spanish, French, German, Russian, Greek, Latin. Also picked up some Nepali, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and a smattering of a few dozen other languages.

If you graduate with a degree in languages, people ask: are you going to teach or are you going to translate?

And I’ve done both of those things, but mostly I’ve used languages for other reasons, like:

  • Reading news and scholarship that is not available in my primary language
  • Teaching and doing research abroad
  • Helping people in other nations to develop businesses
  • Simply connecting with local people around the world

And I’ve learned a lot of poetry, scripture, and other literature in other nations. No matter where you are, if a book has lasted centuries, it’s probably got some story worth reading that will help you live a better life.

My students sign up for my humanities classes because they satisfy a general education requirement. Most of them don’t long to study philosophy, great books, history, or literature.

Thankfully, many of them wind up liking what they read. Often, students will take these classes in their final year of university, having put off something they dreaded, only to find they wish they’d taken it earlier so they could study more.

I also find that people who have been out of university for a long time wish they could return to school. Not for the homework and exams, but for the reading and discussion of big ideas.

Maybe fifteen years ago I offered to lead a semester-long in-person discussion at local pubs for people interested in studying Classical Chinese philosophy. I limited it to a dozen people so we could have seminars. Within an hour of offering the seminar on Facebook and Twitter, I had 45 people request to be let in.

It seems to me that universities are stuck in old ways, requiring a four-year degree for recent high school graduates, and then creating internal systems that make faculty across disciplines into rivals competing for curricular turf.

We could do things very differently.

If, instead of regarding students as clients, we regarded them as fellow citizens and fellow learners, we could show them what it looks like to continue to learn (presuming that we faculty do continue to learn, of course).

And we could invite them to study both skills that will help them to earn a living and attitudes about learning that will help them grow into a vocation, a calling, a full life.

We could even offer them tools that the world needs them to have, like deep engagement with old stories that invite a lifetime of reflection, and a useful understanding of the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of the world.

Our universities are not only like large ships that do not turn easily; they’re also like large ships in narrow canals. Even if the pilots wanted to turn, the walls of the canal prevent changing course frequently.

Thankfully, what happens on individual decks of the ships often has a little more flexibility. Individual departments, honors colleges, and a few of us faculty who are willing to do far more than we are paid for wind up making a difference.

An administrator of one university recently told me that their faculty’s only value to the university is in the easily quantified number of bodies in seats in classrooms. I did not dwell too long on that because I had a grieving student who wanted to talk about her dying parent, and after that I was off to volunteer my time with a global technology challenge that benefits my university in numerous ways that are hard to quantify. I did spend a little time praying for that administrator and her faculty, though, because it sounded like they’re all feeling immense pressure, and responding poorly.

For now I will continue to be one of those faculty who meets with grieving students, who teaches students how to build furniture and how to grow food, who takes students on field trips, who mentors students in building skills, technology, and businesses, who volunteers with my city, with local high schools, and with non-profits. And so much more.

Because I don’t just teach classes. I teach people.

And because I believe that the formal curriculum is a mere shadow of what faculty offer through mentorship, community connection, lived experience, and relationships that grow over time.

And I hope—perhaps naively—that the result will be a long-tailed return for the whole world.