Thoughts on “The End"

of the English major, that is.....

The recent New Yorker feature by Nathan Heller, The End of the English Major, (Feb. 27) has been making waves on social media and among friends who care about such things. This sounding of the death knell for traditional English major and the humanities in general on college campuses has appeared before of course, and Heller’s in-depth article is actually less dismal than the headline suggests. Several valuable points made resonate with observations made during my two decades (!) of teaching experience in English classrooms at CUNY. But most troubling for me was how the article, which draws primarily on observations from Harvard and a public university, Arizona State University, documents evidence for the ongoing cultural devaluation of the deep and sustained reading experience.

Heller details well how finances play a direct role in the decline of the humanities and the turn toward STEM majors. Governmental funding for study in the humanities has drastically, and partly for political reasons, decreased. Alumni of STEM programs are able to donate money to build and reinforce already robust programs, leaving the underfunded humanities behind. Heller discusses becoming personally enchanted by the environment of Harvard’s new multi-billion-dollar Science and Engineering Complex. A student told Heller that Harvard’s illustrious non-graduate, Mark Zuckerberg is donating half million to study AI, a donation that includes new professorships. (Meanwhile, a response to Heller’s article from John Warner in Inside for Higher End points out the reduction in English teacher professorships.) Heller importantly emphasizes that students are telling him these things. While donations, funding sources, and the resulting allocations have long been uncomfortable necessities of college institutions, the glamour of money, media, and technology are becoming louder and more attractive to students bombarded already by “influencers.”

And, students themselves are more concerned with money for obvious reasons. Economic crashes and environmental disasters, pandemic crises, and our increasing war budget tightening spending everywhere else. Bombarded by “analytics” as ways of measuring likes and status and popularity, statistics courses are gaining interest. One student discusses the role of “Effective Altruism.” Young people want to plan ahead so they can be donors rather than young people starting out and doing the service work. More aware of money, they are also demanding access to it.

Heller quotes one student:

“A lot of it has to do with us seeing—they call them ‘influencers’ online,” Harmanian said, pronouncing the word slowly for my benefit. “I’m twenty-one. People my age have crypto. People have agents working on their banking and trading. Instead of working nine to five for your fifteen-dollar minimum wage, you can value your time.” She and her peers had grown up in an age that saw the lie in working for the Man, so they were charging out on their own terms. “It’s because our generation is a lot more progressive in our thinking,” she told me.

While every generation considers itself “more progressive” in its own way, this self-conscious preoccupation with money indeed gets in the way of careers or study in the humanities, which might cultivate a clearer understanding of what progressive ideas or “working for the man” might truly mean

In my own classrooms, I’ve had students in my classes claim they were up all night “watching the stock market.” Students want to write and present research essays about smart investing. There are more investment companies and services targeting young people of all economic brackets. And while these things aren’t inherently wrong, it is a change from when I started teaching. And the emphasis on money and how your college degree will “cash out” puts a confusing dollar mark on education, particularly in a climate where student loan debt is also a national conversation.

But most concerning for me is the way the article shows how the value of reading in a sustained way is in deep decline. One student describes her interest in English courses as a “passion project.” Another discusses how the humanities courses are seen as “easy” or not real subjects of value. James Shapiro, the esteemed Shakespeare scholar at Columbia looks like a graying professor in his office wondering where the English majors are. But he confesses even he’s reading less, from five novels to one novel a month due to increasing distractions from smartphones and other new media. At Harvard, Stephen Greenblatt extolls the excellent writing he sees on television shows such as “Better Call Saul.” Perhaps the future of good writing will increasingly depart from the page.

Our English department, like many, reflects this trend. Like most English departments, we are divided into interests: first year writing, literature, professional and technical writing, writing studies (including creative writing), and linguistics. Interdisciplinary majors and programs seem to be where the future of the department may gain its longevity. But it’s the literature courses that most often don’t fill, despite being taught by strong faculty offering topics directly targeting diverse student interests. I enjoy teaching creative writing but am frustrated when students balk at having to actually read in a creative writing class. Students are more interested in having me (the instructor) read their own work. In all of our courses, we are being encouraged to use open source or free materials to reduce student costs on books. What this means is, even in English classes, students often aren’t reading books. They are getting the message that they really shouldn’t have to. And, these money-conscious young people are being told that when they do read, it should be free or without financial value.

One of my favorite memories of being an English major as an undergraduate and a creative writing MFA student, is that first week of classes when we were handed lists of books to purchase at the bookstore. It was on these days I saw how my semester would take shape, the books and ideas I would stay up all night reading. I had no interest in stocks or net worth. In my MFA program, some students were aghast that we “had to read” so much, while I dropped one literature class after attending an intro session where the instructor said he had no syllabus and wanted to just “hang out and see what we wanted to do.” College bookstores are now far more about gift shops, cafes, and regalia. Something is indeed lost.

While Heller’s article returns at the end to the students who are still enrolling and graduating in humanities and English programs, a question he poses at the middle regarding the shift away from the humanities is truly troubling: “what does it mean to graduate a college generation with less education in the human past than any that has come before”? Indeed. Let’s add to that, what does it mean if we don’t teach or expect them to read deeply, if at all?