What do I think of the Humanities?

My English teacher in 9th and 12th grade said this to our class once: "You can tell how a good a school is by looking at how developed their humanities departments are. If their humanities are weak, don't go to that school. If they don't have any, don't even consider it!" Well, I might have modified the last part. In essence, that is what he said.

As for me, I agree with the article. Studies in the Humanities are hot right now. After graduating from college or university, many humanities majors get great job offers. I've heard of a Philosophy major from UVA that was offered over 100,00 US dollars a year as starting salary minus bonuses and stocks to be an analyst at Goldman Sachs the year before he graduated. Companies like humanities graduates because they are, as mentioned in the question, taught critical thinking skills. At many colleges and universities, the Arts Department is the biggest of the whole school. For example, UBC, my old university, has an Arts department that had maybe 10,000 or so students, not including faculty and administrators. Many doctors, lawyers, business graduates, etc. also started out as Arts or humanities majors as well. they just later changed fields later in their four years or in graduate school. Doesn't this indicate the popularity and influence of humanities studies?

In the future, humanities will start playing an important role again. I think it will because such education is broad enough to give you an understanding of not just history or sociology or English, but a mix of all the humanities subjects. Arts majors also have in-depth study of their own fields as well. In many other programs that I have heard of, lots of classes are pass or fail, so students tend to want to get extremely good grades so they can go to medical school or law school or get an MBA. However, Arts degrees tend to emphasize the learning and thinking process. I am, of course, very biased because I'm more attracted to the humanities and arts of all kinds. Other fields are also interesting, I'm sure, but they seem very dense. Some seem to be too limiting or too objective so that when you study them, you lose focus on everything else. Of course, an artist has got to eat, too. What is society without art, without knowledge of all different fields? That is probably why lots of arts majors are getting hired right out of college without a graduate degree-companies want a diverse point of view on what options they have. They also want the creative juices and analytical muscle that can inject their future projects with fresh ideas. In my opinion, the future will be focused on the Humanities and not science.