I’m really sick right now, so I thought I must be hallucinating when I saw this headline: “Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities.” And it was from Harvard’s Business School! Surely my eyes deceived me. (And thanks to Ready Writing for Tweeting it to my attention.)
But no, it was real, and it’s a good article not only on why you should hire humanities-trained problem solvers, but also on why scientific thinking alone will not save the world. Two of my most favoritest topics.
(By the way, does anyone else remember when Stephen Colbert proposed a tiered tuition system based on how much money your degree would make? Classics was in the “Why Are You Doing This to Your Parents?” category. Au contraire, Mr Colbert, the market has spoken! Er, is about to speak. Maybe?)
As soon as I recover from the Austin Death Plague (this is a real thing, it hits every spring on the heels of allergy season) I fully intend to feature article prominently on every single one of my websites — and humanities folks, I heartily encourage you to do the same. This is exactly the PR we need tacked on the door of advisor’s offices and departmental bulletin boards.
But that’s going to have to wait until I’m a fully functional human being. Here’s hoping I’ll be ranting again soon. For now, back to bed.
Feel better!
Thanks, I think I’m getting there…
Yes, indeed, feel better. I’m suffering from the Eastern KY plague, made worse because, well, I’m in Eastern KY.
I thought you’d get a kick out of it. It’ll integrate nicely into a post I was going to be writing about the “value-added” -ness that teachers (real, live, in-person subject experts) bring to the education experience.
Excuse me, I have to go curl up under my desk now. Ugh.
Thanks again for bringing it to my attention — and hope you feel better soon too!
Hope you feel better soon WoPro.
Thanks, working on it!
I’m sending this to my daughter the lawyer who has gone to the dark side.
It’s not the dark side, as far as I’m concerned…but yes, tell her to spread the gospel!
Feel better, WoPro. Too much fun in TX?
Off to read your link.
Thanks, and unfortunately no, this isn’t the result of partying too hard (I wish!). It’s merely the result of out-of-control allergies, which happen every spring — ugh!
Wow…thanks for posting the link! Finally…the humanities are seen as valuable! About time too!
I know, I was pretty geeked too!
Hope you feel better!
Thanks, I’m getting there!
I am most intrigued. I too agree that scientific thinking alone will not save the world.
Yeah, but what we need is wholesale recognition of that…
For God’s sake, don’t encourage departments or advisors to pin this up until it is up on the doors of boardrooms, HR departments and golf clubs and they have actually hired one or two humanities grads. I approached a company whose CEO had said much the same thing over several years to an institute I have been affiliated with. As it turns out, they think it is a good “idea” but would not touch someone with a History PhD with a ten foot pole. “Transferable skills” are not very useful if no one outside of the academic world really believes they exist.
I don’t agree. The outside world will never come to this conclusion of its own accord, so we cannot merely wait for it to believe. What we need a concentrated campaign of people saying the humanities are useful, over and over again, in the right way — which is why I think this article is such a boon. For too long, humanities people have tried to sell their product with stupid, vague, and ineffective arguments (Founding Fathers/ ‘basis of Western civilization’ kind of crap).
Saying ‘Harvard Business Review’, on the other hand, is going to get you a lot more respect right off the bat. So while I agree that it’s a tough sell to get from idea to reality, the key is to get a concerted chorus of parents, students, advisors and anyone else, on message, until people generally believe it’s true. That’s the only way this is going to work.
Did you ever watch The Riches? My favorite episode was ‘Believe the Lie’.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that it’s a lie. I just think that we should stop telling it to arts students in particular. It’s what I was told as an undergraduate (in fact, older colleagues characterize it as a “very 90s thing to say”, given it’s popularity at least here in Canada then). I was told the same thing as a graduate student, and have told it to my own undergraduates. The trouble is, no one wants to hire them when they graduate, and they feel like the victims of some kind of fraud (i.e. like I lied to them). I would prefer it if universities and departments targeted business programs and businesses themselves with, say, co-op programs aimed at putting arts and humanities students in business and administrative positions to let them demonstrate how great they really are to the people who do the hiring.
Ah, got it. It’s true that the humanities have been lying (and it is a lie, as no one really believes it, I think) to their grads for too long, but as I said, I think that it’s partly due to poor strategy, poor rhetoric, and not actually believing/understanding what they’re saying. I definitely agree that humanities departments should be targeting businesses themselves and doing more to engage with money-making type professions. Alas, I fear there’s a definite bias against doing so…which brings me back to why the Harvard Business Review needs to be on the reading list of humanities advisors, so people can communicate.
Well Max, why do many of the CEOs in Germany have PhDs? It’s also well known that in Germany that the business world have very strong ties with the academic world and the governent. How come the German economy is recovering faster than the other economies in the world including the US? Could it be that German business are more highly qualified (with PhDs) in comparison to business types in the US who are best may have an undergraduate degree??
Yes, and Germany did just force its very popular Minister of Defence to resign over allegations that he had plagiarized part of his dissertation several years ago, but it is changing fast. German business education is rapidly adopting the North American MBA program, and German grad students I work with are now being told by firms that their PhDs no longer qualify them as more desirable employees, so here’s your mop. They are beginning to experience many of the same problems that we do, unfortunatley.
I’ve heard that from other people as well. Boo that!
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