I’ve always known my educational goals: enroll in college as a humanities major, explore the literature I love and eventually attend law school. I’m a junior in college now, closer to the end of that journey than the start.
My journey hasn’t changed, but the environment surrounding it has. In the last 10 years, enrollment in humanities majors has decreased by 17 percent. We have experienced a radical shift in educational culture, priorities and goals.
Our educational system is more results-driven than ever. Some students measure themselves by their ranking, expected salary and GPA. They choose a major not because the knowledge is an end in itself but because the major can be a means to an end. Students are more concerned with the results of a degree than the process itself, in my view.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with desiring a lucrative job or wanting to attend an elite institution, the consequence of such a corporatized view of education is a culture of apathy and dishonesty in the classroom. Students are committing academic dishonesty more than ever and increasingly relying on AI for basic cognitive tasks. Our results-driven culture is also affecting societal attitudes toward the humanities. The tendency to prioritize course difficulty and postgraduation results leads to a broader cultural trend in which the humanities are dismissed.
An offshoot of this view is that we laud the work of STEM students while devaluing the humanities as unimportant and irrelevant. STEM is often deemed more difficult, and can be, but the humanities add depth through the study, and creation, of art and laws, philosophy and moral and ethical codes, which foster critical thinking and orient our society. Difficulty is something to be valued, but depth is just as important.
We should honor the importance of both, and encourage the pursuit of depth in higher education as an end in itself.
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Unfortunately, lawmakers in Florida don’t see it that way. In 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law mandating the annual surveying of roughly 500,000 students, faculty and staff to identify potential political biases and anti-conservative sentiment on college campuses. Such bias is often attributed to the humanities.
The law was paused indefinitely after the 2022 survey. Although the student results were not statistically significant due to a low response rate, the faculty results contradicted the governor’s claims that “woke ideology” had pervaded academia. Still, the flurry of legislation and cultural overhauls in higher education continued.
The governor’s agenda is making it increasingly difficult to pursue a humanities degree; he has pursued devaluing faculty expertise, removing any course or program that “teaches identity politics” and forcing the Western canon to be included in general education humanities classes.
At one point, some Florida Republicans even attempted to remove humanities majors from eligibility for the lottery-funded Bright Futures Scholarship, saying that it should provide full funding only for those whose degree programs lead “directly to employment.”
In response to the “Western canon” provision in Florida bill SB 266, Florida’s board of governors removed 702 of 1,181 courses as general education from the University of Florida, a large portion in the humanities.
Those removed from the general education roster include courses on the Holocaust, African American history, women’s studies and religion (particularly Eastern religions). Although the courses are not being explicitly eliminated, students’ relatively rigid course loads make enrolling in and paying for a course that does not fulfill degree requirements nearly impossible.
By making it difficult for students to take these courses, the Florida legislature is restricting the diversity and breadth of class material without outrightly banning it. SB 266 acts on the back end to implicitly weed out classes that do not subscribe to “Western” perspectives or topics. Other portions of the statute and related laws act on the front end by prohibiting classes that use certain ideas or frameworks.
The legislation has also led faculty to self-censor discussions of topics related to DeSantis’ line of fire because they fear for their jobs, ultimately preventing a plethora of complex discussions.
Under the guise of rectifying a “wokeness” issue, these laws devalue humanities students, faculty and subjects and discourage students from participating in global education in a generalized, accessible setting. They honor difficulty over depth, contributing to the cultural misunderstandings in higher education.
Related: PROOF POINTS: The number of college graduates in the humanities drops for the eighth consecutive year
The current presidential administration has echoed similar plans for higher education nationwide. President Trump has claimed he will “reclaim” higher education from the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” Vice President JD Vance has expressed a similar sentiment, calling universities “the enemy” in 2021.
If they are successful, Florida’s humanities crisis will expand, further establishing higher education as a political playground and pushing depth away.
Through a college education in English, I have gained more than a rudimentary understanding of literature. I have learned to think more critically, analyze the world around me (not just the West) and create. However, since I entered the University of Florida in 2022, these restrictive laws and a results-driven culture have radically changed my classroom experience.
The culture surrounding the humanities needs to change to preserve advanced literacy and depth in education.
Recovering our educational depth requires a commitment to preserving the value of the humanities in all public education systems. We need to not only urge the widespread condemnation and removal of these laws but also reemphasize the importance of depth in our education.
Peyton Harris is a third-year English student at the University of Florida. Her research follows the effects of higher education legislation on Florida universities.
Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].
This story about humanities education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
