“When the economy tanked in 2009, some people predicted the demise of the liberal-arts degree. In 2012, The Chronicle reported that 30 percent of all new nurses had also passed Ph.D. qualifying exams in 20th-century poetry before abandoning their dissertations. Tenured professors began sleeping under their desks to protect their hard-earned window offices. And yet — like cockroaches, Styrofoam, and Harold Bloom — the humanities survived. Consider the shock waves we’ve endured: Universities stopped paying for conference travel. After a wave of armed protests, professors began talking with their colleagues at nearby universities. Study groups formed …” (more)
[Angela Sorby, Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 April]