As arts and humanities enrolment declines, could making programs more practical help?

CBC

01-03-2025

Sarah Mei Lyana isn't yet sure what she's going to do after graduation. As a political studies major at Vancouver Island University (VIU) in her second last semester, she's heard what people say about programs in the arts and humanities.
"Some of my friends are just like, 'Oh, what are you going to do with that? How does it help you?'" Lyana said. "It's a little bit demoralizing."
She says she loves what she studies at school, and has learned valuable skills there that are simply part of living a good life, like how to communicate. But the pressure to get a good job is real, and she knows the job market is competitive for folks with general undergraduate degrees.
"It does stress me out a little bit because, you know, in the society we live in you … have to get a good paying job to survive," Lyana said.
She's not alone in her worries. As economic uncertainty plus the rising cost of living — and of schooling — put pressure on students to pursue a degree that will guarantee them a stable, well-paying job, enrolment in some arts and humanities subjects, which includes subjects like religious studies and philosophy, has declined.
Western University in London, Ont., has seen a 28 per cent drop in enrollment in their arts and humanities faculty over the past decade. Last week, York University paused admissions to 18 degree programs, most of which were humanities or language majors like classics and classical studies, religious studies and Spanish.
And across Canada, humanities enrolment overall has dropped by about 70,000 students per year between the early 1990s and the 2022/23 school year, according to Statistics Canada data.
But according to some faculty, the content isn't the problem — it's the way arts and humanities programs are delivered that's lacking.
Lisa Young, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, says students do enjoy classes in these subjects.
"What we see in a lot of places is that, you know, first and second year courses in some of these disciplines … fill up pretty quickly, but students don't necessarily see where a degree in these [fields] will take them," Young, who also co-authored the book For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, told The Current 's Matt Galloway.
Rather than ditching these disciplines, some faculty — including Young — say making programs in these fields more practical for the job world is the best approach.
Why study arts or humanities in 2025?
Loleen Berdahl, Young's co-author and a professor of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan, says despite the decline, the skills that come with these degrees don't lack value.
How to research, think critically, communicate and apply ethics are examples of skills the humanities offer students, Berdahl says. She says those tools have never been more valuable than right now, given the swath of complex problems our society faces like rising political polarization and the use of AI.
"We're in a world where everything is being presented to us very much as black and white. The social sciences and humanities, the arts really teach us to see the shades of grey and to approach things with a lot of nuance," Berdahl told Galloway.
Ira Wells, a University of Toronto literature professor and writer, agrees. He says business leaders and hiring managers love the soft skills that humanities teach, like cultural awareness, collaboration and an ability to see the big picture.
He also says the idea that humanities graduates don't get good jobs is false. While those in STEM fields tend to make more right out of school, people with humanities degrees catch up in the long run.
Making degrees practical
Throughout education, professors in these disciplines should be pointing out how skills used in the classroom have applications in the real-world, says Berdahl.
For example, if a political science professor is getting students to predict the impact a political event will have on the economy, the teacher might point out how valuable those insights are to businesses who pay consultants to make these kinds of predictions.
Wells also says internships and fellowships should be routinely added to undergraduate humanities and arts degrees in order to add practical experience.
He points to what he sees as a good example at his own institution — the Scholars-in-Residence program, where upper-year undergrad students spend four weeks working as research assistants on projects led by their professors.
The research areas and end products range widely, from working to digitize and publish recently declassified documents from the Cold War, to displaying hip-hop archives in a range of visual media.
While research opportunities have long been plentiful in the sciences, Wells says they're more rare in the arts and humanities. Even the Scholars-in-Residence program is only about a decade old, he says, and came about when faculty realized research opportunities were few and far between for arts and humanities undergraduates.
"Undergraduates are capable," Wells said. "They have the ability to contribute. They just need to be given that opportunity."
Career courses can help
At Arizona State University, dean of humanities Jeffrey Cohen is also trying to show students the value of their own education.
When he joined the school in 2018, he surveyed students and found out that many of them didn't know what humanities even meant, and weren't sure what jobs they could lead to. But when students were asked about courses in the humanities and whether or not they seemed interesting, the answer was a resounding yes.
He's since started teaching a mandatory English course, called Your Degree in the World, that helps students prepare for the job market.
There, students create resumes, learn interview skills, hear from alumni about what they've gone on to do and more. One assignment asks students to reach out to someone who has a career they are interested in, and interview them about their path. Another has students identify a famous humanities or arts major, and assess what skills they might have learned during their education to help them find success.
At VIU, Lyana has been able to take part in research programs and scholarships that granted her practical experience, though those opportunities were ones she had to seek out herself and apply for. She says a course like this where she could learn about the different jobs that her degree could help her land sounds like it would be beneficial.
In his experience, Cohen says the career courses work. When students finish the course, he says they're less certain about what they'll do next than they were on the first day of class — but they're more comfortable in that uncertainty.
"The lesson of the class is that they're going to do a lot of things," Cohen said. "You're being trained to do whatever you want. I can't predict what it's going to be, but you're going to have the skills to ... follow your own path and make your own luck."
His students sure have. He keeps a list of what they've gone on to become, and the job titles so far include Emmy award-winning foreign correspondent, founder of a marketing agency, state director of COVID-19 response, comic book writer, novelist and founding partner of a venture capital firm, to name a few.