National Humanities Alliance

March 31, 2010 – A March 21st opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education by UCLA English Professor Robert N. Watson,  entitled “The Humanities Really Do Produce a Profit,” recently sparked renewed discussion of the value of the humanities from an economic angle.  In the piece, Watson cites recent data from UCLA and other sources as evidence to debunk "the widespread myth that other units and departments subsidize the humanities" by showing that many humanities programs generate a profit when student tuition, full costs associated with research activities, and other factors affecting a university's bottom line are properly taken into account.  

 

Watson argues that across-the-board cuts on teaching staff imposed at UCLA and other higher education institutions in response to the current financial crisis are driven by a mistaken assumption "that scientific researchers always subsidize the humanities" through grants revenue. "The entire teaching staff of Writing Programs," notes Watson, "which is absolutely essential to UCLA's educational mission, has been sent firing notices, even though the spreadsheet shows that program generating $4.3-million dollars in fee revenue, at a cost of only $2.4-million."  In addition to hitting teaching-intensive humanities departments especially hard, he warns, such measures may actually be cutting into the institution's core revenue centers.  Watson serves as Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Associate Vice-Provost for Educational Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

 

Readers responded to Watson's analysis with a range of reactions and a number of substantive suggestions for further research on the subject.