There’s no polite way to say this: Canadian universities have an Arts problem.
At the heart of institutions’ looming fiscal problems is their inability to convince major customer groups (government, students) to pay the desired price for the product they’re offering. The reason for this, mainly, is the perception that the product on offer is not value-for-money. Part of this is due to our ludicrously opaque student aid systems, which lead students and families and politicians into thinking that net tuition is a heck of a lot higher than it actually is (see here for more on that, or here for the full report). But part of it also has to do with the fact that people are under the impression that returns on education ain’t what they used to be.
That’s not entirely fair, of course. The recession is responsible for most of the downturn in graduate jobs, not some sudden change in what the market “wants” in terms of skills. And it’s not even true that returns are falling for all fields of study: some have held up relatively well in recent years. But it is a problem in Arts. Look what data from the annual survey of Ontario Graduates says: though employment rates remain high, the actual monetary returns are very bad at the moment – down roughly 20% in real terms over the past few years.
Figure 1: Average Income (in $2013) Two Years After Graduation, Ontario Graduating Classes from 2003-2011, Selected Disciplines
Not surprisingly, students are voting with their feet. Look at the pattern of applications by program in Ontario: after a series of small declines in Arts, last year saw a decline of 10%.
Figure 2: Share of Total Applications to Ontario Universities, by Selected Fields of Study, 2003-14
The point here is that, increasingly, the perception of Arts is that they aren’t very useful. And yes, it’s annoying that people want to reduce education to considerations of short-term employment, but it is what it is. When we ask people to pay so much (either privately or via tax dollars), people expect results, and they aren’t seeing them.
So something has to change in the Arts; not just for their own sake, but for the sake of all of higher education, which is being tarred with the same brush. And that something is a greater focus on employability.
Now, even saying something like that causes paroxysm among some: “I’m not going to create cannon-fodder for the knowledge economy, etc. etc.” But as I’ve said before, it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of talented academics to devise a curriculum that meets both the traditional aims of a liberal arts degree, and that places more emphasis on employability skills (what is the ability to critically appraise arguments, appreciate complex chains of causation, and clear and effective writing if not employability skills?). Indeed, I’ve even suggested there are some good models available from fields like medicine to do exactly this.
But if fixing the Arts was as simple as that, it probably would have happened already. The biggest problem with Arts isn’t that the curriculum is difficult to alter, it’s that to a large extent curriculum simply doesn’t exist. For decades, Arts faculties in North America have been headed inexorably towards a “buffet”, where if you take a few courses from column A, a few from column B, and we’ll call it a degree as long as the credit hours line-up. Or, more bluntly, there is no curriculum, there’s just a bunch of courses. This is completely unlike Arts faculties in the rest of the world, where course choice is more limited and degrees are much more structured.
So here’s the real issue: the preliminary work required to improve curriculum – that is, getting folks to realize there’s a curriculum in the first place – is therefore pretty massive. And this is why it’s likely that, even though Arts needs to improve quickly to stem declining enrolments, it’s unlikely that change will actually occur quickly.
In the best of all worlds, this is a task people should have started working on years ago. But as they say, the second-best time to start anything is now. We should roll up our sleeves and get cracking.
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The problem is self-continuing: In the face of falling enrollment, departments and programs are less likely to cooperate on creating a meaningful and unified curriculum, especially if they face an existential threat in the form of driver-driven or responsibility-centred budget models. Why would history ask its students to study English, if they’re desperate for every student they can get, and will be penalized for losing any?
Moreover, all the other faculties around are likely to move the sorts of courses that the arts traditionally provided into their own faculties, hoarding student numbers. Short of a true re-commitment to the goals of a liberal education, humanities learning — and hence, an important part of our civilization — is doomed to decline.
Thanks Daniel for the column on Arts degrees. I think we (Arts at UBC) may be an example of a Faculty that rolled up their sleeves a few years ago. We’ve nearly completed a bottoms-up and enthusiastic process of learning outcomes for all Arts degrees; posted “what can I do with my Arts degree?” pages for all programs; initiated a massive careers outcomes process (alongside learning outcomes) which will result in e-portfolios for all students; launched a dual BA-MM with our Business school; revved up Co-op (including a PhD Co-op program in English); and we’re encouraging our Departments to investigate (with the Alumni office) where all of there students have gone and what they’re doing now. The first of these surveys is out for Classics, and the results (on employment, not yet salary) are encouraging. We’re consulting with our student association on this. What’s most surprising is the goodwill of the faculty around this initiative. We’ve heard very little about the “corporatization” of the university and lots about how much people have learned about curriculum. Given the challenges on the Arts salary front, I thought you’d be interested in a reasonably optimistic report from the front lines on this issue.