Oh, the humanities!
In 1979, federal grants for science were worth five times those for the humanities. By 1998, 33 times more. In 2011, 200 times more. Meanwhile, the number of American bachelor’s degrees in disciplines such as language, history, and the classics has been declining for decades — from 14 percent in 1966 to 7 percent in 2010. At Harvard College, the trend is the same, though less steep: 17 percent of students are humanities concentrators today, down from 21 percent about a decade ago. Interest in humanities degrees is declining according to other measures, too. For instance, the number of incoming freshmen at Harvard who say they will concentrate in the humanities drops 57 percent by the end of their third semester. Against this backdrop, and a few weeks before Harvard releases a report on the state of the humanities, a panel of experts met Tuesday in front of a capacity crowd at Radcliffe...