The Humanities Need a Business Model, Not A Sales Pitch

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece again identifies the long-recognized gap between what a humanities major actually teaches and what students and parents think it leads to. It's the same important argument the humanities have had with the market for decades.

What continues to amaze me is how predictably and naively private universities respond to this issue each time it raises to a level requiring institutional attention. Faced with declining enrollments in humanities programs, most private universities (particularly tuition-dependent privates that stake their identity on a liberal arts mission) reach for the same failed corrective actions and pronounce to the world their commitment to protecting the canon, hoping their liberal arts degree requirements will smuggle enough students into humanities courses. 

I'm not aware of any private university where this strategy has ever worked, and I suspect it will be catastrophic under current enrollment and fiscal conditions. Doubling down on legacy majors while traditional enrollment and net tuition revenue collapse simply burns through valuable time and money private universities don't have. A better and more sustainable path is structural. Stop treating the major as the only unit of value and start building stackable, workforce-facing credentials out of humanities coursework. Consider:

Literature / English:

• Narrative & UX Writing Certificate — pulls from literary analysis and creative writing courses, aimed at tech, marketing, and product teams that need people who can write clear microcopy and user-facing content.
• Grant & Proposal Writing Credential — built from composition/rhetoric courses, targeted at nonprofit, arts-admin, and public-sector careers.
• Editorial & Publishing Certificate — drawing on literature and writing courses, oriented toward small presses, content agencies, and corporate communications.

History

• Archives & Cultural Heritage Management Certificate — pairs historical methods courses with practical training in digitization, metadata, and records management for museums, libraries, and corporate archives.
• Policy & Public History Credential — for students headed into local government, historical preservation boards, or think tanks; teaches how to translate historical research into policy briefs.

Philosophy:

• Applied Ethics & Compliance Certificate — distinct from a single gen-ed ethics course, this stacks logic, ethics, and decision-theory coursework for students entering health care, finance, or tech (AI ethics, data governance).
• Critical Reasoning & Argumentation Credential — marketed toward pre-law, consulting, and policy-adjacent students who need to demonstrate structured analytical thinking to employers.

Languages (French, Spanish, etc.):

• Medical/Legal Interpreting Certificate — language courses combined with domain-specific vocabulary and interpreting practicum, aimed directly at health-care and legal-services job markets.
• International Trade & Localization Credential — for language majors pairing coursework with business, aimed at import/export, logistics, or global marketing roles.

Religious Studies / Ethnic Studies:

• Cross-Cultural Competency Certificate — repackages coursework in religion, ethnic studies, and anthropology for HR, corporate training, and nonprofit sectors increasingly required to demonstrate cultural-competency training.
• Community & Faith-Based Organizing Credential — aimed at students heading into nonprofit management, social work, or public health outreach roles.

Sociology / Anthropology:

• User Research & Ethnographic Methods Certificate — trains students in qualitative research methods for UX research, market research, and product teams.
• Community Needs Assessment Credential — for students entering public health, social services, or urban planning.

Communication / Rhetoric:

• Crisis & Risk Communication Certificate — pulls from rhetoric and media studies courses, aimed at PR, public affairs, and corporate communications roles.
• Public Speaking & Executive Presence Credential — a short, stackable non-credit certificate that's easy to market to working adults through continuing-ed channels.

These are recommendations that have been made for years from schools and colleges of professional & continuing studies (I've made many of them myself). The most significant barrier I've found to implementing such an obvious strategy is that these workforce-ready credentials aren't understood by myopic provosts, doughy academic affairs departments, or the traditional humanities departments that grant the majors. As employer- and industry-informed alternative credentials, they of course need to reside in PCE/O units because they are the only units within the university built to assign real market value to credentials, issue them quickly, and market them correctly and strategically to employers and adult learners. Housing these credentials in a PCE/O unit assigns them a necessarily distinct ethos, separate from but in addition to the humanities degree, without asking the traditional department to become something it isn't.

Yeah, it's that simple.