The letters resurface | Choose your career | Additional features

The Humanities degree that gives its name to the Faculty of Humanities and Documentation of the University of A Coruña was canceled in 2017 due to a lack of students. But others took over, such as Industrial Fashion Management, Digital Information and Documentation Management or International Relations, with a strong humanistic content. “History, philosophy, anthropology and, especially, ethics and professional deontology have been incorporated into the different subjects that make up the curricula of these new degrees,” explains the dean, Manuela del Pilar Santos Pita, who is also president of the Association of Arts and Humanities Deans. An evolution of which Darwin would be proud, and which can also be seen in the alliances that the classic literary careers have sealed with other areas of knowledge: last year, to enter the degree of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Carlos III, bilingual, more than a 13 was needed; and almost 12 for Global Studies at Pompeu Fabra.

When, in June 2022, the University of Navarra had to make “the difficult decision” to approve the cessation of the offer of its Humanities degree from the 2022-2023 academic year, the only consolation was to see how other commitments with a humanist DNA were working: the possibility of taking double degrees, since 2011 with Communication (History and Journalism, Philosophy and Journalism), and since 2015 with Law (De Law and Philosophy, International Relations and History). Or the degree in Spanish Language and Literature with a specialization diploma in Creative Writing, implemented in 2022-2023 to replace the degrees in Hispanic Philology and Literature and Creative Writing, which from this academic year have ceased to be offered to new students. Review, renewal, evolution.

Renaissance

“I think we are at the beginning of a new renaissance in the humanities, encompassing the arts and humanities as a single whole,” says Víctor Padilla, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the International University of La Rioja (Unir). His impulse will come from, paradoxes of life, the “massive use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools”, which will lead companies to demand professional profiles “with deeper, more strategic knowledge”, he adds; that provide truly intelligent value, beyond that provided by machines. In the opinion of Samer Ajour el Zein, Vice Dean of Degree Programs and Research at EAE Business School, the humanities must be a complementary part of the marketing and digital communication, Business Administration and Management or data science. “It is also possible to offer mentions in the current titles with some humanist subjects in the third and fourth year,” he suggests.

It is common, at this point, to cite the article that the entrepreneur and professor Vivek Wadhwa wrote, in 2012, in The Washington Post under the following headline: ‘Why Silicon Valley Needs Doctors of Humanities’. The technological residents in the area have picked up the gauntlet, according to several also recurring examples. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, studied History and Literature; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, and Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr and Slack, majored in Philosophy, and Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, in Medieval History and Philosophy. “In other countries, the business world’s need for professionals with a solid humanistic background is being perceived,” says Santos Pita. With the capacity for intellectual reflection and critical reasoning to make decisions, solve problems and make improvements to technology, potentially lethal if the human being is not the main objective. “Technology that dehumanizes is very dangerous,” he warns.

breadth of vision

Jesús Zamora, Dean of Philosophy at the UNED (National University of Distance Education), does not believe that graduates of his Faculty encounter more (nor less) labor difficulties than those of other careers “other than the stars”, but he does detect that in Spain it is still not fully perceived that a professional with a humanistic background has “a capacity for vision, an open-mindedness, to go further…, which advances the company for which they work”. Thought, art, aesthetics or analysis are common in the so-called careers in letters, and lead to debate and reflection. “It is no longer so important to know how to use a software, which will be obsolete in a few months. Even for the computer world there are tools that generate basic code, freeing developers from low-level tasks. As a University, we have to provide students with higher knowledge and skills that will serve them not only for today’s world, but for the jobs of years to come”, Padilla points out.

“Of the 341,215 enrolled in private Spanish universities in the 2019-2020 academic year, only 14,986 were from Arts and Humanities; it is a figure less than 4.5% of the total volume. We still have to do a lot of pedagogy so that Spanish society understands the importance of humanistic profiles in the company”, insists Padilla. Although it seems that things are beginning to change: between 2015-2016 and 2020-2021 (the last year available in the official Educabase statistics), students in the Arts and Humanities branch have gone from 130,911 to 142,473, in an escalation without setbacks. The bulk is concentrated in public universities, where progression is also observed, in this case with ups and downs, between the 123,121 enrollments recorded in 2015-2016 and the 128,329 in 2020-2021.

The UNED has never detected a great drop in this branch of knowledge, but “in the last five or six years, and especially as a result of the pandemic, the rise has been spectacular; we have gone from 800 to 1,100 first-year students”, corroborates Zamora, for whom this is a trend that has been taking shape in the last 10 years, fueled by the controversy that raised the reduction in class hours in secondary school. “It had a rebound effect; many were interested in it, ”she maintains. Until exploding with the health crisis caused by covid-19. It is no coincidence that in the two Educabase graphs mentioned, the greatest rise occurs in the 2020-2021 academic year. “Events that cause existential concerns, such as the pandemic, globalization, the economic and social crisis, or AI, lead people to wonder about the meaning of everything that is happening,” explains the Dean of Philosophy at UNED.

A digital transformation

The U-Ranking 2021, from the Ivie (Valencian Institute of Economic Research) and the BBVA Foundation, certified the “great transformation” that the family of artistic studies had undergone, the creator of new degrees in the Arts and Humanities branch focused on the digital transformation of the humanities, or related to animation and multimedia, or design. Santos Pita mentions the existence of degrees that mix philosophy and technology, and some interuniversity degree in science, technology and humanities; he considers them steps forward, although not enough. “Most of the degrees offered by Spanish universities are located within the same field of knowledge; some combine the humanities with the social sciences, but there is still a need to incorporate more humanistic content in all the degrees, and implement double degrees that unite the humanistic with the scientific-technological ”, he says.

In the last decade, the number of students who opt for a humanist training at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the (private) University of Navarra has increased, according to its dean, Julia Pavón. If in the 2013-2014 academic year there were 313 undergraduate, 11 master’s, 114 doctorate and 183 own degree students, in 2022-2023 there are 566 undergraduate, 13 master’s, 112 doctorate and 282 own degree students. More and more applicants for studies less classic, as verified by the dean, who gives as an example the bilingual degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, which has been taught since 2018 with more than 50% of subjects in English, 25% of its international students, and stays outside of Spain. “It covers three key disciplines and is a good example of the evolution of the Humanities”, she recounts.

New labor doors

The degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Navarra allows its graduates to work in multinationals, international NGOs, the media or governments. Unir’s Master’s in Digital Humanities opens up “new job opportunities both in research and in multidisciplinary projects,” Padilla details. The degree in Digital Information and Documentation Management at the University of A Coruña provides “much-needed” professionals to companies, museums, archives, libraries, cultural consultancies, and foundations. The American job board for philosophers Philjobs.org shows offers from technology companies hunting for experts in artificial intelligence ethics, from the big data, robotics or neurotechnology. They are good knocks against two mantras that still permeate among the student population: if you do Humanities you are almost exclusively devoted to teaching; If you study a career in letters you will not find a job.