Recently, a few of the Lanthorn’s columnists (myself included) have written about higher education and the dilemmas that, at least in our view, it currently faces. Mostly, our focus has been on topics that concern us students at Grand Valley: we’ve wondered how a liberal education might be considered “useful;” we’ve critiqued the tendency of many of us students—along with some professors and administrators—to treat higher education as if it were some sort of business transaction; we’ve reflected on the fact that our majors might not appear useful to those outside the university system. Through it all, our attempt has partly been to respond to an issue that seems to befuddle everyone concerned with the fate of higher education: how can certain disciplines—particularly the humanities and some of the social sciences—justify themselves in the face not only of tightening budgets but also, it appears, waning public and student interest? English majors, history majors, philosophy majors—they’ve all got a stake in this.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Mellon Puts Humanities in Close Touch with Urban Studies,” takes up essentially the same issue. The author, Marc Perry, questions how anyone can demonstrate the relevance of the humanities at a time when “reports and news articles have renewed a sense that they are in crisis?” As a potential answer, Perry discusses a new initiative at some major universities to unite disciplines such as architecture and urban studies with the humanities to come up with a new way to tackle issues facing major cities today: issues like overcrowding, climate change, and limited housing. The initiative, not only serving a practical use, will give humanities professors and students a new way to talk about the relevance of their work to society. As an architecture professor at UCLA is quoted in the article, “the relevance of the humanities has to have a new rhetoric.”

This initiative seems to address more than just the “relevance” of the humanities, though. It may, at least to some extent, provide a new opportunity for people working in the humanities to answer one undying question: how might our work truly change the lives of others, beyond the realm of the practical or the “useful”?

Students in the humanities—say, English majors—might benefit from asking the same question even now, in college. Last week, I mentioned a program run by the philosophy department—Community Working Classics—in which GVSU students go out to prisons or Job Corps to teach classes in their disciplines. When I first heard about this program a couple years ago, it seemed that all the students involved had been enlivened by the experience. To them, their course work in college, especially in the humanities, took on greater meaning; their studies had not only a personal use but also a social use that transcended practicality or simple utility. They were taking the humanities out into the world and testing their relevance. They asked, “can the humanities actually make someone’s life better?”

It’s likely almost every humanities or social science major has asked a similar question. The best prescription for that which ails higher education, then, might be for more students—and professors—to hazard a new kind of answer. Perhaps programs like Community Working Classics and the young urban humanities provide the best opportunity to do so.