I’ve been writing for as long as I could pick up a pencil. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed, and I like to think it always came easily to me. Even more importantly, it’s something I thought would always be accessible to everyone.
But the humanities are gradually becoming less and less available at dozens of universities across America. Colleges have started to forfeit their humanities classes in order to prioritize their Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) programs. While STEM is incredibly important for education systems, the question in the air is, how will this affect humanity majors in the future? Why might the humanities feel so undervalued?
Humanities majors are typically broad, including (but not limited to) religion, philosophy, English, foreign language, and the visual arts.
“When a programmer is really strong in STEM, but has never taken a humanities class in his life to learn how to think critically or feel empathy for others, he might end up making something that hurts people,” Liligrace Desmond (‘27) said. She’s currently working towards applying to colleges to become a fine arts major, and fears that her major will soon be taken away from her.
Eden Suoth, a social studies teacher at ORHS, initially went to UNH for mechanical engineering, and switched to philosophy halfway through.
“I felt like my soul was legitimately dying…,” Suoth explained after realizing his engineering education wasn’t exactly what he thought it was going to be. “There are incredibly interesting things in STEM. You learn a lot about how the world works, and how to manipulate the world in order to get various things done, but it doesn’t really tell you how you should live your life.”
Suoth also brought up the moral implications as Desmond mentioned. He started with the fact that as he progressed along with his mechanical engineering degree, it seemed like his only option would be going into weaponry design and creation.
“I wanted to go into mechanical engineering because I wanted to create technology that would help people. And quickly I realized, where the money is at in mechanical engineering, is not helping people… it’s increasingly in defense manufacturing companies. So essentially if I wanted to make it big in engineering, I would be going to a company… in designing planes and bombs that would be dropped on people that have a darker complexion than I do…”
Suoth explained how many of his friends who went through with their engineering degree are doing just this, and that he couldn’t ever see himself getting paid to possibly do this to others. “They’re not thinking about the consequences that their actions have, on greater humanity, on who benefits and who gets harmed by their education,” he added.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this was true. When I thought of engineering, I thought of people making car parts, computers, or buildings. Not bombs.
But looking into it, Suoth is absolutely right. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 75% percent of engineering majors worked with either computers or building once graduating college. The most popular job in this 75% is Aerospace Engineering, which often includes the plane companies that build bombs for the U.S., like Lockheed Martin. With a bachelor’s degree alone there, you can make up to $130,000 a year, but deal with the fact that you might be making weapons possibly killing people in other countries for political advantage.
The humanities don’t focus on this. It hits on questions that are much less easily answered than STEM problems, which usually have set explanations. Some examples of these big humanities questions might be like why literature is important, the evolution and communications of languages, and how to express ourselves with art.
Diannely Antigua is the resident poet of the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Foundation at UNH. Antigua teaches and does workshops through UNH and the Foundation. The Nossrat Yassini Foundation itself is dedicated to the woman Nossrat Yassini, who has since passed. Her family is funding the poetry program at UNH through donations alone. Without Nossrat Yassini and her family deciding to fund the program through donation, the program wouldn’t exist. It would be one less program available to students at UNH.
Antigua is also a multi-award-winning author, who majored in fine arts and worked her way up to where she is now. She said, “I don’t think that I would be alive without poetry, and I don’t say that lightly. And I don’t mean that to be a reductive thing to say either, but I grew up in a strict religious system, and also in an abusive home. And poetry, writing literature, were the things that kept me alive and kept me afloat.”
The arts are often a refuge for people, Antigua explained. The humanities allow a lot of freedom, as long as the person has the incentive to create. STEM classes allow you to create as well, but not in the way humanities can often be left up to the artist interpretation.
Antigua talked about how the humanities can be a place where people are allowed to
freely express themselves, and with colleges getting rid of these programs, it gets rid of this creative communication. It also limits the extending opportunities for students who are looking for programs and jobs that were once easily accessible to them, either during college or post-graduation.
Desmond attributed part of this defunding to students not wanting to use their own creativity and personal ideas. “I think partially it’s because of the lack of education, but I think partially it’s a rise in anti-intellectualism. I think a lot of the humanities, specifically things like English and philosophy and even the visual arts, creates this environment where people are forced to come up with their own original thoughts and stories and ideas… and society has come to this point where we want to conform and prioritize STEM,” Desmond said.
Another large aspect is the stigmatization around the humanities. The National Science Foundation found in 2021 that on average, STEM degrees have a 86% higher employment rate than the 78% of the rest of the kinds of jobs. They also found that STEM majors typically make at base 15,000 dollars more annually than the humanities.
This sort of statistic shows how undervalued the humanities is, and how it’s not seen as a requirement for careers now, despite how much social and humanitarian insight it can add. The yearly salary is enough for parents and even schools prior to college to discourage students pursuing a humanities degree.
But this isn’t meant to undervalue STEM majors. Over 31 million people work in STEM fields in America, according to the National Science Foundation. There’s also no doubt that they’re necessary, because we wouldn’t have a lot of the technology that we do now. STEM provides structure and body, but with no humanities, there’s not much of a heart.
Antigua emphasized the importance of the humanities being an outlet, saying, “It’s been just like a buoy for me, and it’s kept me connected to the world in a way that I don’t think I would have been otherwise.” She talked about how the humanities can tie into everything and provides foundation, even for STEM professions, to the ones who consider it.
“A lot of the messages that students are hearing around the humanities are negative, especially when it comes to financial stability later in life. And I think that narrative needs to change, needs to stop… in order to change that narrative, we also need to change the conversation around these types of opportunities and art in general… that conversation needs to start middle school and high school, and I’d argue even younger,” Antigua added.
However, ORHS students wanting to get a humanities degree shouldn’t feel discouraged by this. There are so many more career options than just education if you choose to pursue that in college. It’s important to still take your humanities classes starting in high school, and not just when you’ve fulfilled your credit to graduate. High schools and colleges directly influence each other, as Suoth brought up, and if one loses something, it’s likely the other will face the loss as well. It’s similar to a domino effect.
As Antigua said, “If you really want something, if something brings you joy, if something intrigues you, fascinates you, I think that we need to fight for it. Whether it’s on the personal level, but also obviously when it comes to our society, I think it’s important for us to continue to fight for it. It’s important for us to not cave into the narrative of what’s happening right now.”
Things aren’t exactly optimistic for the humanities at UNH, or even colleges across the country, but I like to hold hope. There are so many incredibly passionate people working hard to keep the humanities alive, including the interviewees here. Even some of those going into medicine or STEM, including myself, will always want the freedom that the humanities allow. In ten years, I hope to see myself as someone not only practicing psychiatry, but also finding the time to write at the end of my long days.
-Emily Taylor
Mouth of the River 
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