1st Edition

The Changing Face of Higher Education Is There an International Crisis in the Humanities?

Edited By Dennis Ahlburg Copyright 2019
    292 Pages
    by Routledge

    292 Pages
    by Routledge

    Over the last decade, a heated debate has raged in the US and the UK over whether the humanities are in crisis, and, if there is one, what form this crisis takes and what the response should be. Questioning how there can be such disagreement over a fundamental point, The Changing Face of Higher Education explores this debate, asking whether the humanities are in crisis after all by objectively evaluating the evidence at hand, and opening the debate up to a global scale by applying the questions to twelve countries from different continents.

    Each carefully chosen contributor considers the debate from the perspective of a different country. The chapters present data on funding, student enrolment in the humanities, whether the share of total enrolment in this area is falling, and answer the following questions:

    • What does each country mean by the ‘humanities’?
    • Is there a ‘crisis’ in the humanities in this country?
    • What are the causes for the crisis?
    • What are the implications for the humanities disciplines?

    Uniquely offering an objective evaluation of whether this crisis exists, the book will appeal to international humanities and higher education communities and policy-makers, including postgraduate students and academics.

    Chapter 1: Introduction  Chapter 2: An Australian Humanities Crisis?  Chapter 3: Is there a Crisis in the Humanities in Brazil? Ambivalences and Fragilities of a Late Higher Education System  Chapter 4: The Humanities as the Default Option in Higher Education: The Case of Egypt  Chapter 5: The Crisis of the Humanities and Social Sciences in France Today?  Chapter 6: To Be or Not To Be? Crisis and the Humanities in Germany  Chapter 7: Much Ado About Very Little: The [2015] Japanese Government Order that Japanese National University Abolish Their Humanities and Social Science Programmes  Chapter 8: The Humanities in Mexico: No Crisis, but No Shining Future Either  Chapter 9: Palestinian and Israeli Universities: Is there a Crisis of the Humanities?  Chapter 10: Hopeless Entanglement: The Short History of the Academic Humanities in South Africa  Chapter 11: Is there a crisis in the Humanities in the UK?  Chapter 12: The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’: Fact or Fiction?  Chapter 13: Conclusion

    Biography

    Dennis A. Ahlburg is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at Trinity University, Texas, USA. He was President of the University between 2010 and 2014. He has served as Dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, USA and Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, New College, University of Oxford, UK.