| Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?  Illustration by Hudson Christie “The crisis, when it came, arrived so quickly that its scale was hard to recognize at first,” Nathan Heller writes, in a compelling and deeply reported piece in this week’s issue. The crisis in question? Humanities enrollments are in free fall at colleges across the country. During the past decade, the study of English and history has fallen by a third, and some universities have contemplated renaming their English departments or eliminating the major altogether. Heller visits Harvard and Arizona State University, where he speaks with students, professors, and administrators to understand what’s going on. Student debt plays a role, but Heller finds a sharp decline in humanities enrollment even in its absence. Many students tell him they love literature but view the humanities as a luxury, a “hobby” for the well-off. “You don’t go to Harvard for basket weaving,” one student recalls a parent saying. Then there’s technology. “How has it changed me?” a Columbia professor says. “I probably read five novels a month until the two-thousands. If I read one a month now, it’s a lot.” As Heller notes, assigning “Middlemarch” in this climate is “like trying to land a 747 on a small rural airstrip.” As he digs deeper, Heller follows the changing funding patterns in American higher education—and the changing cultural prestige that humanities carry in society at large. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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