From the issue dated April 19, 2002
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Let's Quantify the HumanitiesBy ROBERT M. SOLOWIn 1998, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities sponsored a meeting at which many scholars and education leaders voiced strong concern about the lack of public understanding and support for the humanities. We at the academy asked, How can we articulate in compelling ways the continued importance of the humanities to our national life? A fundamental part of the problem, we quickly discovered, is that it is almost impossible to find reliable and up-to-date data on many aspects of the humanities -- in contrast to the sciences, which have long been the subject of, and had access to, a broad collection of quantitative information, the Science and Engineering Indicators. As a result, the academy is recommending the creation of a much-needed counterpart: the Humanities Indicators, a set of empirical databases about such subjects as the education of students in humanistic disciplines; the growth of traditional departments and new fields; the employment of humanists both within and beyond academe; and the availability of financing for the humanities. Of course, such a comprehensive set of databases cannot be created overnight. Systematic data collection is not a spontaneous, natural activity. It is costly and tedious, and has to be done for a purpose; otherwise it is unlikely to be done at all. Moreover, the purpose itself is often indirect: The availability of Humanities Indicators will not directly lead to the writing of better history, philosophy, or literary criticism, any more than the publication of Science and Engineering Indicators can unravel any puzzles about superconductivity or developmental biology. Yet good data, especially in the form of consistently defined time series, measured regularly and continuously, would be an important contribution to the infrastructure of the various disciplines within the humanities. A few well-designed statistical surveys could help us to understand, in a way that anecdotes cannot, what has been happening in the recruitment, training, and career opportunities of students of history, philosophy, and literature. Eventually, if more and better information leads colleges, foundations, and the government to make wiser decisions, they might avoid the overand under-recruitment of students into the various disciplines. Students could be trained in ways that are better adapted to the functions they will perform and the lives they will lead. That cannot be bad for the intellectual quality of each discipline, and is likely to be good. So why is data collection in the humanities still at such a primitive stage, when Science and Engineering Indicators, published every two years, is already some 1,200 pages long and still growing? I ask the question only because the answer is so obvious: It is because society at large thinks, correctly, that the science-and-engineering enterprise is important for the economic health and progress of the nation. As a result, major colleges, Congress, the press, and others want to know how the enterprise is doing. How well is it gearing up to meet demands for trained people? How efficiently is it disseminating new knowledge about science and technology? How thoroughly is it matching the demand for scientists and engineers, and for the products of research, with the supply? Anyone who has observed the nexus between the science-and-engineering enterprise and other institutions of our society knows how anxious and insecure those who perform basic research feel, with or without Science and Engineering Indicators. They fear, with good reason, that support for curiosity-driven research will be neglected because politicians, foundation executives, and citizens generally can see no clear connection between the activities of pure science and the national output of goods and services. The recognized exception is illuminating: Almost any research at the frontiers of molecular and cell biology could presumably lead, by some now unforeseeable route, to useful medical discoveries. That is, no doubt, why Congress and successive presidential administrations bury the National Institutes of Health in money but are stingier with the National Science Foundation, often trying to direct the latter's funds away from science into programs linked to perceived national needs. Academic economists who work at quantifying the social return of investments in industrial research and development are used to being asked by their colleagues in basic science whether one could not calculate an analogous rate of return for money spent on astrophysics and other scientific research aimed at answering questions far removed from marketable goods and services or visible environmental amenities. The answer is probably no, because the chains of cause and effect are too numerous, long, tortuous, and diffuse, and the individual links are too chancy. They may lend themselves to the indirect measurements that are possible in simpler cases, when expenditures at one end of the intellectual pipeline can be correlated with useful results at the other end. But that's much harder to do with the humanities, because even the final product, however we define it, can rarely be measured in terms of dollars. Net contribution to gross domestic product is not exactly what the humanities are about. (One imagines that pure science, too, is closer to this state of affairs than anxious researchers like to admit.) On the other hand, everyone knows that even the most ivory-tower chemistry can lead to some unexpected material or process. The creation of a decent database for the humanities will not solve the problem of making the importance of humanistic education and research real to the world of legislators, governors, and citizens. That difficult job is never-ending, and not getting any easier. For anyone who takes humanistic education and research seriously, however, an Indicators project offers a major tool for evaluating and improving the institutions and routines that create our students, consumers, practitioners, and professors -- and that provide them with the opportunity to study, consume, practice, and profess. Those involved in the humanities, including financial supporters, know deplorably little about what is taught to whom and by whom, how long it takes, where graduates and postgraduates go, what they do when they get there, and how many of them there are. It would be a small miracle if there were not imbalances and inefficiencies throughout the educational process. If those could be identified, it might be possible to correct them, freeing up resources for productive use. It might even be possible to show financial supporters where and how an infusion of new resources could have a disproportionately large effect on the capacity of the system to produce new ideas and train more people. There are bound to be opportunities for systematic self-improvement revealed by a Humanities Indicators. Everyone needs to see how institutions and their practices create incentives, and how incentives create results. But the value of an effort to collect and publish consistent data goes far beyond the administrative imagination, important as that may be. "Know thyself" is an injunction that ought to resonate with anyone who cares about the humanities, whether as producer or consumer. It can only be a major advance to know more about and understand better the institutions that allow humanists to work and the humanities to flourish. Humanities Indicators would be an important step toward self-awareness. Robert M. Solow is a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Institute Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a foundation scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1987. This article is adapted from "Making the Humanities Count," being issued this month by the academy. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B20
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education