The recession that began in 2008 resulted in universities across the continent clamping down on the purse strings in every possible way. This clamp-down manifested itself in non-tenured faculty layoffs, departments closing and merging to save on administrative costs, and the devastating hiring freezes that terrified entire cohorts of graduating PhD students.  If you are in academia, I am not telling you anything you didn’t already know and experience first hand.

Currencies, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

As a result of the funding becoming so tight, departments have fought with one another over who should get what remaining monies, and  the arts have been accused of benefitting from the subsidies of programs like medicine and business which are traditionally perceived to be the university cash cows. This is part of the reason why the arts have shouldered a large brunt of the budget cuts.

The reality of funding, however, is more complex than that. According to Professor Robert N. Watson, “The social sciences are the only ones that generate more tuition income than 100 percent of their total expenditure…whereas units such as engineering and agriculture run at a loss.” Reem Hanna-Harwell, Assistant dean of the humanities at UCLA calculated the numbers and discovered that the humanities there generate over $59 million in student fees, while spending only $53.5 million.

This is consistent with the results of Professor Christopher Newfield’s case study , which suggests that “the money that departments generate through teaching enrollments that the humanists do not spend on their almost completely unfunded research is routinely skimmed and sent elsewhere in the university.” In other words, the humanities could in actuality be the subsidizers.

I do not mean to imply here that financial arguments should fuel reasons for departmental cuts and hiring freezes, only that the arts do not deserve the blame for squandering funds in this economy. Cutting funding or eliminating departments does not save money (especially if these departments are self-sustaining) and only shifts burdens and debts onto other departments in the arts to provide students with their language and humanities requirements. Even if history departments could not pay for themselves, they (like every other subject) have intrinsic value for students and for the regional, national, and global communities that cannot ultimately be measured in terms of dollars and cents, regardless of the economic climate.