Mellon Gives Another Boost to the Humanities in Higher Ed Amid Waning Student Interest

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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation wants you to know that — to paraphrase Mark Twain — reports of the demise of the humanities have been greatly exaggerated. 

An iconic arts and humanities grantmaker, and one that other funders in those fields take cues from, the foundation has for years been doing what it can to strengthen the humanities. Specifically, it has sought to bolster humanities education amid waning interest from students and concurrent efforts — including from countless ed funders — to boost the STEM fields. Mellon’s most recent contribution: $25 million to underwrite internships for humanities majors at five public colleges and universities.

The initiative will support paid internships for students majoring in the humanities at the following institutions: California State University, Fresno; City College of New York; Old Dominion University; University of Missouri — Kansas City; and University of North Carolina Greensboro. The goal? “To enhance awareness of the employability of humanities majors and thus to promote the study of the humanities among undergraduates,” an announcement from Mellon read.

For decades, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has been the philanthrosphere’s “mothership funder” for liberal arts. Mellon has steadfastly championed the humanities, using its resources as an accelerant to enhance and amplify the humanities’ contributions to the public good and to center social justice in that work — most recently through its Humanities for All Times initiative. 

Equity and social justice took on even greater importance for Mellon when, in 2020, the foundation’s president, Elizabeth Alexander, announced that it would adjust its mission to prioritize social justice in all of its grantmaking. 

The foundation has aimed to expand the humanities’ reach beyond ivory tower enclaves by promoting humanities curricula in community colleges and by supporting higher learning for those impacted by the criminal justice system, among other initiatives. In addition, the foundation wants to dispel the widespread public perception that majoring in the humanities in college is a career killer. The new internship initiative aims to accomplish both of these goals by giving humanities majors attending public colleges and universities with diverse student populations the chance to acquire hands-on experience in the professional world. 

“While it is obvious from the data that humanities majors regularly graduate into jobs that they find both emotionally and financially rewarding, that message has not reached students or their families,” said Phillip Brian Harper, Mellon’s program director for higher learning, when the initiative was announced. “The internships funded through these grants will make it clear that humanities study leads not just to jobs, but to exciting career paths in a wide range of sectors.”

Win-win

Today, as Harper pointed out, many students and their families, concerned that a degree in art history or poetry will land them a career waiting tables, opt for STEM fields instead. As a result, humanities departments across the country are being cut back, and even eliminated in many cases. But Harper’s argument — backed by a recent analysis from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — is that when it comes to jobs and earning potential, humanities majors are, in fact, competitive with their peers in other fields. 

That is not the public perception. “We know people are not persuaded by statistics,” Harper told me. So he tried to figure out other ways to get that message across. “When I’m trying to generate ideas,  I tend to start with a kind of blue-sky ‘what if?’ proposition,” he said. “What if we were able to fund a paid internship program for every humanities major in the country so that they and their parents and their high school college counselors would see that if you major in the humanities, even before you graduate, you will have the experience of paid employment? We know that internship experience is incredibly effective in enhancing students’ post-graduation employment prospects. So it would be a win-win.” 

The Mellon Foundation may be large, but it doesn’t have the resources to fund internships for every humanities student in the country, of course, so Harper formulated a more modest proposal. “We decided to target institutions where we thought such a program would have the greatest impact. We decided to focus on very large institutions — public regional comprehensive institutions — that probably wouldn't have the resources to fund such a program on their own.” 

Mellon also considered student demographics. “We wanted to work with institutions with very diverse student populations so it wouldn't just be the wealthy students who had the luxury of studying the humanities because they don't have to worry about employment,” Harper said. “Instead, there would be students from all socio-economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds.” 

In addition, the foundation looked for institutions that already had strong humanities departments and an interest in developing internship programs; several of those chosen had fledgling internship programs in place already. Harper said it was relatively easy to narrow the list down to five. 

“It turned out that all five of the institutions had some demonstrated commitment to career preparation for their humanities students, even though they might not have the money to do it at scale,” Harper said. “We decided we would use them as a kind of test to see how well this funding scheme might work.” 

An issue of equity

The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), one of the five grantee institutions, has been doing what it can to generate interest in the humanities, according to Tamara Falicov, the dean of UMKC’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. “We're trying to retool the humanities for the 21st century,” she said. UMKC has a number of departments that are humanities based, as well as a public history masters program. The university’s Center for Digital and Public Humanities opened in 2022.

UMKC already had an internship program for graduate students in the history department, but Falicov said funding was an issue. “We've never had a robust undergrad-level internship program,” Falicov said. “And the one that we have for graduate students has been limited because we always want to pay our students. We could only really work with those nonprofits — and you can count them on one hand — that can afford to pay the students. So it was a small but mighty initiative to give students opportunities to work in archives and museums during their graduate studies.” 

The funding from Mellon will change that calculus, allowing UMKC to offer paid internships to undergraduate students in the humanities as well. “What we were doing at the graduate level is a much more stripped-down version of what we're planning to do now, because we just didn't have the infrastructure,” Falicov said. “The Mellon grant is extremely beneficial in that now we can build scaffolding to prepare our students before they enter an internship. We can help them with professional skills and resumes, and help them understand how skills that they're learning in the classroom translate to a workplace. The funding allows us to do a lot more career development work.” 

Potential internships under the new program are in development, but current hosting organizations include the Missouri State Archives, the Black Film Center and Archive at Indiana University, Linda Hall Library, Children’s Mercy Hospital and the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Without the support from Mellon, most UMKC students wouldn’t have the opportunity to participate in a humanities internship. “Our students are first generation and Pell Grant-eligible,” Falicov said. “They have to work in order to do internships, and most internships in the humanities are unpaid. There are simply not possibilities for our students. So for us, it is a lifeline to be able to train up our students to give them the opportunities that students in other fields often have. This is an equity issue.” 

Falicov’s role includes fundraising, and she said that can be a heavy lift. After all, very wealthy donors in fields like tech or finance tend to target their higher ed giving toward efforts that seem familiar. “I look around me and I see how generous alums and foundations have been towards furthering STEM research, and I don't blame them,” she said. “People are so grateful, they want to pay it forward. But they don't seem to realize that it’s also important to give to students in the humanities. We are also going to change the world, we will partner with you in changing the world, we will ask the right questions to help you change the world. Yet, for whatever reason, I have to go out and make a case for why the humanities matter.” 

That case has to do with more than career success — it’s about developing life skills that are particularly important in a diverse, complicated and polarized world. “Studying the humanities gives you an appreciation for nuance and complexity,” pointed out Mellon’s Harper. “That is really important in navigating a world of differences.”  

Falicov agreed. “In my mind, the reason young people are coming to college is not only to find a career; we want them to become well-informed global citizens,” she said. “We want students to understand how society works and where they fit into it and to be thinking critically about different facets of our society. For me, the humanities are a foundation, they're a fundamental part of the growth of a human being.”