Postmodernism, the potent anti-growth toxin

Another Get Woke, Go Broke story. From Humanities Enrollment Is In Free Fall by Alex Berezow. Now The Humanities are Collapsing is a stock-in-trade Chicken Little story among the cultural doomsters but Berezov has the numbers.

In his analysis, Dr. Schmidt depicts several graphs, all of which show a fairly striking trend: Students are rejecting the humanities. The most striking graph, which includes data for English, Languages, History, and Philosophy, shows that the number of college degrees in these fields awarded as a percentage of all college degrees fell from roughly 7.5% in the 2000s to under 5% today.

While some humanities fields -- such as cultural, gender and ethnic studies -- have escaped the devastation, most others have not. Indeed, Dr. Schmidt reveals that enrollment is down in nearly every field considered part of the humanities.

Dr. Schmidt also writes, "The social science fields that most closely resemble humanistic ones -- sociology, anthropology, international relations, and political science -- have also seen serious drops." What's going on?

A 20-50% decline within a decade probably does warrant the description free all. Certainly, sharp decline.

Click to enlarge.

The Gramscian march through the cultural institutions continues. Berezov tries to lay the decline at the feet of the 2007 financial crisis, possibly exacerbated by the increasing cost of higher education. If the cost goes up for a low income degree, as the humanities degrees are, then it is nearly axiomatic that the demand will decline.

I suspect there is more to it than Berezov is acknowledging. The humanities became inundated with postmodernist professors circa 1995-2005 and it is striking that several of the declines are seen to originate then. As departments become dominated by leftwing postmodernism, they usually become strikingly unreceptive to non-conformers. If you become ideologically toxic to half your potential degree holders, then it is not especially surprising to see a fifty percent decline in people taking that degree.

The postmodernists have been surprisingly effective colonizing institutions but it is becoming increasingly clear that "Get Woke, Go Broke" is more than an empty taunt. See University of Missouri as an example, declining some 30% in admissions. Or Evergreen State College, down 20%. Or Oberlin College, down 10-15%. Every institution that swings postmodernist, then goes into decline in terms of revenue (see General Electric), in terms of admissions (see above), or in terms of Trust (see the media).

Or, as IowaHawk famously put it:

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.#lefties

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 10, 2015