Humanities Could Become a Less Risky Investment

Why do humanities studies get such a bad rap as a formal educational goal? After all, humanities studies contain vast representations of what is rightly considered the progress of civilization. However, the fact more individuals seek work in these areas than is actually available, generates plenty of skepticism re present system costs for this form of human capital investment.

How did the pursuit of a wide array of intellectual challenges, became so misaligned with our economic realities? It wasn't always this way. During the centuries when tradable sector activities were the dominant employment opportunities, humanities students - especially in developed nations - could generally find work in areas not related to their studies. For a long time, one could often reconcile their natural tendencies with the kinds of work that were actually on offer.

For instance, my father's bachelor's degree in English (after WWII), which meant far more to him personally than to the marketplace, didn't reduce the practicality of the carpenter's skills he employed in petroleum refining, afterward. Today, however, human capital investment in humanities is far more chancy, especially since most corporations rely on more specific skills than what my father utilized. As much as I wanted to complete a bachelor's degree in music: After the problematic logistics of an hours long campus commute, and a series of financial setbacks, I finally realized degree completion would have meant more to me personally, than what the less signal driven marketplace of the seventies actually required.

Can humanities studies be salvaged as a form of valid human capital investment? These studies not only represent civilizational progress, they impart valued qualities to the (human capital) production and consumption of societal discourse. However, if humanities studies are to be preserved and actively maintained during periods of economic stagnation, they'll need viable economic platforms which address the risks of human capital investment, while simultaneously preserving the tremendous value of personal intellectual challenges. In a chapter on investment in Basic Economics (Fifth Edition) Thomas Sowell writes:

If the return on investment is not enough to make it worthwhile, fewer people will make that particular investment in the future, and future consumers will therefore be denied the use of the goods and services that would otherwise have been produced. No one is under any obligation to make all investments pay off, and to what extent is determined by how many consumers value the benefits of other people's investments, and to what extent.

We are particularly concerned about humanities as a more viable form of human capital, of which Sowell notes:

While human capital can take many forms, there is a tendency of some to equate it with formal education. However, not only may many other valuable forms of human capital be overlooked this way, the value of formal schooling may be exaggerated and its counterproductive consequences not understood...From an economic standpoint, some education has no value and some can even have a negative value.

Yikes. Let's briefly consider why humanities studies nonetheless contributed to broad employment opportunities for decades, in the U.S. After WWII, most regions were experiencing productive economic gains via the widespread dispersal of tradable sector activity. Consequently (until more recently), standards of living rose all across the country. Another aspect of humanities studies as a strong secondary (revenue dependent) marketplace, was the nature of a financial system which worked as a reliable transmission mechanism from points of wealth origin, to the active circulation of strong service sector activity.

Of course, today these circumstance are changing, especially as monetary transmission is becoming more closely aligned with other vital aspects of the economy. Again, it helps to reflect on what's at stake. We know that we assign real value to both humanities production and consumption. What might be done about the fact humanities studies as human capital investment, lack viable economic value?

It's possible to assign formal economic value, to a broader dispersal of informal learning processes. Fortunately, many communities could make the production of humanities a more integral part of their economic activity, via the direct wealth creating processes of time arbitrage. Formal means of mutual engagement in these activities, would generate mutually shared costs which don't pose high risks for the personal time and resources involved. Time arbitrage would provide means to connect humanities studies to wealth creation, thereby greatly reducing the costs of human capital investment.

The direct services input to output relationship of time arbitrage, could transform personal commitments to humanities studies. Like minded individuals would take part in endeavour which - while also experiential in nature - has the imminently pragmatic component of natural personal inclination. Commodification of time, via measured time units, would create a value in use function for human discourse which can be readily distinguished from the uncertainties of humanities value in exchange, given the latter's inevitable "inequality" of globally aligned compensation.

Educationally oriented time units as mutually compensated activity, could greatly reduce the risks involved in a diverse range of human capital investment. Thankfully, it's not necessary to diminish human capital as a formal investment option. By realigning skills acquisition to wealth creation patterns, our time value could ultimately assume a central role, in the organizational processes of knowledge use.