Numerous articles over the last few years have been describing ‘humanities’ as ‘crisis’ or ‘deadlock’ and so on. Following this trend, universities across the nation are hasting to merge or to shut down unpopular humanities departments. For example, Bae Jai University which is well known for producing top literary figures such as poet So-Wol Kim and linguist Si-Gyeong Ju, have recently announced that they will merge several humanities departments. Another example is the Hannam University reporting their plan to eliminate humanities departments which received the poorest scores in internal evaluation.

This phenomenon can be explained by the employment rate of graduates of humanities related major such as literature, philosophy, history and more. According to a survey by Job Korea, 70.3% of respondents who graduated with humanities-related degrees said their major did not help them get a job. Especially due to the high unemployment rate, popular majors became majors that actually help getting a job like engineering and industrial management.

The condition is even worse for those who want to do the literary, music, and artistic works which are the real meanings of humanities. Even though there are naturally talented and popular writers, artists and musicians, most of them are not able to earn their living. The very few who become superstars are very well rewarded, perhaps more than other professions. But almost all the others ̶ poets, novelists, actors, singers, artists, and so on ̶ must either have a partner whose income supports them or a “day job” to pay their fundamental bills. Even writers who are regularly published by major houses or win major prizes cannot always live on their earnings. So what’s the solution?

The fundamental problem behind the crisis is that the humanities have lost their true meaning. They have lost their desire to communicate with humans as spiritual beings. There is no literature, only texts linked to another connected to other texts. So to flip this trend, we need a new program to develop a more attractive, appropriate and future oriented humanities. But what should we change? The humanities should not limit their opportunity to scholarship, but rather seek to create their individual ways of changing what they study. They should have a practical plan in order to transform knowledge into productive thinking and creative action.

Another major problem behind the crisis of humanities is a public structure that makes its students compete all the time, regardless of what subject they take. While natural science is generally specialized in their own main field, humanities deal with subjects even if it’s not related to your future. Myeong-Kwan Kang, a professor at Busan National University mentioned, “The current educational system deprives students of opportunities to study humanities and the unfulfilled desire to study the subjects resurface as they get older, which is ‘unnatural’.”

Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” This may be the answer to the current crisis the humanities are going through. Knowledge, which is the main function of natural sciences, repeats the remaining world. On the other hand, imagination creates a world that never existed before. This kind of innovation should be implanted in the humanities.

Sae-Yeon Ahn (DG reporter)