Pushing back ...

... Essay on new approach to defend the value of the humanities | Inside Higher Ed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Traditionalists argue that emphasizing professional skills would betray the humanities' responsibility to honor the great monuments of culture for their own sake. Revisionists, on the other hand, argue that emphasizing the practical skills of analysis and communication that the humanities develop would represent a sellout, making the humanities complicit with dominant social values and ideologies. But though these rival factions agree on little else, both end up concluding that the humanities should resist our culture's increasing fixation on a practical, utilitarian education. Both complain that the purpose of higher education has been reduced to credentialing students for the marketplace.