New Data on Public Humanities Training

A new report from the National Humanities Alliance, based in part on a national survey of colleges and universities, finds that training in the public humanities is a relatively new offering but a growing one. Some 72 percent of 156 responding institutions said they offered a public humanities course, degree or credential for students. While the goals of public humanities training programs vary, the report says, the programs tend to share four interrelated goals: offering students the opportunity to act on civic and social justice commitments through the humanities, training current and future faculty members in publicly engaged methods to shape the future of humanities disciplines, equipping humanities students with tools and experiences that may help them succeed in a variety of fields, and addressing the challenges faculty members confront in their public humanities practices. The report further breaks down public humanities training trends by level, from graduate to undergraduate to faculty.