Where Are We Going and Who Will We Teach?: Conjectures about Comparative Literature and the Humanities

This paper offers a dark and light macro and micro vision of graduate education in the Humanities in the United States with some anecdotal evidence specific to Comparative Literature. I’ll intersperse my comments with some data and conclude with a few comments about the future of Comparative Literature. As Haun Saussy has so eloquently argued, “Comparative Literature has won its battles. It has never been better received in the American university” (3). But where is the American university going? As an amateur in the field of higher education studies, let me propose a few answers.

First, Comparative Literature in the U.S. seems to be thriving. The membership of the acla has doubled from approximately 600 to 1200 in the past two years. There are about 175 Comparative Literature programs and departments in the U.S. according to the September 2006 pmla . Not all of these, however, are in the Carnegie Foundation’s 96 Very High Research Universities, nor in the 103 High Research Universities and 84 Basic Doctoral Research Universities (see Carnegiefoundation.org or The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac Issue 2006–07). Indeed, the National Research Council survey that is currently underway has just announced that there are forty-seven Comparative Literature programs in their doctoral survey. This compares reasonably to other doctoral programs in the Humanities: for instance, forty-three in French and Francophone, thirty-three in Germanic languages, sixty-two in Spanish and Portuguese, and one hundred twenty-five in English departments (Council of Graduate Schools Communicator). Given these numbers, Comparative Literature is doing quite well. However, the Humanities in general are struggling, partially because we in the profession are not doing as effective a job as we could in teaching our students when they are seeking academic employment to look beyond a narrow selection of Very High Research Universities, nor are we publicizing the value of the education we offer. This conclusion leads me into a somewhat darker discussion.

At the Council of Graduate Schools meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2006, the Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, in a paper titled “America’s Fiscal Future: Implications for Higher Education and Global Competitiveness,” gave a complex and almost terrifying picture of the American economy over the next forty years. In brief, if some major changes are not made in federal expenditures and tax codes in the U.S. in the next few years, America will go bankrupt. Let me note that the Comptroller General wrote and gave this speech before Al Gore’s film and the United Nations report on global warming.

But apart from floods and droughts, the effect a national bankruptcy would have on higher education is obvious. If the head of the gao does manage to persuade Congress to balance the budget and not pay a projected 40 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product ( gdp ) in interest on loans (as we will be doing by 2040 if we continue current policies), we still are not out of difficulty. Part of the challenge America faces is that international competition in higher education is becoming much more intense, as I’ll mention in a bit more detail in a few minutes.

On the lighter side of the future of education, we also heard another paper at the Council of Graduate Schools conference outlining the 150-year history of higher education and the last sixty years of world-wide mass education. The transition that an ever increasingly educated world population is making and will continue to make is almost miraculous, as many of you know who have seen the abrupt changes in educational systems in places like China and India. Add to this that countries like Australia are developing very fine higher educational systems, and that they are competing intensely for international students, students who formerly would have come to the United States. I could spend additional time here talking about the changes in the European education system as a result of the Bologna Treaty, a treaty that basically outlines a plan to harmonize the...