Ithaka S+R is excited to announce that we have been engaged by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to conduct research on the state of the humanities in higher education. Our research will be part of a portfolio of commissioned work that will contribute to the Academy’s ongoing efforts to gather comprehensive data on systematic challenges facing humanities departments today.

Over the coming year, Ithaka S+R will conduct interviews and focus groups with faculty and administrators from across the humanities to explore two critical topics in the field.

Our first study will use a series of focus groups to identify how department chairs are adapting to the current climate of retrenchment and technological change. These focus groups will yield information about the perceived value of the humanities, efforts to promote student enrollment, interdisciplinary classes, and majors, the implication of AI for humanities teaching, and the effects of hiring austerity on departmental cultures and curricula.

A second study will explore faculty and departmental administrative perspectives about how university policies, structures, and practices might affect student decision making about majoring in the humanities. Using an inventory guide created by Ithaka S+R, we will gather publicly available data on policies and requirements relating to humanities enrollments and majors and use these data to inform interviews with faculty about how admissions, advising, and other institutional practices either mitigate or contribute to declining majors in the humanities.

Our findings will inform a 2026 convening of stakeholders from academia, federal agencies, and scholarly societies to lay out a research agenda for its Humanities Indicators project’s next decade of work measuring the state of the humanities. Our findings will also be shared with the public via research reports written and published by the Academy.

If you would like to know more about our work supporting the humanities, please contact Dylan Ruediger (dylan.ruediger@ithaka.org).