Just revisiting this article “The Humanities Really Do Produce a Profit”, By Robert N. Watson (Chronicle of Higher Education March 21, 2010) and appreciating this quote:
No sane citizenry measures its public elementary schools by whether they pay for themselves immediately and in dollars. We shouldn’t have to make a balance-sheet argument for the humanities, either, at least not until the balance-sheet includes the value, to the student and to the state, of expanded powers of personal empathy and cross-cultural respect, improved communication through language and other symbolic systems, and increased ability to tolerate and interpret complexity, contemplate morality, appreciate the many forms of artistic beauty, and generate creative, independent thought.
Robert N. Watson is a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles.
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