Rediscovering Humanities Education in Community Colleges

Much of the attention about the humanities in higher education tends to focus on four-year colleges and universities (and more specifically, on the declining number of students who major in the humanities). In recent years, the American Academy’s Humanities Indicators (HI) have been exploring the growing presence of the humanities in the community college sector. To capture the scale and character of humanities education at these institutions, the HI (with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities) surveyed the nation’s community colleges on three key topics:

1. The number and share of students taking humanities courses;
2. The number and share of faculty teaching such courses; and
3. The number and share of students who earn college credit in the humanities while still enrolled in high school.

The findings underscore the significant presence of the humanities in community colleges and reveal some of the variations in humanities course-taking in this sector.