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"That's what happens to the majority of undergraduate projects in the humanities. Heroic research is undertaken, and the student suffers mightily during the writing process. But after being submitted for a grade, the results of all that work are filed away, never to be read again. (Of course, the same could be said of most dissertations and many academic monographs.) It's as if we've entered the print revolution while most of us are still illuminating manuscripts. What are we doing all this work for-one might ask-if not to make some kind of impact on the world? And why should anyone continue to pay for it?"

"In reality, however, the news is bleak: Median pay per course in 2010 was $2,700. ($2,235 at two-year schools; $3400 at four-year doctoral or research schools). Pay doesn't correspond with credentials-wage premiums for better credentials within the contingent workforce are small; likewise, there's not much of a career ladder. And, of course, contingent faculty pay lags behind similarly-educated professionals in other fields. Part-time faculty have access to limited professional development, and are generally excluded from governance. Most part-time faculty teach in such positions for extended periods of time, and most would prefer a full-time appointment, if one were available."

"It seems to me that when pundits deride the humanities as irrelevant, it's because we aren't, and that poses a threat. Yes, studies in the humanities do raise uncomfortable questions, like when Susan Reverby, a women's studies professor at Wellesley, documented a series of horrific unethical medical experiments that the U.S. Government performed on Guatemalan prisoners in the 1940s. They do make you change your textbooks. They challenge firmly held beliefs about culture, and offer evidence to back it up. People who want humanities research to be "timeless" do not believe that it can or should be timely. They are wrong."

"While things are in motion (dramatic disruptive change) we can't use the old mindset to describe the new mindset. We can't use current processes to accomplish new processes. We can't measure a butterfly as if it were still a caterpillar. The event of change requires us to also change the way we view ourselves, our roles, and our processes."