> “There are certainly reasons to believe that the current crisis of the humanities owes partly to the poor job they do of explaining and justifying themselves.”<p>Especially when they accept that the argument must exclusively be about a discipline’s alleged usefulness to the economy. Last week the Belgian vice-president said Latin should be replaced as a high school subject with programming classes, because they are more useful. It’s been picked up, even by prominent intellectuals: <a href="http://woutersoudan.be/20150405/" rel="nofollow">http://woutersoudan.be/20150405/</a>
"Up until 1999, a thesis of original research was required of every student pursuing the Italian equivalent of a bachelor’s degree." Outstanding.
A couple things I got out of it:<p>> ...at a time when anything that takes more than a few minutes to skim is called a “longread”<p>Very true with the and the advent of buzzfeed style lists.<p>> "[A theses is] about committing oneself to a task that seems big and impossible."<p>Kind of along the same lines as the short attention span comment above, but it does seem tough to organize your thoughts and produce a non-trivial document. Or in the case of a lot of people here, the seemingly big and impossible task of starting a company.