> No real classics in the last 40 years<p>What's your definition of a classic? 40 years is a bit soon to tell if something is a classic, in my view. You need it to stand the test of multiple generations.<p>> students aren't majoring in HASS at all anymore.<p>Some are. Some aren't. In the past, some were, and some weren't. So... not much change.<p>> At a high level HASS is more non-penetrable than any hard science where you can plug numbers in and test whether or not the equations they give you actually work.<p>Yeah, that's because HASS <i>isn't</i> hard science, so it doesn't work like hard science. If you expect it to, that's your fault, not HASS's.<p>> Universities are now job training institutions where people go for credentials and get out, nothing more.<p>Some do. Some don't. Perhaps more do than used to.<p>> The students there don't join any of the extracurriculars or sports teams, they just get their STEM degrees and get out.<p>Some do. Some don't. Same as before.<p>> So HN, have the humanities and university system failed society?<p>You really sound like you came here with your own view (and an axe to grind), and you want HN to endorse it.<p>The humanities have in fact failed society, but not at all in the way you describe. People not going to extracurriculars has <i>nothing</i> to do with whether the humanities have failed society. (Extracurriculars aren't the humanities, and college students aren't society.)<p>First, the humanities have failed society by being hijacked. All the various flavors of Critical Theory have hijacked the humanities. They largely aren't the humanities any more; they're cheerleaders (and indoctrinators) for a particular narrow subset of views. They should be thinking and teaching much more broadly than that.<p>Second, the humanities seemingly forgot how to speak to the broader society, or else forgot the value of doing so. They speak (so far as I have seen) to each other, and to humanities students, but they speak little to the broader society. (Though it could be that, when they do so, I don't recognize it as "humanities", which would mean that they are in fact doing it well rather than badly...)