It’s my understanding that the humanities doesn’t get much in government grants to begin with, but when the sciences have a finance problem, they cut the humanities for some reason.

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epistasis 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not aware of humanities getting get to fund the sciences, at least in the UC system. But in many places with highly complicated accounting, the sciences can sometimes indirectly fund humanities through the overhead rate that universities charge. These are highly negotiated rates between the government and the universities, so there has to be a bit of confusion on what money keeps which buildings going.

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skybrian 11 hours ago | parent [-]

The problems at the University of Chicago seem especially bad and I don’t entirely trust this article, but for what it’s worth:

> The reason today’s Dean of Humanities wants to send students to other universities to learn subjects that she would like to cancel, or use ChatGPT to teach subjects tomorrow that humans teach today, is to drive the “marginal cost” of teaching students from 20 percent of their tuition down to 10 percent. Future applicants should know that the University plans a further expansion from around 7,400 students to 9,000 ... and has simultaneously announced an intent to hold the number of research faculty constant. Perhaps we can drive the cost of educating students below 10 percent? Perhaps that is what the president and provost and dean of humanities mean when they say that we need to position ourselves as leaders in the field.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-univers...

It would be nice to read something more in-depth about university finances. Can humanities courses be funded by tuition alone or not?

	▲	epistasis 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By "UC" I was referring to the University of California system, which is massive, and generally what UC means in the scientific world is travel in. The University of Chicago is a very prestigious institution due to its historical reputation, but the administration in recent years seems to have both ruined its future with terrible financial decisions, even before the pressures of Trump.