FASS Blog – Why I Love the B.A. by Professor Peter Coffman (History and Theory of Architecture)
A few weeks ago in my regular blog, I observed that fall is the annual hunting season for those who enjoy stalking universities, and in particular for those who target the humanities. That hunt – which takes place in the media, the blogosphere, and elsewhere – was in fact noticeably less shrill and misinformed this year than in the past. But there was still more than enough hysteria to remind us that the B.A. remains misunderstood, undervalued and even demonized by plenty of people with loud voices.
The fundamental question raised by such critiques is, however, well worth asking. What good is a B.A.? Why do we believe that students should devote three or four years of their lives to getting one? What do we expect students to have at the end of the process that they wouldn’t have had otherwise?
I teach in Carleton’s History and Theory of Architecture (HTA) program. Like most programs, HTA offers a discipline-specific expertise to students. Our graduates will have learned about the history of the built environment, how it has been informed by human circumstances and aspirations, and how it in turn informed the humans who made it. They will be historically and visually literate, and know how to interpret the built environment as a historical document. This can lead to a host of rewarding careers in such fields as architecture, heritage, government, and other fields.
But the B.A. degree is every bit as valuable to those of our students who never end up working in any of these fields. That’s because what we teach is not just a body of knowledge, but a body of skills. We teach skills such as critical thinking, analysis of evidence, discovery of underlying principles, visual literacy and — perhaps most importantly — communication skills. These are what we call ‘transferable skills’, which is a fancy way of saying that they make you better at just about everything you do for the rest of your life.
This was vividly brought home to me a few weeks ago by a friend and neighbour of mine, Peter Gibaut. Peter did both a B.A. and an M.A. in medieval history. He didn’t study medieval history with any clear career strategy in mind. He did it because he loved it. Because he loved it he worked hard at it, and because he worked hard he became good at it. And by becoming good at it, he acquired a host of intellectual skills — skills that have turned out to be ideal preparation for his current career as an analyst for Policy Horizons Canada, a federal government agency that evaluates the effectiveness of current polices in light of expected future challenges. Here’s how Peter explained it to me (I should add that Peter speaks for himself, not for the civil service or the Government of Canada):
The study of history helps me professionally in two ways: first, it trained my mind to analyze complex systems with confidence; second, realizing how complicated understanding the past is taught me to have humility towards attempting to understand the present.
In my current job, I make evidence-based analyses on the long-term strategic robustness of public policy. Just as a historian weaves a range of disparate sources together to craft a compelling argument about a historical topic, working with policy requires me to weave a range of often seemingly unconnected sources together to create a compelling statement about the present and future. Historians are especially well trained to look at ‘big picture’ problems because we are trained to look at systems.
Part of the reason why Peter’s experience resonates so deeply with me is that it mirrors my own in many respects. My first degree was in English and Philosophy. My first full-time job was in specialty retail; I began in the back room, but as soon as my boss realized that I had useful communication and analytical skills, he moved me to the showroom to deal with customers — and gave me a raise. I eventually left that job to study photography. One doesn’t need to have a B.A. in the humanities to become a photographer, but my intellectual training gave me a significant edge over much of my cohort, both at school and later in the working world — photography, like pretty much any business, is an area where an analytical mind and good communication skills are the cornerstones of success. I haven’t worked in commercial photography for about twenty years now, but what I learned about visual communication (a skill, incidentally, that we work on in HTA) informs the teaching I do to this day. The point is that although I do not and never have worked in the field I studied in my B.A., that degree has made me significantly better at everything I have done since. It has been the foundation of all that followed, and I am enormously fortunate to have had that training.
In a job market that is a constantly moving target, the B.A. provides skills that are truly enduring. Students who aren’t certain where their degrees and careers will take them (and who is, at the age of 20?) should look ahead with confidence – they’re not just getting a degree, they’re getting an education.