Demand and supply of humanities in Israeli academic institutions: Between academic policy and market forces

From ancient Greece to Europe in the late 19th century, the humanities were respected and had a prestigious status. A paradigmatic revolution in the status and prestige of humanities started in the second half of the 1990s. The demand for humanities is decreasing, for example, if in the past hundreds of students applied to Hebrew literature, in 2012 there were only seven students. If this is the case, the question that arises is should we continue to teach humanities at all costs? Some believe that the humanities are a waste of academic economic resources and that this may be at the expense of other highly requested faculties. They believe that large amounts of public funds are invested, but their research output is questionable. Others, however, believe that it is necessary to continue to fund the humanities and there is no adequate allocation of resources for research and programs for excellence, aimed at attracting more students toward humanities. In the current study 136 subjects participated (73 males and 60 females), including 104 high school students in tenth-twelfth grade of Ironi Zain in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and 32 pre-military students in the Nachshon program. In contrast to the first hypothesis, we found a significant positive correlation between the attitude toward humanities and the willingness to learn humanities in the future. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between the values of honesty, helping others, and contributing to the state in accordance with the hypothesis. The contribution of this current study is that it dares to challenge the importance of studying humanities today.