Do humanities students get their money’s worth?

Over summer, at a gathering of my parents’ friends, I was inevitably asked what I was doing with my life. After being quizzed about my English Literature degree, it came out that this semester I only have six hours of lectures/seminars a week.

‘Six?’ was the rather blank reply of ex-students of law and chemistry. Yes, I said, but I have a lot of reading to do in the rest of the time. ‘Oh well,’ one said, ‘You’ll have a lot of time to revise for your finals’.

‘Er… I don’t actually have finals…’ Needless to say their shocked looks said it all. In fact it appeared my miniscule degree had made such an impression that upon leaving one guest said ‘Goodbye! Enjoy your four or six hours.’

Humanities students have long endured the stigma that we’re actually all a bunch of dossers, who lay in bed all day, whilst the hardworking students of other faculties toil from 9-5. And though we fiercely defend how much work we have to do, we’re actually quite smug about the fact we usually have a day or so (or in my case three) off a week.

But does this mean that whilst others get something for every penny, Humanities students are being diddled out of their money? We pay thousands of pounds, even more so for this year’s freshers, for roughly an hour a day’s teaching, and then on top of that we whittle away our student loans on masses of novels and textbooks.

One side of the argument says that we don’t actually need any more hours. Per module we typically have an hour’s lecture and a two hour long seminar, and since this is essentially discussion do we really need to drag it out any further? If we want we can organise private sessions with seminar leaders and academic advisors, and if we had any more hours when we would read our reams of novels and theoretical essays.

Yet if this truly isn’t a problem then why do we find ourselves having to justify our timetables on a regular basis? Is this just because we’re being judged by the standards of those who can’t put our degrees into a different perspective to their own, or is this really a serious problem? After all we all know how those long hours off campus encourage procrastination.

At the end of the day, humanities students chose their particular degrees because it’s what they love, and in most cases we knew what to expect when it came to lesson time. Compared to school it can seem that you don’t always have enough time to get to grips with things, but then what else is uni for if not for making you take charge of your work.

If people want to judge humanities degrees then that’s fine by me – if they know what they’re talking about. But if you’re going to tell me ‘Oh it’s so funny – what you do as a degree I do as a hobby!’ then I may just have to show you how productive those spare hours can be when put to the use of learning, oh I don’t know, kickboxing?