"Bad news first", Bérubé announces. "In a material sense the Arts and Humanities are not going to contribute significantly to what will be, over the next century, the true 'growth' areas of higher education in the USA and UK: business, science and technology." (p. 23)
"Most of the university-affiliated artists and humanists I know are profoundly ambivalent about the idea of justifying their disciplines in terms of there social utility...The Arts enrich life, the Humanities teach us what it is to be human, the Arts deepen our spirit, the Humanities teach us what it is to be human, the Arts deepen our spirit, the Humanities preserve our common cultural heritage, bleat, bleat, bleat" (p. 25)
"if the study of the Humanities is defined as the 'self-centered desire to bask in the philosophical and aesthetic pleasures of superb texts', then there is little chance that the Arts and Humanities will be seen by scientists as anything better - or more consequential - than a delightful dessert." (p. 25) "arts-as-dessert" (p. 25) "a delightful dessert" (p. 26)
"surely the more speculative sciences, from astrophysics to evolutionary theory, do not have quite the same claim on practical utility; surely some endeavors in pure mathematics or cosmology contribute no more than does the study of medieval tapestry to the economic or physical well-being of the general citizenry." (p. 26)
"the reason that so few cultural leftists in the Humanities care about new developments in theories of matter or of the evolution of the universe is precisely that such theories have no social utility whatsoever." (p. 27)
"cultural workers have tended all too readily to defend their enterprise in terms of skills and competencies." (p. 29)
"the Arts and Humanities also introduce students to many varieties of beauty and technical virtuosity that do nothing to enhance their interpersonal skills of co-operation or their ability to make a solid economic contribution to their communities and the nation." (p. 29-30)
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