HUMANITIES IN PRACTICE – IS PLACEMENT/INTERNSHIP PROGRAMS A SOLUTION TO THE CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES?

This presentation will elaborate on the design and development of an internship placement programme - Humanities in practice (HiP). HiP has succeed with developing interdisciplinary teamwork skills and entrepreneurial mind sets among the students through team-based and collaborative learning in higher education and through the flipped learning opportunities offered by internship placements in a broad variety of public organizations and private corporations.

Since 2005 the credit bearing internship placement programme HiP has been offered master students at the Faculty of Humanities as an alternative to the compulsory subject Experts in team (EiT) at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. EiT was established in 2001 in response to work life demands arguing that students need to learn interdisciplinary teamwork skills. This demand was raised in a time characterized by increasing focus on interdisciplinary problem solving and merging of different knowledge cultures in research, teaching and industry internationally as well as nationally, and locally a physical merger of two different knowledge cultures and campuses as the traditional university was merged with the technical civil engineering education in Trondheim in 1996. Establishing a compulsory interdisciplinary team- and project-based subject for all master students was an important innovation at NTNU. HiP, as an alternative subject, was initially based on the same pedagogy and work life demand as EiT, but the design also responded to research on transition to work life as well as reports from EiT observing that humanities students were struggling with identifying their role and subject specific identity in EiT groups dominated by students from more profession like educations like civil engineering. In addition to representing two different knowledge cultures from two different campuses with quite different identities, these students also experienced quite different transitions to industry - as civil engineers often have been hired to well paid jobs prior to finishing their masters, while students from the humanities often have experienced slower transition to jobs (in the public sector) less in accordance with their expectations and subjects specific skills. Hence, HiP was initially established to teach students from the humanities that there is a place for them as well in work life.

Now, the internship placements of groups of 2-3 humanities students not only empower the students and train them in entrepreneurial skills and mind sets. Based on observations of recent and rapid changes in work life and continuous dialogue with industry HiP also challenges work life expectations of (future) education by demonstrating through practice in interdisciplinary workplace settings that students from the humanities are valuable in all kinds of organizations. HiP hence work both as an invitation to faculty to engage more in dialogue with industry as well as a warning against responding to short term work life demands from industry only high lighting “useful” subjects contributing to the immediate corporate revenue and surplus.