A side effect of A.S.U.’s remote-learning boom has been improvement in its humanities numbers. On paper, the number of English majors at A.S.U. has grown, even as the number of students in English classrooms has dropped. Several professors insisted to me that they really, truly felt no preference for online or on-site students—but that they did notice a difference in the demographics of who showed up onscreen.
“These are people in their thirties and forties who have been stay-at-home parents, or they work. And they are committed to the humanities—they have an idea about the value of liberal-arts education,” Ayanna Thompson, the A.S.U. English professor, told me. Partly, it was a cohort thing, given that the older students represent the views of older generations. But it was also a matter of life experience. The university has a partnership with Starbucks, which pays for its…
