WERT
WERT - Effect of measures to increase the assessment of professional and social relevance in humanities degree programmes
A lack of motivation to study is one of the main reasons for dropping out of university. Expectation-value theories suggest that students are particularly motivated if they expect to successfully complete their studies and at the same time attach a high value to them. In addition to academic interest, students hope above all that their degree programme will enable them to pursue an exciting career or contribute to the positive development of society. In the humanities in particular, however, there is no explicit focus on the professional and social relevance of the degree programme and their high motivational potential does not appear to have been fully exploited to date. Against this background, the BMBF-funded research project WERT investigated various university measures that make the relevance of studying visible and can therefore contribute to reducing drop-out rates.
At the beginning of the project, measures to increase the professional and social relevance of humanities students were systematically collected and synthesised. Among other things, scientifically published interventions on employability and citizenship, randomly selected courses in the humanities and offers from career service institutions were taken into account. Particularly promising measures were presented in an open access anthology. These include usefulness interventions, social engagement as a teaching format, a career evening for humanities scholars, an intervention programme to reduce motivational costs, research-based learning, a lecture series on the climate crisis and the curricular integration of vocational qualification measures.
It is evident that universities invest a great deal of effort, time and money in developing and implementing measures on the topic of the professional and social relevance of the degree programme. At the same time, however, only a few case or evaluation studies have analysed their impact. In order to close this gap, the second stage of the project investigated which measures and design features can increase the assessment of professional and social relevance. A total of 43 university events were monitored between April 2022 and December 2023. The students took part in online surveys using standardised questionnaires at three measurement points (pre, post, follow-up). The project data was made available for secondary use via the Research Data Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (FDZ-DZHW).
The results of the studies show that students of the humanities perceive the professional and social relevance of their degree programme to be significantly lower than their fellow students in other subjects. This applies to the humanities in general, but is particularly pronounced in the fields of linguistics and literature. In addition, the perception of relevance continues to decrease over the course of the humanities degree programme. The perception of professional and social relevance therefore offers particularly high potential for improvement and is an ideal starting point for increasing the motivation of humanities students. However, the impact analysis shows that an increase in professional and social relevance could only be achieved through a few measures, despite a great deal of effort on the part of the universities. At the same time, however, an increase in the perception of relevance was accompanied by a reduction in the intention to drop out of university. This emphasises once again that effective measures to increase the perception of relevance would be an effective means of reducing drop-out in the humanities.