The liberal arts are back in vogue and back in value. It's time for a rethink, writes Marian Fitzgibbon, head of the school of humanities and hospitality studies in Athlone Institute of Technology

The courses pages of the newspapers are an interesting index of trends and fashions. So what does the recent surge in humanities positions in the institutes of technology (ITs) tell us? Does it reflect a return to the traditional values of a liberal education? If so, this is implicit rather than explicit: such sentiments are rarely reflected in public policy statements on technological education today.

The pragmatic - not to say frenetic - quest for students in the context of the demographic downturn and the economic up-soon-to-be-downturn, as well as the rush on places in university arts faculties, undoubtedly has a bearing. Also the demand by employers for more versatile and adaptable staff, characteristics attributed to humanities graduates, has influenced this change.

There is also the attractiveness of humanities programmes to the adult population - whether to fill leisure time, to satisfy a hunger for meaning or simply to do something "cool" (as witnessed by the positive response to courses with "media" in the title). In any case, in the context of the ambitious Government target of 15 per cent participation in education by the adult population by 2006, the affinity between this group and the humanities is of strategic importance to the IT sector.

Is this all? Or is something else happening? Has the paradigm shifted, as paradigms tend to do? The new awakening of interest in the humanities has been accompanied by a strong growth in the related world of arts and culture, the reinsertion of this sphere of activity into the world of work and nothing short of an explosion in the job potential of the sector. Though such a phenomenon has yet to be cogently articulated, could it be that the shift has been spontaneous or unconscious - a response to a force yet to be clearly understood?

Because there are other signs too. These are humanities departments with a difference. While it might be expected that humanities in the institutes of technology can be differentiated from those in the universities by a more professional or vocational orientation, again the jobs pages tell us otherwise.

A week or so ago, UCD advertised its MA programmes: English and publishing, for one. So the universities, too, are experiencing the drift. Purity is hard to come by these days - especially in university! By the standards of yore, humanities in the ITs have had strange bedfellows: business and humanities, hospitality and humanities etc. To milk the metaphor, has purity given way to perversion, a hot bed of unlikely unions driven by utility?

This is not to say that the concept of utility is something new. Oxford and Cambridge were designed to cater for the needs of the church and the courts, just as the Industrial Revolution profoundly affected the development and orientation of universities.

The humanities have been present in the ITs since their establishment - and some institutes have long-established faculties. Rather than representing a postmodern dissolution of boundaries, is the configuration of these new faculties merely cyclical, yet another turn of the old wheel?

But it could be that instead of having gone into reverse, we are shifting gear. At the very least, the conjunction of business and humanities in the third-level education sector furnishes a new context. The "greasy till" may provide some lubrication.

At the very least, this shift in focus raises different and challenging questions and offers new possibilities. It offers a fresh context and a new light. This should not be underestimated: a new light was after all at the core of the Impressionist contribution. Interesting possibilities are thrown up - for instance, the reintegration of culture into the cut and thrust of the political and market-orientated environment.

The trend is also a stimulus to innovation - for example syllabuses liberated from the dryness and drudgery of souping up what used to be termed "business" French or German, and a relegitimation of the communicative core of language and literature. The questions posed by the new context are hard. The students are different. So everyone, especially the lecturers, have to rethink, re-evaluate and re-present. The challenges are considerable, but so are the rewards. Anyway, the old models are fraying at the edges.

At the macro level, the proliferation of humanities departments also presents a challenge. It would be a shame if the institutes of technology did not grasp the advantages presented by their geographical spread to exploit fully the possibilities for innovation described above and to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, especially given the possibilities offered by new technology.

The task is to work together and in so doing to capitalise on our international reputation in the world of the arts and culture, a badge that is of considerable importance in the rapidly-globalising world of education.

• Marian Fitzgibbon has a PhD in management from UCD. She is the author of Managing Innovation in the Arts - Making Art Work (2001) published by Quorum Books in the US.