When I was in school we were educated in STEM alongside the humanities, they called this being "interdisciplinary".
One of my undergraduate chemistry professors went to Cal Tech and he told us that his professors encouraged him to ask people outside of his discipline about problems if he got stuck.
I do not understand why people are unwilling to do more interdisciplinary studies. When I took courses on crop botany and plant genetics we also read books and had seminar to discuss the topics of the books - that is a humanities skill, to discuss in a group what meaning you can derive from texts.
As for the people saying you should get a degree that pays well...look at all the folks who got Comp. Sci. degrees who are now being thrown in the wood chipper. Was that worth it? Time will tell.
This discussion would be well served if we separated concerns about the economics of higher education in general (obviously student debt burdens are too high. There has been much written about how this came to be for all major) from the value of humanities program. Where I am coming from (so source of bias) I got a BA and PhD in philosophy, make plenty in software now, and credit to some extent my time in the humanities with the ability of I do that.
As someone with a degree in fine arts, good. A lot more of these programs need to be downsized or removed. Not because they aren't popular, they are (or were when I went) extremely popular. Rather they have poor outcomes for the students. After 4 years, I was left with the realization that I had wasted my time, and I was further away from a career than my peers.
I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity.
In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate.
People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real.
Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this.
I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department.
Let me push back and say that is not the point of university.
If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole.
I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities.
You're looking for a trade school. Universities have always been about education often for the sake of learning. Generating money just came to be a nice side effect as knowledge work grew in value.
A good point in general but not here specifically: among the various liberal arts degrees, philosophy majors have some of the highest average earnings.
>> our economy is not built on poetry and painting
Really? Hollywood operates on the efforts of screenwriters and digital rendering masters, both areas very informed by poetry and painting. Graphic design and quick language are the basis of online ads, which in turn are what supports the likes of Facebook and Google. If not for the wordsmiths and visual artists, the modern internet would be a very different place.
At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities. The reason you experienced a bad outcome is because our society doesn't care much about this, despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history. I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so.
Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.
It's more like the patient needs some fixed amount of food each day and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create lots more food than they need on the hopes that someday they'll want to eat more than they can.
If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.
Humanities should require math and science in order for people to graduate. At the minimum Calculus/Stats + a CS class + some kind of science should be the absolute bare minimum.
This is what a liberal arts institution is (the university I went to is one). At my uni if you are taking a science degree you need to take 4 social science classes and 4 fine arts/humanities. and vice versa for students in fine arts/social sciences.
Yeah, I feel like something has got to give, maybe we don’t fund student loans for certain majors. Maybe we bring back certain types of book or social clubs to learn these materials instead. Online learning? I totally see the beauty in the humanities, it’s largely all I read for fun, But you can’t have a system that incentivizes people to take out bigger and bigger loans on investments that don’t pay back.
The humanities are why the internet exists. Coding is linguistics, writing is the key aspect of most software creation. Why then do we devalue this critical skill and those who wish to pursue its excellence? It seems most of ya’ll are content to make a fat check working a bs job in a marketing/business capacity where no real things of substance are being learned or progressed other than “how do i squeeze the utmost money out of the system”. Is this the world you continue to want to promote?
No. Coding is mathematics. The internet exists because of engineering. The web was invented because of physics.
Humanities came late to the game and try to claim the honor without actually having done anything. Except whine and complain about the demise of X because of this new fangled internet thingy. For X you may insert "reading", "writing", "critical thinking", "books", "education", "manners", "discussions" and another 50 things at least. I'd say the humanities hindered the progress of humanity more than they promoted it over the last 50 years.
Yeah, I think the argument for the humanities can only exist if college wasn't outrageously expensive.
The world made college into a checkpoint to get a good salaried position, it's not the same as the old geezers experienced it, where college was thought of as a bonus education, but not solely needed to get a decent paying job.
And making it un-dischargeable in bankruptcy so people are either in perpetual debt bondage or the taxpayer picks up the tab for the inflated costs takes it from gross to downright criminal.
I'd be a lot more OK with student loan jubilees if universities had to pay the remaining principal on any forgiven loans. They'd immediately get their costs under control and be a lot more careful about degree programs which don't have any earning potential.
I don’t disagree with your general point, but for clarity, student loans are non-dischargeable because they have been federally guaranteed since 1965. Meaning that if the borrower defaulted, taxpayers would be on the hook. And the reason for the federal guarantees was that students are bad credit risks. So without the guarantees, banks wouldn’t lend to students, especially disadvantaged ones.
As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.
People who agree with this happening take for granted the critical ways humanities education contextualizes and guides stem research and progress. By studying the humanities you peer past the present and all of its trappings in the capitalistic race to the bottom. Shame on you humanities graduates that believe there being zero English, History, English, etc majors will lead to a better world.
I think the universities made a mistake in becoming too culturally left wing. The faculty (and students) in the humanities in particular are far to the left of the political mainstream. (I am on the left though more focused on labor rights and good jobs than identity politics.)
The attack on the universities is fueled by this divergence, now that the right is firmly in power. This will just hurt the country in the long run. There was so much group think and silencing happening on the left over the last decade. It seems now to have been self-destructive.
The latest chapter of America’s cultural revolution has been driven largely by radical currents in the humanities and by students eager to impose them beyond campus.
It is finally time for universities to reconsider what they truly want to teach. They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers and focus instead on real learning,including the humanities, when they are done honestly and not just used to push one narrow worldview.
With so much changing in the world right now, we urgently need the humanities to recover their integrity and purpose.
All right, let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy. How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and established the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts, but have I taught you anything of value this year?
When I was in school we were educated in STEM alongside the humanities, they called this being "interdisciplinary".
One of my undergraduate chemistry professors went to Cal Tech and he told us that his professors encouraged him to ask people outside of his discipline about problems if he got stuck.
I do not understand why people are unwilling to do more interdisciplinary studies. When I took courses on crop botany and plant genetics we also read books and had seminar to discuss the topics of the books - that is a humanities skill, to discuss in a group what meaning you can derive from texts.
As for the people saying you should get a degree that pays well...look at all the folks who got Comp. Sci. degrees who are now being thrown in the wood chipper. Was that worth it? Time will tell.
This discussion would be well served if we separated concerns about the economics of higher education in general (obviously student debt burdens are too high. There has been much written about how this came to be for all major) from the value of humanities program. Where I am coming from (so source of bias) I got a BA and PhD in philosophy, make plenty in software now, and credit to some extent my time in the humanities with the ability of I do that.
As someone with a degree in fine arts, good. A lot more of these programs need to be downsized or removed. Not because they aren't popular, they are (or were when I went) extremely popular. Rather they have poor outcomes for the students. After 4 years, I was left with the realization that I had wasted my time, and I was further away from a career than my peers.
I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity.
In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate.
People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real.
Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
I agree with your axioms but not your conclusion.
People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this.
I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department.
Let me push back and say that is not the point of university.
If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole.
I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities.
Ever watch Netflix these days? Woof.
You're looking for a trade school. Universities have always been about education often for the sake of learning. Generating money just came to be a nice side effect as knowledge work grew in value.
Christina P: “I graduated with a degree in philosophy only to discover The Philosophy Corporation wasn’t hiring.”
A good point in general but not here specifically: among the various liberal arts degrees, philosophy majors have some of the highest average earnings.
4 replies →
>> our economy is not built on poetry and painting
Really? Hollywood operates on the efforts of screenwriters and digital rendering masters, both areas very informed by poetry and painting. Graphic design and quick language are the basis of online ads, which in turn are what supports the likes of Facebook and Google. If not for the wordsmiths and visual artists, the modern internet would be a very different place.
At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities. The reason you experienced a bad outcome is because our society doesn't care much about this, despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history. I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so.
Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.
It's more like the patient needs some fixed amount of food each day and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create lots more food than they need on the hopes that someday they'll want to eat more than they can.
If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.
What is your solution? Should the rest of us all consume more art? A lot of people are struggling just to pay for housing and food.
Long shot, but maybe require humanities as a minor for tech and business majors so that our technology might start to be built with humanity.
Humanities should require math and science in order for people to graduate. At the minimum Calculus/Stats + a CS class + some kind of science should be the absolute bare minimum.
Yes, some colleges already require that.
https://www.hmc.edu/hsa/program/
This is what a liberal arts institution is (the university I went to is one). At my uni if you are taking a science degree you need to take 4 social science classes and 4 fine arts/humanities. and vice versa for students in fine arts/social sciences.
Yeah, I feel like something has got to give, maybe we don’t fund student loans for certain majors. Maybe we bring back certain types of book or social clubs to learn these materials instead. Online learning? I totally see the beauty in the humanities, it’s largely all I read for fun, But you can’t have a system that incentivizes people to take out bigger and bigger loans on investments that don’t pay back.
The humanities are why the internet exists. Coding is linguistics, writing is the key aspect of most software creation. Why then do we devalue this critical skill and those who wish to pursue its excellence? It seems most of ya’ll are content to make a fat check working a bs job in a marketing/business capacity where no real things of substance are being learned or progressed other than “how do i squeeze the utmost money out of the system”. Is this the world you continue to want to promote?
No. Coding is mathematics. The internet exists because of engineering. The web was invented because of physics.
Humanities came late to the game and try to claim the honor without actually having done anything. Except whine and complain about the demise of X because of this new fangled internet thingy. For X you may insert "reading", "writing", "critical thinking", "books", "education", "manners", "discussions" and another 50 things at least. I'd say the humanities hindered the progress of humanity more than they promoted it over the last 50 years.
Its disingenuous to discard the contribution of humanities. To name a few of the top of my mind:
Chomsky hierarchy is an important concept in programming languages and could be considered as originating from linguistics
Philosophy (which is counted in humanities) has had massive contributions to Logic and formal methods in computer science.
There's even more examples of humanities contribution in HCI and AI safety.
Good? Encouraging people to go into six-figure debt for a degree with no earning potential is gross and predatory.
Yeah, I think the argument for the humanities can only exist if college wasn't outrageously expensive.
The world made college into a checkpoint to get a good salaried position, it's not the same as the old geezers experienced it, where college was thought of as a bonus education, but not solely needed to get a decent paying job.
And making it un-dischargeable in bankruptcy so people are either in perpetual debt bondage or the taxpayer picks up the tab for the inflated costs takes it from gross to downright criminal.
I'd be a lot more OK with student loan jubilees if universities had to pay the remaining principal on any forgiven loans. They'd immediately get their costs under control and be a lot more careful about degree programs which don't have any earning potential.
I don’t disagree with your general point, but for clarity, student loans are non-dischargeable because they have been federally guaranteed since 1965. Meaning that if the borrower defaulted, taxpayers would be on the hook. And the reason for the federal guarantees was that students are bad credit risks. So without the guarantees, banks wouldn’t lend to students, especially disadvantaged ones.
2 replies →
IMHO Outcome Based Funding is a better model for public education.
https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-educati...
As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.
https://archive.is/YbXI4
People who agree with this happening take for granted the critical ways humanities education contextualizes and guides stem research and progress. By studying the humanities you peer past the present and all of its trappings in the capitalistic race to the bottom. Shame on you humanities graduates that believe there being zero English, History, English, etc majors will lead to a better world.
Zero may not be the optimal number but nobody is arguing for zero anyway. Also, you don't need to be a History major to study history.
"you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"
I think the universities made a mistake in becoming too culturally left wing. The faculty (and students) in the humanities in particular are far to the left of the political mainstream. (I am on the left though more focused on labor rights and good jobs than identity politics.)
The attack on the universities is fueled by this divergence, now that the right is firmly in power. This will just hurt the country in the long run. There was so much group think and silencing happening on the left over the last decade. It seems now to have been self-destructive.
Good riddance.
The latest chapter of America’s cultural revolution has been driven largely by radical currents in the humanities and by students eager to impose them beyond campus.
It is finally time for universities to reconsider what they truly want to teach. They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers and focus instead on real learning,including the humanities, when they are done honestly and not just used to push one narrow worldview.
With so much changing in the world right now, we urgently need the humanities to recover their integrity and purpose.
All right, let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy. How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and established the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts, but have I taught you anything of value this year?
> They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers
That's right, MAGAs can do that for themselves, and none of them are educated!
> and focus instead on real learning
Yep, whatever the Eternal Leader says is real is real. Climate change is a hoax, thus spake the Eternal Leader.
Sorry but this is what the GOP actually did by weaponizing the uneducated evangelical zealots
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-v...
1 reply →