"I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM." It's not that the subjects ar

"I think sometimes there is too much tendency to dismiss the arts and humanities as complete lightweight fluff compared to STEM." It's not that the subjects are lightweight fluff, it's that the students are disproportionately so. STEM is fairly objective, so it's comparatively hard to hide your lack of depth. But if you just want to go to college as a social signal, and a ticket to 4 years of parties, then arts and humanities will offer you a place of comfort. Not every professor for every class at every university; but at pretty much any university you can find some kind of lazy path through the arts/humanities departments. There are a few reasons for this: * Many professors / TAs use classes as a political platform first, and an education platform second. If you just tell them what they want to hear (a slightly avant garde kind of progressive liberalism will do the trick pretty much anywhere), you get an A or B. * Based on the title of the course, huge mobs of lazy students will sign up assuming that it's easy (this is never a serious STEM class). The professor then adapts the grades so that a lot of them pass, because otherwise there will be a revolt. * Universities like to provide "a path to success" for pretty much all of their students who are willing to put in even small amounts of effort. If they can't tell the difference between a concerto and a sonata, then the counselors can take them out of music theory, and put them in "post-modern ethno musical studies".