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There is literally nothing wrong with studying the humanities. I am amazed at how many brilliant engineers skip history and literature and become predictable co

There is literally nothing wrong with studying the humanities. I am amazed at how many brilliant engineers skip history and literature and become predictable consumerist cogs because "that's how the world works" as far as they've ever known. Time was you'd go to college, get a job, and get trained while you work. Of course I'm not saying a rocket scientist opening should cater equally to the engineer and the artist, but we have become so addicted to pedigree that we forget how differently things can be done when we don't expect a new CS graduate to build a mobile API on their first day.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Time was you'd go to college, get a job, and get trained while you work. You got trained while you worked because most people stayed at the same company from the day they started until the day they retired. So it was easy for companies to justify investing time and money into training: barring unusual circumstances, they expected that person to remain an employee for a long time. Nowadays though, job-hopping is the norm. If the company cannot expect you to stay for longer than X years, they're going to adjust their hiring practices to make sure new hires are "safe", i.e. have degrees from prestigious colleges. Of course that still doesn't guarantee they will have the necessary skills from the get-go, but if things don't work out the hiring manager can at least cover his/her own ass by saying, "well, he/she was a <prestigious college> graduate..."
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Absolutely. Seriously this cannot be stressed enough: there is a huuuuge amount of influence in the decision-making process, whether it's choosing a vendor or hiring an employee, that ultimately goes back to someone preemptively covering their ass. When I tried an Ed-tech startup in college, our biggest barrier was that nobody wanted to sign off on an untested product in case it went wrong and they got the blame.
caseysoftware 10y ago
The opposite is just as bad. If all you learn is history and literature and nothing about how the world around you works - aka science and math - your deficiencies are just in other areas. If something is "well rounded," it has shape in all directions.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I would argue that a study of history which neglects "the physics" is hardly an education of history at all. World War 1 would not have been the same without machine guns and chemical weapons. How was it that these manufacturing processes scaled up to meet the needs of major national warfare? What was it about mustard gas that made it such an effective tool? Why was it not used more widely? Why was it used just as much as it was? Why use that and not a different kind of gas? How did they acquire the resources for, process, and send this deadly substance miles and miles to the front lines where it could be used without erupting and killing one's own troops? To truly understand these kinds of questions, a scholar must take into account the entire scope of history, not just the narrative. History is everything.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> There is literally nothing wrong with studying the humanities. There's a lot wrong with going deeply into debt to study the humanities, though - especially when you wind up surprised that you can't make enough of a living to pay off your loans.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I literally never said anything remotely close to this irrelevant straw man argument. Maybe if you'd studied the humanities you would've learned to read between the lines ;)
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    The original article was about student debt. Four comments upthread from this one, eastbayjake said, "(2) Everyone can benefit from learning new things -- even (or perhaps especially) a liberal arts education -- but many students are attending college to get a credential and land a good job." Your reply to that comment triggered my comment. Maybe I've had enough humanities to know to look at surrounding context ;-)

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>Time was you'd go to college, get a job, and get trained while you work. You got trained while you worked because most people stayed at the same company from the day they started until the day they retired. So it was easy for companies to justify investing time and money into training: barring unusual circumstances, they expected that person to remain an employee for a long time. Nowadays though, job-hopping is the norm. If the company cannot expect you to stay for longer than X years, they're going to adjust their hiring practices to make sure new hires are "safe", i.e. have degrees from prestigious colleges. Of course that still doesn't guarantee they will have the necessary skills from the get-go, but if things don't work out the hiring manager can at least cover his/her own ass by saying, "well, he/she was a <prestigious college> graduate..."

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Absolutely. Seriously this cannot be stressed enough: there is a huuuuge amount of influence in the decision-making process, whether it's choosing a vendor or hiring an employee, that ultimately goes back to someone preemptively covering their ass. When I tried an Ed-tech startup in college, our biggest barrier was that nobody wanted to sign off on an untested product in case it went wrong and they got the blame.

caseysoftware 10y ago

The opposite is just as bad. If all you learn is history and literature and nothing about how the world around you works - aka science and math - your deficiencies are just in other areas. If something is "well rounded," it has shape in all directions.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I would argue that a study of history which neglects "the physics" is hardly an education of history at all. World War 1 would not have been the same without machine guns and chemical weapons. How was it that these manufacturing processes scaled up to meet the needs of major national warfare? What was it about mustard gas that made it such an effective tool? Why was it not used more widely? Why was it used just as much as it was? Why use that and not a different kind of gas? How did they acquire the resources for, process, and send this deadly substance miles and miles to the front lines where it could be used without erupting and killing one's own troops? To truly understand these kinds of questions, a scholar must take into account the entire scope of history, not just the narrative. History is everything.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

> There is literally nothing wrong with studying the humanities. There's a lot wrong with going deeply into debt to study the humanities, though - especially when you wind up surprised that you can't make enough of a living to pay off your loans.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I literally never said anything remotely close to this irrelevant straw man argument. Maybe if you'd studied the humanities you would've learned to read between the lines ;)
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  The original article was about student debt. Four comments upthread from this one, eastbayjake said, "(2) Everyone can benefit from learning new things -- even (or perhaps especially) a liberal arts education -- but many students are attending college to get a credential and land a good job." Your reply to that comment triggered my comment. Maybe I've had enough humanities to know to look at surrounding context ;-)