8 ms·

Why I Was Wrong About Liberal Arts Majors

61 points by grellas 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
Don't you just love when people suddenly "realize" the value of liberal-arts degrees (probably obtained by rich or connected colleagues) over the apparent total inability of engineering and science majors to think for themselves? /s No really, what gives people the impression that STEM majors can't think independently or well?
- btdiehr 10y ago
  It's only a point made to further justify their over priced diploma.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  a decent percentage can't. trying to talk to some of my friends about political topics or history or anything else is frustrating because of their lack of knowledge. They know their major and they know about the video games they play but that is it. "who is joe Biden?" is a real question I've heard. many perform abysmally on critical reading portions of tests and can't form persuasive arguments effectively.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    This isn't limited to STEM majors!
  - khedoros 10y ago
    Are they capable of critical thinking if you choose an area of discussion that they are knowledgeable about? Can they make clear, reasoned judgements within the limits of their knowledge? If they can't, then you have a point (which is really sad).
    - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
      yes I'd say so. problem is sometimes they may not know when they are arguing about something they are knowledgable about versus things they aren't. once again I'm talking from anecdotal experience and there are always exceptions. honestly the biggest problems I've seen from my peers(college aged and new grads) are superiority complexes and not realizing when they are out of the bounds of their knowledge base.
      - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        Dunning-Kruger is something pretty much everyone lapses into sometimes.
  - xufi 10y ago
    I can relate to you about the "Frustrating lack of knowledge aspect" I've tried to engage people who are in the Psychology department where I hang around, about other topics such as stuff like VR and they dont even care about it. No matter how much you dumb it down or try to make it sound interesting,
  - burfog 10y ago
    To be fair, the VP is only very slightly more powerful than a typical senator, and less powerful than at least one of them. Do you know all the senators? The VP is also less powerful than a supreme court justice. The VP is also less powerful than the house majority leader. Things are less clear with governors, but I think the argument can be made that the VP is less powerful than the governors of California, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. Do you know those? Also, remember what Feynman said his dad taught him about knowing the names of birds. Memorizing names gives a false sense of knowledge.
- Retra 10y ago
  I've been in CS curricula where, were you to ask the students what they wanted, they would casually dismiss any liberal-arts subject as a waste of time. I've been in liberal arts curricula where the students themselves either think it is a waste of time (but that STEM is too hard) or that STEM is a waste of time because it doesn't appeal to their desire to "never be wrong" about anything. I have met very few people who look at either situation and see the breadth of information that exists and how valuable it can be to analyze and model.
- superuser2 10y ago
  A high quality liberal arts education is years of full-time deliberate practice, under constant feedback and guidance from experts. It's also exposure to the enormous volumes of arguments and ideas that have already been explored. Someone who has been working for years under the engineering culture and code review regime on an elite Google distributed systems team is probably going to write better code (at least in that domain) then someone who did a couple of side projects after reading the Rails tutorial.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Well yes, of course. What I object to is equating "able to think critically and independently" with "has years of domain expertise in academic liberal-arts and humanities fields." The whole point of talking about "critical" or "independent" thinking is that they're supposed to be domain-general cognitive skills.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Hacker news seems to have a subset of people who believe CS degrees are not just useless, but perhaps actively harmful. At least that's how it seems whenever this comes up.
- geebee 10y ago
  I have this reaction when I read these articles as well. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are dismissive of humanities majors, but I've experienced a real problem, over the course of my career, with people who want to put engineering and science majors in a box, defining them as people who can handle technical tasks but can't think independently outside their narrow and well defined technical skill set. I wonder if this attitude is more prevalent in the US, where people routinely say "you can do anything with a law degree", viewing law as a generalist degree, while viewing engineering or math as a narrow, task-specific degree with no real use outside those subjects… Although I double majored in English Literature and Math, I did notice the extent to which I would have been required to study humanities as a math major in college (UCSD) without the double major in lit. My general education requirements included a two year undergraduate survey course on world history, a required upper division sequence in a humanities field focusing on a specific region (such as a one year upper division sequence on European or Asian history), two years or proven competence in a foreign language, a year of arts (fine arts, art history, theater), and a minor in a humanities field. That may be a bit heavier than usual, but in general, math and science majors are required to take a great deal of humanities. The humanities majors, by contrast, had to take two courses in "math" which could be fulfilled with symbolic logic in the philosophy dept and stats for the social sciences (no calculus or even a modicum of advanced math required). The science could be fulfilled through "physics for humanities majors" and bio classes not intended for science track students. Again, that may be a bit light, but it's pretty consistent in US universities - humanities majors get away with minimal math and science, whereas science, engineering, and math majors must take substantial humanities coursework. One more thing - although the humanities were rigorous, the partiers were pretty much all humanities or social science majors. At least at UCSD, it was nearly impossible to survive in engineering or science as a "partier". Not to say these students were never at the parties, but they spent a lot more time in labs and the library, it was pretty clear. Those and the pre-meds. The humanities majors who got good grades were serious students, sure, but it's pretty clear to me that they didn't have to work anywhere near as hard for good grades (this was also my personal experience in upper division lit classes vs upper division math classes). This is why I think the most well-rounded students tend to be the STEM students. Not all STEM students are well rounded, many resent and minimize their humanities coursework, but the well-roundedness tends to be more deeply built into the curriculum for STEM than for humanities.
whatshisface 10y ago
"A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking." There are enough truly bad Liberal Arts degrees out there that the more difficult ones (philosophy and economics spring to mind, at least at my school) get dinged by proximity. What people are really worried about hiring is someone with four years of multiple choice and BSssays under their belt - that is, experience only in perverting performance metrics. A college experience like that is almost impossible in STEM, rare in a few LA fields and extremely common in the rest. Also: taking the initiative to learn to program and switch careers is a strong signal that you weren't one of the people who tried to engineer their good school into behaving like a degree mill.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  > A college experience like that is almost impossible in STEM I wager that a lot of people disagree with you here. There are definitely cheap tactics to dupe lazy teachers at both ends of the educational spectrum. Example: Even if you don't know the answer, write as much work as possible to get partial credit. Look at backwork to learn the form of the exam, memorize the form of the solution and then just plug in the new numbers and calculate.
- jordanb 10y ago
  I got an English degree from a middle-ranked state school and never once had a multiple-choice exam and only had two classes with fill-in-the-blanks style exams: 1) A chemistry class I took and 2) An art history class where we were given photos of pieces and asked to write in what culture and epoch produced them. Although the art history tests were in the above format, that class also required us to go to the local art museum, find a relevant piece, and photograph it; then go to the library and research the piece developing a thesis and a ten page paper supporting that thesis. Besides that all my coursework consisted of developing theses and then writing papers defending those theses with the grade being determined by how well we argued our point. Is this bullshit? I would say it's subjective, yes, but a part of a liberal arts education is learning to embrace the subjective nature of the human experience.
- ohyes 10y ago
  I did both computer science and philosophy at a top tier college, the computer science courses were far easier.
benjohnson 10y ago
In my humble opinion, it really depends on what you're programming: 3D Gaming engine: A genius with lots of CS training/education. Simple business app with weird rules that requires a lot of customer feedback: A kind-hearted person who can listen and noodle around and is tenacious.
- knn 10y ago
  I agree that more technical projects require more cleverness/training, but most things don't require genius. Terry Tao, field medalist, argues strongly that one does not need to be a genius to be a professional mathematician. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t... Likewise, this implies that one does not need to be a genius to program difficult things.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
tylerkahn 10y ago
Someone who majored in liberal arts but is able to themselves to code is likely to be an intelligent and motivated individual. I suspect that more readily explains the successes of these individuals than their liberal arts studies. It's also my personal observation that someone's college major has no bearing on their ability to think critically.
- potatoyogurt 10y ago
  Yeah, there's a lot of selection bias with this sort of thing. The average computer science graduate is probably going to go on to become a software engineer or otherwise work in tech in some way. This means that you will meet all of the average CS graduates every day. The average liberal arts major will not go on to be a software engineer. The only liberal arts major software engineers you will meet are the ones who are interested enough in programming to bother learning it and talented enough to become proficient in two mostly unrelated fields. I do think there's a lot of value in studying non-technical, potentially useless, even esoteric things, but this argument is not extraordinarily convincing.
  - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
    This. Most people with liberal arts degrees don't have pre-existing knowledge of/interest in all things tech/programming. The people on here who say they have graduate degrees in history, etc aren't even remotely the average LA degree holder. Without a lot of extra studying/bootcamps/programming since you were 12/post bacc certs/second BS degrees in computer science, a plain old average liberal arts degree I'd wager is much, much less valuable than a BS in CS.
mrdrozdov 10y ago
I sense a serious sample size problem here.
lhnz 10y ago
Those degrees aren't worth their cost. A better recommendation, and a path that some STEM students have already taken, is independent study of the Liberal Arts curriculum. Unfortunately, even if you do this, you will still have to deal with condescending fools telling you that you can't see the forest from the trees, and are constrained by memorizing commands or syntax. The fact of the matter is that you have no critical thinking skills, can't see the big picture and lack the soft skills – the people skills – that help to understand customers and bring the staff along. Everybody here can see it, why can't you? You'll never make anything of yourself, nerd. (Those quotes are directly from the article. It's super condescending towards STEM people. No better than similar articles aimed at Liberal Arts students.)
- taurath 10y ago
  One would argue that we could consider it a societal good to have good critical well rounded thinkers. Nowadays college is more like a capitalist transaction in order to make money. If thats the point of college, then its definitely not worth the cost. I'd love to go back and be able to do a full course of liberal arts - I'd probably be a much more well rounded person.
- tspike 10y ago
  > liberal art's curriculum Is this the result of independent study? ;) In all seriousness, my linguistics degree was worth every penny. Spending that much time with incredibly bright people with broad perspectives focused solely on sharpening your understanding of the world is something that's very difficult to replicate independently.
  - lhnz 10y ago
    Fixed. I can imagine that even if it is difficult to replicate broad perspectives independently it is worth trying to do so. I think the internet will certainly make it easier to do so now, too. Additionally you have a lot longer than 4 years to engage with material. Autodidactism eventually wins because it is unconstrained; though the educational experience might get a lot of breadth out fast.
gozur88 10y ago
>A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking. This is the sort of thing you tell people when you can't point to anything measurable. It's the college grad's equivalent of "I'm a people person!"
- nyolfen 10y ago
  Not everything in life is easily quantifiable, but that doesn't mean those things that aren't are meaningless
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Yes, but it also doesn't mean they aren't meaningless. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever people with Liberal Arts degrees possess better than average critical thinking skills compared to other college graduates.
galfarragem 10y ago
Arts Major here. An Arts major is great for your personal growth because it's broader and more generalist than STEM but it doesn't add much value to society on short term. Once it doesn't add direct value to society, society doesn't reward it also. This translates into an high probability of a stagnated life after graduation. Choose carefully.
- orionblastar 10y ago
  Pick your degree and major carefully. I wanted a degree in physics but it doesn't pay as much as a programming job would. So I took computer science instead. Teacher/Education degrees are good to get because of a teacher shortage but don't get paid as well as most other jobs. When I went to a university it was 1986, I learned Turbo Pascal which is nothing compared to modern IDEs now. I learned Turbo C in 1987 and that helped me learn Ada, COBOL, FORTRAN, Visual BASIC, and many others. Once you understand the concepts you can learn almost any other language.
arca_vorago 10y ago
The trivium and the quadrivium are what a true "liberal" education is about, and are things that shouldn't be restricted to any particular major and should be taught even before high-school. The real issue is that the oligarchs don't want a populace that is truly educated in critical thinking. For a treat, try page 7 of the Norman Dodd report to the Reece Committee. https://www.scribd.com/doc/3768227/Dodd-Report-to-the-Reece-Committee-on-Foundations-1954 https://www.scribd.com/doc/3768227/Dodd-Report-to-the-Reece-... Bonuses: https://www.amazon.com/Leipzig-Connection-Basics-Education/dp/0897390016/179-1848850-1151606?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 https://www.amazon.com/Leipzig-Connection-Basics-Education/d... https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Dumbing-America-Revised-Abridged/dp/0966707117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464824056&sr=1-1&keywords=dumbing+down+of+america https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Dumbing-America-Revised-Ab...
StanislavPetrov 10y ago
I have a post-graduate degree in History, and even though I've never "used" my degree in my professional career, the benefits have been incalculable. A good understanding of history is what allows one to have a good understanding of the present.
adamsea 10y ago
Why do many people have a knee-jerk reaction against the humanities? I'm genuinely curious what others think. I mean - where do they think Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Sopranos, i.e. all of our culture (popular and otherwise) come from?
- danharaj 10y ago
  technocracy is en vogue here and humanities experts are not seen as experts in anything """useful""", which usually translates as "economically lucrative" or ""rational and objective"".
- orionblastar 10y ago
  It isn't knee jerk reactions to liberal arts degrees. The world needs better books, movies, tv shows, painting, music, etc. The thing is, that was once thought a decade ago or so, was that a liberal arts degree did not qualify someone for a programming job as much as a computer science or engineering degree would. Python and Ruby on Rails made it easier to program, when it was thought that a liberal arts major can't program we used C and Pascal, pointers, had to do garbage collection on our own, had to allocate and then free up memory, etc. Programming Languages evolved with Java and C# that did away with pointers, does garbage collection on their own, and allocates and frees up memory when an object is closed. Then Python and Ruby on Rails made it even easier. Microsoft had to make a Express and then Community version of their Visual Studio Dotnet languages to compete with FOSS languages, Borland suffered and kept getting bought out, suddenly there FOSS languages got easier to use, understand, and program in. I think every degree should have a Critical Thinking class and maybe a Small Business class to learn how to balance a checking account and learn to save money instead of living paycheck to paycheck. How to run your own business and make it a startup by bootstrapping what you saved working a job.
- glibgil 10y ago
  They come from digital cameras, cgi and editing software all delivered over the internet
  - rfrank 10y ago
rfrank 10y ago
These discussions are always so stupid. I was a lit major, have worked as a PCB designer, taught myself some coding and all that jazz, and now put around on the internet doing digital marketing stuff. College major is a terrible indicator of intelligence, work ethic, and so on. Sure, liberal arts majors can be annoying (I probably have a lot more first hand experience with that than you do), but at the same time, plenty of STEM folks write like freshman in high school and start stammering when asked to explain whatever declarative statement they just made further. The condescension from the STEM crowd sure gets old though.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  The attitude from the STEM "crowd" is a real issue. I've experienced it myself while talking to kids about technology. People have interrupted a comverstation just to say that art is stupid. I just change the subject and continue with the conversation. But its really hard to motivate kids and young people to be creative with such an idiotic attitude. We don't need more engineers, programmers or whatever. We need more creative people with drive. Period.
  - wcummings 10y ago
    People like this are why I don't like to call myself an "engineer" anymore. They've ruined the word for me. I spent a year at WPI, and its fucking lousy with these stuck up losers, sharing lame "engineering memes" putting down lib arts majors. Mind you, these were not even engineers, just engineering students, most of whom hadn't built a single useful thing in their life outside of school.
    - personjerry 10y ago
      I'm not certain, but aren't these memes always done tongue-in-cheek?
      - rfrank 10y ago
        lol, definitely not.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Honestly, I think the failing is that computer science majors (unlike some other STEM majors) are rarely offered as liberal arts programs with stronger breadth requirements that are typical in B.S. programs (in lots of institutions, you can get a B.A./A.B. in other STEM fields like Mathematics or Chemistry, but not Computer Science.) While I don't think all (or even most) CS majors need to be produced out of liberal arts programs, I think it would be good for the field and the software industry to have more of those.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  It depends if the CS department is in an engineering college/school as part of the larger institution. In colleges without engineering programs, its often in a liberal arts and sciences school.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Often, "liberal arts and sciences schools" offer both liberal arts (B.A.) and sciences (B.S.) degrees, the former having more breadth requirements and the latter more depth in the major field; quite often they offer both types of degrees for some STEM fields. IME, which may not be representative, Computer Science is far less likely to have B.A. programs than either Math or most physical sciences.
    - tzs 10y ago
      BA vs. BS can be quite confusing in STEM fields. In the United States, there is no standard for how they differ. All of the following exist in the wild: • BS only. (Caltech, for example. In fact, Caltech only offers BS for everything. Even English majors--and yes, there is an occasional English major at Caltech--end up with a BS). • BA only. UC Berkeley is an example in this category for math and physics. • Both are offered, with identical coursework and requirements. You can have whichever you want. Some will even for a small fee give you two diplomas, so you can use whichever seems appropriate for the situation. • Both are offered, from the same department, with different in-major coursework and aims. One may be aimed toward students aiming to go into research, and one toward those aiming to go into teaching, for instance. • Both are offered, from different departments. For example, UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Sciences offers a BA in chemistry, and the College of Chemistry offers a BS in chemistry. Computer science can be taken at Berkeley in the College of Letters and Science for a BA, or in the College of Engineering for a BS. • Both are offered, with the same in-major coursework, but differ in out-of-major requirements. So, the BA and BS would require the exact same science and math courses, but the BA has specific breadth requirements to produce a well rounded education, whereas the BS lets you take pretty much what you want as long as you satisfy the math and science requirements and any general requirements of your school. I generally just say that I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics. If someone thinks they need to know if it is a BA or a BS, I ask what they are really trying to figure out.
sndean 10y ago
> Critical thinkers can accomplish anything. Critical thinkers can master French, Ruby on Rails, Python or whatever future language comes their way. I guess an example of this is the Italian girl that won last year's Dyalog APL student competition: http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Contest-Winners.htm http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Cont... She was studying Latin and Greek, then was exposed to APL, enjoyed it, and was apparently very good at it... Fine, that makes some sense. But, if the goal is learn APL (or any programming language), why not just learn APL? Is it really true that learning French prior to Ruby on Rails gives you a unique advantage?
- jdminhbg 10y ago
  Even just within programming, I'd say ever successive language you learn gets easier, as you're able to apply labels to patterns you see, and think abstractly about language features. I don't think that if your goal is to learn RoR, the best way to accomplish it is to learn French first. But if you take two programming newbies, and one of them knows a couple foreign languages and the other doesn't, the former will have an advantage.
3pt14159 10y ago
So degrees like Philosophy and Economics aside, since rigour is assured no matter the university, my issue with the statement: "How can this be? It’s very simple. A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking." Jumps the gun. The brevity of my counter argument may belie it's truth: Selection bias perfectly explains his experiences. Of course I'd rather an English major that has learned to code at the level I require over a Computer Science major. The English major that is able to hustle his or her way into a programming career almost certainly has a greater IQ than the average Computer Science grad. What is not seen is the vast sea of English majors not going down that path, but rather ending up in a career that is far less challenging.
- rfrank 10y ago
  > What is not seen is the vast sea of English majors not going down that path, but rather ending up in a career that is far less challenging. It's almost like they went to school for something completely different ;) I don't see why selection bias matters though, as it's not terribly relevant to the author's point that humanities students bring a different/valuable perspective to the table and shouldn't be written off as technical hires. To me, the real goal should be encouraging students from both STEM and humanities backgrounds to learn from each other and cross streams a bit. No more Physics for Poets or Shakespeare for sysadmins.
hkmurakami 10y ago
This is a terrible thesis/headline position that doesn't even reflect the author's own experiences. He posits that the STEM label don't work well, then proceeds to use another label in its place. What his experience should tell him is: "Critical thinking and the ability to learn and adapt independently is the most important ability in a professional. These abilities are more pertinent than one's conferred degree. Find people with these characteristics wherever you may find them. Independently acquired skills outside of one's undergraduate studies may be correlated with an increased likelihood of possession of such aptitudes." Not judging people by their labels cuts both ways. Plenty of liberal arts majors lack critical thinking, and vice versa and any combination thereof.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking. So, not those liberal arts majors who are protected in "safe spaces", who have "trigger warnings" on their classes, who complain about how they feel threatened when someone wrote pro-Trump messages at their school. Look, there are a lot of good, high-quality liberal arts schools that are teaching students to think for themselves, and giving them a good breadth of background to orient them to the stuff that they encounter. But there are unfortunately also a lot of liberal arts schools that just coddle the kids, and turn out little better than 22-year-old high-schoolers. The first is valuable; the second a waste.
nashashmi 10y ago
I remember a video where the early Steve Jobs is talking about the company he built. One of the things he mentioned was that Apple stands at the intersection of art and computers. He then mentioned that every person at Apple is not just a software developer but also a poet, a musician, and other liberal arts type professions. It is for that reason, he believed, they come up with an incredible computing experience. Personally, I always complain I wish I knew what a normal person would want. A technical person very quickly falls to an abnormal and complicated approach of doing things.
_wo6a 10y ago
I'm sure hobbyists with liberal arts majors and liberal arts majors with computer science minors can both be very good developers and leaders, but to really be "by far the sharpest, best-performing software developers and technology leaders" I think would still require a CS degree. I have a BS in CS, but from a program with relatively lax minimum course requirements, particularly in math, from what I've read about other CS programs. (Only Calc II and Discrete Math.) This allowed me to actually take more non-STEM than STEM courses while still earning a CS degree. If I was required to take higher-level math or more advanced CS subjects, I probably would have failed at the time. Yet I still got aspects of a CS education that I wouldn't have if I just minored in CS, which have provided a good base for exploring higher-level CS topics on my own. At the same time, the program has everything available for students who want a more rigorous courseload. So I'd say that except for producing top individual contributors in STEM domain programming (physics simulations, etc.), low-level algorithms, and high-performance system-level programming (which admittedly comprise a large number of software engineering jobs, but probably not the majority), a high-quality CS program where you can still take mostly non-STEM courses, and that doesn't use math courses effectively to weed people out, would on the surface appear to be ideal for the vast majority of software developers and technology leaders.
sudosteph 10y ago
Uh-oh, somebody better not tell this author that people can be great programmers, leaders, and team members without going to college at all. I really wish we could just kill this whole notion of "This degree I got X years ago makes me innately better at my job" and the pointless hierarchy that always seems to stem from it. Engineering degrees don't magically turn someone into a robotic human with no capacity for creativity or self-leadership, and liberal arts degrees don't make someone incapable of understanding logical reasoning. I would be interested in seeing what types of people are drawn most to each though. For example, many of my friends who went the engineering path did it because they wanted a stable career, and they knew engineering was a solid way to earn that, even if it's difficult. In contrast, some of my friends who went to smaller liberal arts colleges (in most cases for political science) cited "networking" opportunities and "making connections" as important for their careers and reasons why they went the LA path. Both sets of friends are very capable, but as someone from a solidly middle-class background who was raised to view hard work as the only way to succeed, the notion of "networking" and playing the social game to move up has always seemed alien to me. I know it's not true in all cases, but it makes me wonder if taking the risk on a LA degree in some cases is correlated to greater economic privilege (ie, people with better safety nets who don't need guaranteed income that more economically valuable degrees provide). I wonder if those are the people that the author is so enamored with here.
- mercer 10y ago
  > Both sets of friends are very capable, but as someone from a solidly middle-class background who was raised to view hard work as the only way to succeed, the notion of "networking" and playing the social game to move up has always seemed alien to me. I know it's not true in all cases, but it makes me wonder if taking the risk on a LA degree in some cases is correlated to greater economic privilege From my experience of college (and that of most people I know), especially in the social sciences, the degree itself was only worth it because studying is cheap here. About 1500 euro a year, and we received about 250 euro a month from the state, more if we lived in a dorm, and could top that off with a very, very friendly loan up to about 600 euro total. The biggest value, aside from intrinsic interest in the topic and having mediocre-at-best lecturers provide us with reading suggestions, was indeed the connections we made during those years. Most of the people I met in college now have interesting work or positions in their field (and often via said connections). I partied with them, hung out with them, had discussions with them, started book clubs with them, and became friends with them. If I need to talk to a good journalist, accountant, lawyer, entrepreneur about something, there's one from my network available. If I have questions related to philosophy, physics, literature, etc., well, that's just an appointment and a few beers away. While it's possible to create these connections without going to college, it's much harder. By going to college it happens automatically, especially if you join some student organization. Whether that's worth the insane student loans people have to burden themselves with in some countries is up for debate, but the value in the network is huge. I'd also like to note that it doesn't feel like playing a social game and networking. It's making friends and acquaintances and sort of 'falling into' using the advantages. A bit like how I suppose most people who date other people are looking forward to getting laid, but it doesn't feel 'sleezy' because it's not your primary objective (of course, if it is and you're up-front or okay with that, that's fine too).
smegel 10y ago
> A critical thinker is a self-learning machine that is not constrained by memorizing commands or syntax. But is a critical thinker creative? They can think, but if you put them in front of a blank sheet of paper, a blank whiteboard, or an empty Vi terminal, can they create and build something new and original? Creativity is not at all like critical thinking - one analyzes things that exist, one actually creates things. Creativity is at the heart of software craftmanship.
ohohoh 10y ago
Programming jobs need critical thinkers and problem solvers with a mathematical ability. What degree such students were attracted to at the age of 18 is neither here nor there really. An undergraduate degree is not really training you in anything formally. How many of us actually use, or for that matter remember, what we learned in our undergraduate degree program? In my case it was pure Mathematics, and to this day I have not had to use Field Theory, say, in my career (and I would likely fail abysmally if required to). The most important bit is the 'critical thinking' coupled with a passion to learn, build and being creative. At the end of the day writing software has a huge creative component to it. Sadly most companies require STEM degrees for an entry level Software Engineer position. I agree with the author that we need to be more open and be the meritocracy we thump our chests about so loudly. Conversely for liberal arts jobs ...
mojoe 10y ago
Articles like this are ridiculous, because essentially all they say is "guess what, there are some smart people in X group!" There are smart/hard-working/passionate/etc. people in nearly every group. The question is, what are the ratios?
deleted 10y ago
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aminok 10y ago
A STEM degree is more valuable than a Liberal Arts degree both financially and in terms of the economic contribution it makes to the nation. The hard sciences and engineering are accountable to reality while Liberal Arts is accountable only to popular opinion.
mikeskim 10y ago
It is a fact that students at top tech schools (think Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, etc.) study longer compared to students at comparable liberal arts schools. I believe it takes time and practice to get good at anything. Students at tech schools in tech majors just spend more time practicing their craft. Obviously that doesn't mean some English major can't pick up math, computer science and physics later in life, but such people are the outliers.

61 points by grellas 10y ago

Don't you just love when people suddenly "realize" the value of liberal-arts degrees (probably obtained by rich or connected colleagues) over the apparent total inability of engineering and science majors to think for themselves? /s No really, what gives people the impression that STEM majors can't think independently or well?

btdiehr 10y ago
It's only a point made to further justify their over priced diploma.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
a decent percentage can't. trying to talk to some of my friends about political topics or history or anything else is frustrating because of their lack of knowledge. They know their major and they know about the video games they play but that is it. "who is joe Biden?" is a real question I've heard. many perform abysmally on critical reading portions of tests and can't form persuasive arguments effectively.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  This isn't limited to STEM majors!
- khedoros 10y ago
  Are they capable of critical thinking if you choose an area of discussion that they are knowledgeable about? Can they make clear, reasoned judgements within the limits of their knowledge? If they can't, then you have a point (which is really sad).
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    yes I'd say so. problem is sometimes they may not know when they are arguing about something they are knowledgable about versus things they aren't. once again I'm talking from anecdotal experience and there are always exceptions. honestly the biggest problems I've seen from my peers(college aged and new grads) are superiority complexes and not realizing when they are out of the bounds of their knowledge base.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      Dunning-Kruger is something pretty much everyone lapses into sometimes.
- xufi 10y ago
  I can relate to you about the "Frustrating lack of knowledge aspect" I've tried to engage people who are in the Psychology department where I hang around, about other topics such as stuff like VR and they dont even care about it. No matter how much you dumb it down or try to make it sound interesting,
- burfog 10y ago
  To be fair, the VP is only very slightly more powerful than a typical senator, and less powerful than at least one of them. Do you know all the senators? The VP is also less powerful than a supreme court justice. The VP is also less powerful than the house majority leader. Things are less clear with governors, but I think the argument can be made that the VP is less powerful than the governors of California, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. Do you know those? Also, remember what Feynman said his dad taught him about knowing the names of birds. Memorizing names gives a false sense of knowledge.
Retra 10y ago
I've been in CS curricula where, were you to ask the students what they wanted, they would casually dismiss any liberal-arts subject as a waste of time. I've been in liberal arts curricula where the students themselves either think it is a waste of time (but that STEM is too hard) or that STEM is a waste of time because it doesn't appeal to their desire to "never be wrong" about anything. I have met very few people who look at either situation and see the breadth of information that exists and how valuable it can be to analyze and model.
superuser2 10y ago
A high quality liberal arts education is years of full-time deliberate practice, under constant feedback and guidance from experts. It's also exposure to the enormous volumes of arguments and ideas that have already been explored. Someone who has been working for years under the engineering culture and code review regime on an elite Google distributed systems team is probably going to write better code (at least in that domain) then someone who did a couple of side projects after reading the Rails tutorial.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Well yes, of course. What I object to is equating "able to think critically and independently" with "has years of domain expertise in academic liberal-arts and humanities fields." The whole point of talking about "critical" or "independent" thinking is that they're supposed to be domain-general cognitive skills.
serge2k 10y ago
Hacker news seems to have a subset of people who believe CS degrees are not just useless, but perhaps actively harmful. At least that's how it seems whenever this comes up.
geebee 10y ago
I have this reaction when I read these articles as well. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are dismissive of humanities majors, but I've experienced a real problem, over the course of my career, with people who want to put engineering and science majors in a box, defining them as people who can handle technical tasks but can't think independently outside their narrow and well defined technical skill set. I wonder if this attitude is more prevalent in the US, where people routinely say "you can do anything with a law degree", viewing law as a generalist degree, while viewing engineering or math as a narrow, task-specific degree with no real use outside those subjects… Although I double majored in English Literature and Math, I did notice the extent to which I would have been required to study humanities as a math major in college (UCSD) without the double major in lit. My general education requirements included a two year undergraduate survey course on world history, a required upper division sequence in a humanities field focusing on a specific region (such as a one year upper division sequence on European or Asian history), two years or proven competence in a foreign language, a year of arts (fine arts, art history, theater), and a minor in a humanities field. That may be a bit heavier than usual, but in general, math and science majors are required to take a great deal of humanities. The humanities majors, by contrast, had to take two courses in "math" which could be fulfilled with symbolic logic in the philosophy dept and stats for the social sciences (no calculus or even a modicum of advanced math required). The science could be fulfilled through "physics for humanities majors" and bio classes not intended for science track students. Again, that may be a bit light, but it's pretty consistent in US universities - humanities majors get away with minimal math and science, whereas science, engineering, and math majors must take substantial humanities coursework. One more thing - although the humanities were rigorous, the partiers were pretty much all humanities or social science majors. At least at UCSD, it was nearly impossible to survive in engineering or science as a "partier". Not to say these students were never at the parties, but they spent a lot more time in labs and the library, it was pretty clear. Those and the pre-meds. The humanities majors who got good grades were serious students, sure, but it's pretty clear to me that they didn't have to work anywhere near as hard for good grades (this was also my personal experience in upper division lit classes vs upper division math classes). This is why I think the most well-rounded students tend to be the STEM students. Not all STEM students are well rounded, many resent and minimize their humanities coursework, but the well-roundedness tends to be more deeply built into the curriculum for STEM than for humanities.

whatshisface 10y ago

"A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking." There are enough truly bad Liberal Arts degrees out there that the more difficult ones (philosophy and economics spring to mind, at least at my school) get dinged by proximity. What people are really worried about hiring is someone with four years of multiple choice and BSssays under their belt - that is, experience only in perverting performance metrics. A college experience like that is almost impossible in STEM, rare in a few LA fields and extremely common in the rest. Also: taking the initiative to learn to program and switch careers is a strong signal that you weren't one of the people who tried to engineer their good school into behaving like a degree mill.

ethanbond 10y ago
> A college experience like that is almost impossible in STEM I wager that a lot of people disagree with you here. There are definitely cheap tactics to dupe lazy teachers at both ends of the educational spectrum. Example: Even if you don't know the answer, write as much work as possible to get partial credit. Look at backwork to learn the form of the exam, memorize the form of the solution and then just plug in the new numbers and calculate.
jordanb 10y ago
I got an English degree from a middle-ranked state school and never once had a multiple-choice exam and only had two classes with fill-in-the-blanks style exams: 1) A chemistry class I took and 2) An art history class where we were given photos of pieces and asked to write in what culture and epoch produced them. Although the art history tests were in the above format, that class also required us to go to the local art museum, find a relevant piece, and photograph it; then go to the library and research the piece developing a thesis and a ten page paper supporting that thesis. Besides that all my coursework consisted of developing theses and then writing papers defending those theses with the grade being determined by how well we argued our point. Is this bullshit? I would say it's subjective, yes, but a part of a liberal arts education is learning to embrace the subjective nature of the human experience.
ohyes 10y ago
I did both computer science and philosophy at a top tier college, the computer science courses were far easier.

benjohnson 10y ago

In my humble opinion, it really depends on what you're programming: 3D Gaming engine: A genius with lots of CS training/education. Simple business app with weird rules that requires a lot of customer feedback: A kind-hearted person who can listen and noodle around and is tenacious.

knn 10y ago
I agree that more technical projects require more cleverness/training, but most things don't require genius. Terry Tao, field medalist, argues strongly that one does not need to be a genius to be a professional mathematician. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t... Likewise, this implies that one does not need to be a genius to program difficult things.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

tylerkahn 10y ago

Someone who majored in liberal arts but is able to themselves to code is likely to be an intelligent and motivated individual. I suspect that more readily explains the successes of these individuals than their liberal arts studies. It's also my personal observation that someone's college major has no bearing on their ability to think critically.

potatoyogurt 10y ago
Yeah, there's a lot of selection bias with this sort of thing. The average computer science graduate is probably going to go on to become a software engineer or otherwise work in tech in some way. This means that you will meet all of the average CS graduates every day. The average liberal arts major will not go on to be a software engineer. The only liberal arts major software engineers you will meet are the ones who are interested enough in programming to bother learning it and talented enough to become proficient in two mostly unrelated fields. I do think there's a lot of value in studying non-technical, potentially useless, even esoteric things, but this argument is not extraordinarily convincing.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  This. Most people with liberal arts degrees don't have pre-existing knowledge of/interest in all things tech/programming. The people on here who say they have graduate degrees in history, etc aren't even remotely the average LA degree holder. Without a lot of extra studying/bootcamps/programming since you were 12/post bacc certs/second BS degrees in computer science, a plain old average liberal arts degree I'd wager is much, much less valuable than a BS in CS.

mrdrozdov 10y ago

I sense a serious sample size problem here.

lhnz 10y ago

Those degrees aren't worth their cost. A better recommendation, and a path that some STEM students have already taken, is independent study of the Liberal Arts curriculum. Unfortunately, even if you do this, you will still have to deal with condescending fools telling you that you can't see the forest from the trees, and are constrained by memorizing commands or syntax. The fact of the matter is that you have no critical thinking skills, can't see the big picture and lack the soft skills – the people skills – that help to understand customers and bring the staff along. Everybody here can see it, why can't you? You'll never make anything of yourself, nerd. (Those quotes are directly from the article. It's super condescending towards STEM people. No better than similar articles aimed at Liberal Arts students.)

taurath 10y ago
One would argue that we could consider it a societal good to have good critical well rounded thinkers. Nowadays college is more like a capitalist transaction in order to make money. If thats the point of college, then its definitely not worth the cost. I'd love to go back and be able to do a full course of liberal arts - I'd probably be a much more well rounded person.
tspike 10y ago
> liberal art's curriculum Is this the result of independent study? ;) In all seriousness, my linguistics degree was worth every penny. Spending that much time with incredibly bright people with broad perspectives focused solely on sharpening your understanding of the world is something that's very difficult to replicate independently.
- lhnz 10y ago
  Fixed. I can imagine that even if it is difficult to replicate broad perspectives independently it is worth trying to do so. I think the internet will certainly make it easier to do so now, too. Additionally you have a lot longer than 4 years to engage with material. Autodidactism eventually wins because it is unconstrained; though the educational experience might get a lot of breadth out fast.

gozur88 10y ago

>A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking. This is the sort of thing you tell people when you can't point to anything measurable. It's the college grad's equivalent of "I'm a people person!"

nyolfen 10y ago
Not everything in life is easily quantifiable, but that doesn't mean those things that aren't are meaningless
- gozur88 10y ago
  Yes, but it also doesn't mean they aren't meaningless. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever people with Liberal Arts degrees possess better than average critical thinking skills compared to other college graduates.

galfarragem 10y ago

Arts Major here. An Arts major is great for your personal growth because it's broader and more generalist than STEM but it doesn't add much value to society on short term. Once it doesn't add direct value to society, society doesn't reward it also. This translates into an high probability of a stagnated life after graduation. Choose carefully.

orionblastar 10y ago
Pick your degree and major carefully. I wanted a degree in physics but it doesn't pay as much as a programming job would. So I took computer science instead. Teacher/Education degrees are good to get because of a teacher shortage but don't get paid as well as most other jobs. When I went to a university it was 1986, I learned Turbo Pascal which is nothing compared to modern IDEs now. I learned Turbo C in 1987 and that helped me learn Ada, COBOL, FORTRAN, Visual BASIC, and many others. Once you understand the concepts you can learn almost any other language.

arca_vorago 10y ago

The trivium and the quadrivium are what a true "liberal" education is about, and are things that shouldn't be restricted to any particular major and should be taught even before high-school. The real issue is that the oligarchs don't want a populace that is truly educated in critical thinking. For a treat, try page 7 of the Norman Dodd report to the Reece Committee. https://www.scribd.com/doc/3768227/Dodd-Report-to-the-Reece-Committee-on-Foundations-1954 https://www.scribd.com/doc/3768227/Dodd-Report-to-the-Reece-... Bonuses: https://www.amazon.com/Leipzig-Connection-Basics-Education/dp/0897390016/179-1848850-1151606?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 https://www.amazon.com/Leipzig-Connection-Basics-Education/d... https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Dumbing-America-Revised-Abridged/dp/0966707117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464824056&sr=1-1&keywords=dumbing+down+of+america https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Dumbing-America-Revised-Ab...

StanislavPetrov 10y ago

I have a post-graduate degree in History, and even though I've never "used" my degree in my professional career, the benefits have been incalculable. A good understanding of history is what allows one to have a good understanding of the present.

adamsea 10y ago

Why do many people have a knee-jerk reaction against the humanities? I'm genuinely curious what others think. I mean - where do they think Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Sopranos, i.e. all of our culture (popular and otherwise) come from?

danharaj 10y ago
technocracy is en vogue here and humanities experts are not seen as experts in anything """useful""", which usually translates as "economically lucrative" or ""rational and objective"".
orionblastar 10y ago
It isn't knee jerk reactions to liberal arts degrees. The world needs better books, movies, tv shows, painting, music, etc. The thing is, that was once thought a decade ago or so, was that a liberal arts degree did not qualify someone for a programming job as much as a computer science or engineering degree would. Python and Ruby on Rails made it easier to program, when it was thought that a liberal arts major can't program we used C and Pascal, pointers, had to do garbage collection on our own, had to allocate and then free up memory, etc. Programming Languages evolved with Java and C# that did away with pointers, does garbage collection on their own, and allocates and frees up memory when an object is closed. Then Python and Ruby on Rails made it even easier. Microsoft had to make a Express and then Community version of their Visual Studio Dotnet languages to compete with FOSS languages, Borland suffered and kept getting bought out, suddenly there FOSS languages got easier to use, understand, and program in. I think every degree should have a Critical Thinking class and maybe a Small Business class to learn how to balance a checking account and learn to save money instead of living paycheck to paycheck. How to run your own business and make it a startup by bootstrapping what you saved working a job.
glibgil 10y ago
They come from digital cameras, cgi and editing software all delivered over the internet
- rfrank 10y ago

rfrank 10y ago

These discussions are always so stupid. I was a lit major, have worked as a PCB designer, taught myself some coding and all that jazz, and now put around on the internet doing digital marketing stuff. College major is a terrible indicator of intelligence, work ethic, and so on. Sure, liberal arts majors can be annoying (I probably have a lot more first hand experience with that than you do), but at the same time, plenty of STEM folks write like freshman in high school and start stammering when asked to explain whatever declarative statement they just made further. The condescension from the STEM crowd sure gets old though.

asimuvPR 10y ago
The attitude from the STEM "crowd" is a real issue. I've experienced it myself while talking to kids about technology. People have interrupted a comverstation just to say that art is stupid. I just change the subject and continue with the conversation. But its really hard to motivate kids and young people to be creative with such an idiotic attitude. We don't need more engineers, programmers or whatever. We need more creative people with drive. Period.
- wcummings 10y ago
  People like this are why I don't like to call myself an "engineer" anymore. They've ruined the word for me. I spent a year at WPI, and its fucking lousy with these stuck up losers, sharing lame "engineering memes" putting down lib arts majors. Mind you, these were not even engineers, just engineering students, most of whom hadn't built a single useful thing in their life outside of school.
  - personjerry 10y ago
    I'm not certain, but aren't these memes always done tongue-in-cheek?
    - rfrank 10y ago
      lol, definitely not.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Honestly, I think the failing is that computer science majors (unlike some other STEM majors) are rarely offered as liberal arts programs with stronger breadth requirements that are typical in B.S. programs (in lots of institutions, you can get a B.A./A.B. in other STEM fields like Mathematics or Chemistry, but not Computer Science.) While I don't think all (or even most) CS majors need to be produced out of liberal arts programs, I think it would be good for the field and the software industry to have more of those.

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
It depends if the CS department is in an engineering college/school as part of the larger institution. In colleges without engineering programs, its often in a liberal arts and sciences school.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Often, "liberal arts and sciences schools" offer both liberal arts (B.A.) and sciences (B.S.) degrees, the former having more breadth requirements and the latter more depth in the major field; quite often they offer both types of degrees for some STEM fields. IME, which may not be representative, Computer Science is far less likely to have B.A. programs than either Math or most physical sciences.
  - tzs 10y ago
    BA vs. BS can be quite confusing in STEM fields. In the United States, there is no standard for how they differ. All of the following exist in the wild: • BS only. (Caltech, for example. In fact, Caltech only offers BS for everything. Even English majors--and yes, there is an occasional English major at Caltech--end up with a BS). • BA only. UC Berkeley is an example in this category for math and physics. • Both are offered, with identical coursework and requirements. You can have whichever you want. Some will even for a small fee give you two diplomas, so you can use whichever seems appropriate for the situation. • Both are offered, from the same department, with different in-major coursework and aims. One may be aimed toward students aiming to go into research, and one toward those aiming to go into teaching, for instance. • Both are offered, from different departments. For example, UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Sciences offers a BA in chemistry, and the College of Chemistry offers a BS in chemistry. Computer science can be taken at Berkeley in the College of Letters and Science for a BA, or in the College of Engineering for a BS. • Both are offered, with the same in-major coursework, but differ in out-of-major requirements. So, the BA and BS would require the exact same science and math courses, but the BA has specific breadth requirements to produce a well rounded education, whereas the BS lets you take pretty much what you want as long as you satisfy the math and science requirements and any general requirements of your school. I generally just say that I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics. If someone thinks they need to know if it is a BA or a BS, I ask what they are really trying to figure out.

sndean 10y ago

> Critical thinkers can accomplish anything. Critical thinkers can master French, Ruby on Rails, Python or whatever future language comes their way. I guess an example of this is the Italian girl that won last year's Dyalog APL student competition: http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Contest-Winners.htm http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Cont... She was studying Latin and Greek, then was exposed to APL, enjoyed it, and was apparently very good at it... Fine, that makes some sense. But, if the goal is learn APL (or any programming language), why not just learn APL? Is it really true that learning French prior to Ruby on Rails gives you a unique advantage?

jdminhbg 10y ago
Even just within programming, I'd say ever successive language you learn gets easier, as you're able to apply labels to patterns you see, and think abstractly about language features. I don't think that if your goal is to learn RoR, the best way to accomplish it is to learn French first. But if you take two programming newbies, and one of them knows a couple foreign languages and the other doesn't, the former will have an advantage.

3pt14159 10y ago

So degrees like Philosophy and Economics aside, since rigour is assured no matter the university, my issue with the statement: "How can this be? It’s very simple. A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking." Jumps the gun. The brevity of my counter argument may belie it's truth: Selection bias perfectly explains his experiences. Of course I'd rather an English major that has learned to code at the level I require over a Computer Science major. The English major that is able to hustle his or her way into a programming career almost certainly has a greater IQ than the average Computer Science grad. What is not seen is the vast sea of English majors not going down that path, but rather ending up in a career that is far less challenging.

rfrank 10y ago
> What is not seen is the vast sea of English majors not going down that path, but rather ending up in a career that is far less challenging. It's almost like they went to school for something completely different ;) I don't see why selection bias matters though, as it's not terribly relevant to the author's point that humanities students bring a different/valuable perspective to the table and shouldn't be written off as technical hires. To me, the real goal should be encouraging students from both STEM and humanities backgrounds to learn from each other and cross streams a bit. No more Physics for Poets or Shakespeare for sysadmins.

hkmurakami 10y ago

This is a terrible thesis/headline position that doesn't even reflect the author's own experiences. He posits that the STEM label don't work well, then proceeds to use another label in its place. What his experience should tell him is: "Critical thinking and the ability to learn and adapt independently is the most important ability in a professional. These abilities are more pertinent than one's conferred degree. Find people with these characteristics wherever you may find them. Independently acquired skills outside of one's undergraduate studies may be correlated with an increased likelihood of possession of such aptitudes." Not judging people by their labels cuts both ways. Plenty of liberal arts majors lack critical thinking, and vice versa and any combination thereof.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

> A well-rounded liberal arts degree establishes a foundation of critical thinking. So, not those liberal arts majors who are protected in "safe spaces", who have "trigger warnings" on their classes, who complain about how they feel threatened when someone wrote pro-Trump messages at their school. Look, there are a lot of good, high-quality liberal arts schools that are teaching students to think for themselves, and giving them a good breadth of background to orient them to the stuff that they encounter. But there are unfortunately also a lot of liberal arts schools that just coddle the kids, and turn out little better than 22-year-old high-schoolers. The first is valuable; the second a waste.

nashashmi 10y ago

I remember a video where the early Steve Jobs is talking about the company he built. One of the things he mentioned was that Apple stands at the intersection of art and computers. He then mentioned that every person at Apple is not just a software developer but also a poet, a musician, and other liberal arts type professions. It is for that reason, he believed, they come up with an incredible computing experience. Personally, I always complain I wish I knew what a normal person would want. A technical person very quickly falls to an abnormal and complicated approach of doing things.

_wo6a 10y ago

I'm sure hobbyists with liberal arts majors and liberal arts majors with computer science minors can both be very good developers and leaders, but to really be "by far the sharpest, best-performing software developers and technology leaders" I think would still require a CS degree. I have a BS in CS, but from a program with relatively lax minimum course requirements, particularly in math, from what I've read about other CS programs. (Only Calc II and Discrete Math.) This allowed me to actually take more non-STEM than STEM courses while still earning a CS degree. If I was required to take higher-level math or more advanced CS subjects, I probably would have failed at the time. Yet I still got aspects of a CS education that I wouldn't have if I just minored in CS, which have provided a good base for exploring higher-level CS topics on my own. At the same time, the program has everything available for students who want a more rigorous courseload. So I'd say that except for producing top individual contributors in STEM domain programming (physics simulations, etc.), low-level algorithms, and high-performance system-level programming (which admittedly comprise a large number of software engineering jobs, but probably not the majority), a high-quality CS program where you can still take mostly non-STEM courses, and that doesn't use math courses effectively to weed people out, would on the surface appear to be ideal for the vast majority of software developers and technology leaders.

sudosteph 10y ago

Uh-oh, somebody better not tell this author that people can be great programmers, leaders, and team members without going to college at all. I really wish we could just kill this whole notion of "This degree I got X years ago makes me innately better at my job" and the pointless hierarchy that always seems to stem from it. Engineering degrees don't magically turn someone into a robotic human with no capacity for creativity or self-leadership, and liberal arts degrees don't make someone incapable of understanding logical reasoning. I would be interested in seeing what types of people are drawn most to each though. For example, many of my friends who went the engineering path did it because they wanted a stable career, and they knew engineering was a solid way to earn that, even if it's difficult. In contrast, some of my friends who went to smaller liberal arts colleges (in most cases for political science) cited "networking" opportunities and "making connections" as important for their careers and reasons why they went the LA path. Both sets of friends are very capable, but as someone from a solidly middle-class background who was raised to view hard work as the only way to succeed, the notion of "networking" and playing the social game to move up has always seemed alien to me. I know it's not true in all cases, but it makes me wonder if taking the risk on a LA degree in some cases is correlated to greater economic privilege (ie, people with better safety nets who don't need guaranteed income that more economically valuable degrees provide). I wonder if those are the people that the author is so enamored with here.

mercer 10y ago
> Both sets of friends are very capable, but as someone from a solidly middle-class background who was raised to view hard work as the only way to succeed, the notion of "networking" and playing the social game to move up has always seemed alien to me. I know it's not true in all cases, but it makes me wonder if taking the risk on a LA degree in some cases is correlated to greater economic privilege From my experience of college (and that of most people I know), especially in the social sciences, the degree itself was only worth it because studying is cheap here. About 1500 euro a year, and we received about 250 euro a month from the state, more if we lived in a dorm, and could top that off with a very, very friendly loan up to about 600 euro total. The biggest value, aside from intrinsic interest in the topic and having mediocre-at-best lecturers provide us with reading suggestions, was indeed the connections we made during those years. Most of the people I met in college now have interesting work or positions in their field (and often via said connections). I partied with them, hung out with them, had discussions with them, started book clubs with them, and became friends with them. If I need to talk to a good journalist, accountant, lawyer, entrepreneur about something, there's one from my network available. If I have questions related to philosophy, physics, literature, etc., well, that's just an appointment and a few beers away. While it's possible to create these connections without going to college, it's much harder. By going to college it happens automatically, especially if you join some student organization. Whether that's worth the insane student loans people have to burden themselves with in some countries is up for debate, but the value in the network is huge. I'd also like to note that it doesn't feel like playing a social game and networking. It's making friends and acquaintances and sort of 'falling into' using the advantages. A bit like how I suppose most people who date other people are looking forward to getting laid, but it doesn't feel 'sleezy' because it's not your primary objective (of course, if it is and you're up-front or okay with that, that's fine too).

smegel 10y ago

> A critical thinker is a self-learning machine that is not constrained by memorizing commands or syntax. But is a critical thinker creative? They can think, but if you put them in front of a blank sheet of paper, a blank whiteboard, or an empty Vi terminal, can they create and build something new and original? Creativity is not at all like critical thinking - one analyzes things that exist, one actually creates things. Creativity is at the heart of software craftmanship.

ohohoh 10y ago

Programming jobs need critical thinkers and problem solvers with a mathematical ability. What degree such students were attracted to at the age of 18 is neither here nor there really. An undergraduate degree is not really training you in anything formally. How many of us actually use, or for that matter remember, what we learned in our undergraduate degree program? In my case it was pure Mathematics, and to this day I have not had to use Field Theory, say, in my career (and I would likely fail abysmally if required to). The most important bit is the 'critical thinking' coupled with a passion to learn, build and being creative. At the end of the day writing software has a huge creative component to it. Sadly most companies require STEM degrees for an entry level Software Engineer position. I agree with the author that we need to be more open and be the meritocracy we thump our chests about so loudly. Conversely for liberal arts jobs ...

mojoe 10y ago

Articles like this are ridiculous, because essentially all they say is "guess what, there are some smart people in X group!" There are smart/hard-working/passionate/etc. people in nearly every group. The question is, what are the ratios?

deleted 10y ago

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aminok 10y ago

A STEM degree is more valuable than a Liberal Arts degree both financially and in terms of the economic contribution it makes to the nation. The hard sciences and engineering are accountable to reality while Liberal Arts is accountable only to popular opinion.

mikeskim 10y ago

It is a fact that students at top tech schools (think Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, etc.) study longer compared to students at comparable liberal arts schools. I believe it takes time and practice to get good at anything. Students at tech schools in tech majors just spend more time practicing their craft. Obviously that doesn't mean some English major can't pick up math, computer science and physics later in life, but such people are the outliers.