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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

by 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.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>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. That seems like a good statement that accords with my experience at school. I also have a peculiar resentment towards the humanities requirements: I had to take extra humanities requirements, on top of basically everything you already mentioned, for the "honors college" that was giving me the scholarship by which I avoided Student Loan Hell, so pretty much every semester when course selection came up, I had to make some sinister choices between fulfilling my scholarship requirements and taking sufficient coursework in math, CS, and the hard sciences to give me a good base of knowledge for the future. The result is that I basically squeaked by in hard math (stopped after multivariable calculus and linear algebra) and CS, didn't take enough hard science (I really should have taken a physics course), and was under-prepared and even under-advised for the kind of research I wanted to do in graduate school. Graduate school notified me of this by forcing me to fight to have my degree considered a four-year Comp Sci degree at all. In defense of the Technion, I really should have taken more rigorous coursework in undergrad: physics, better vector calculus, real analysis, category theory, a proper type-theory course. In my defense, my undergrad institution didn't even offer those latter two subjects, and my scholarship conditions simply did not have a track available for hard-science students. The institution's idea of an "honors" or "honorable" education, deserving of financial support, was a humanities education finished inside of four years. They provided no coursework options for taking a scholarship-supported education in the hard sciences, and also would not give you additional years of scholarship so you could take their honors humanities education and your own rigorous science-and-math degree on top. Basically, we pay people not to take science courses.
- geebee 10y ago
  That's interesting. A professor at Berkeley told me once that Berkeley Engineering, along with a bunch of other universities, once threatened to withdraw from ABET, largely because they felt that the requirements were getting so heavy that students were no longer able to remain well-rounded. There is also some support for making Engineering more of a 5-year or graduate program. Sounds like that wouldn't have worked for you because of scholarship requirements, but at UCSD, many students who had the choice simply took 5 years to graduate in Engineering. It is truly difficult to manage the rigor of these classes while giving proper time to general requirements. On a related note, what you've described in terms of graduate preparation is also a serious problem for domestic (US) students. I think there is merit to the more generalized approach to undergraduate education in the US, but we specialize very late in the US compared to other educational systems. This becomes a problem when combined with the high attrition rates in PhD programs. When I enrolled in a PhD program at Berkeley, I noticed that the coursework seemed like review for many of my fellow students who had degrees from overseas. Some would chalk this up to superior mathematics education outside the US, but I do think that the late specialization plays a big role here as well. While I was taking those classes in literature, theater, arts, history, and so forth, my graduate classmates were specializing in mathematical optimization and stochastic processes much earlier, and in much greater depth. I don't think that this would be an issue if attrition rates weren't so high, but PhD programs in STEM fields typically have attrition rates between 35%-50%. If you aren't ready to hit the ground running, odds are very good you won't survive the first two years. This isn't an issue in graduate programs in medicine and law in the US, which don't expect undergraduate specialization (and, at the elite level, have vanishingly low attrition rates anyway, typically below one half of one percent). Nobody is expected to study law prior to law school or medicine prior to medical school, and the overwhelming majority of students who start elite programs in these fields do finish (again, 99.5% or more typically do). Unfortunately, the result is what the RAND institute already identified - top US students behave rationally by avoiding PhD programs in the sciences in favor of professional degrees in law, medicine, dentistry, etc. This is only one factor, but I do think the situation you faced - less specialization at the undergraduate level - also plays a role here.

by geebee 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>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. That seems like a good statement that accords with my experience at school. I also have a peculiar resentment towards the humanities requirements: I had to take extra humanities requirements, on top of basically everything you already mentioned, for the "honors college" that was giving me the scholarship by which I avoided Student Loan Hell, so pretty much every semester when course selection came up, I had to make some sinister choices between fulfilling my scholarship requirements and taking sufficient coursework in math, CS, and the hard sciences to give me a good base of knowledge for the future. The result is that I basically squeaked by in hard math (stopped after multivariable calculus and linear algebra) and CS, didn't take enough hard science (I really should have taken a physics course), and was under-prepared and even under-advised for the kind of research I wanted to do in graduate school. Graduate school notified me of this by forcing me to fight to have my degree considered a four-year Comp Sci degree at all. In defense of the Technion, I really should have taken more rigorous coursework in undergrad: physics, better vector calculus, real analysis, category theory, a proper type-theory course. In my defense, my undergrad institution didn't even offer those latter two subjects, and my scholarship conditions simply did not have a track available for hard-science students. The institution's idea of an "honors" or "honorable" education, deserving of financial support, was a humanities education finished inside of four years. They provided no coursework options for taking a scholarship-supported education in the hard sciences, and also would not give you additional years of scholarship so you could take their honors humanities education and your own rigorous science-and-math degree on top. Basically, we pay people not to take science courses.

geebee 10y ago
That's interesting. A professor at Berkeley told me once that Berkeley Engineering, along with a bunch of other universities, once threatened to withdraw from ABET, largely because they felt that the requirements were getting so heavy that students were no longer able to remain well-rounded. There is also some support for making Engineering more of a 5-year or graduate program. Sounds like that wouldn't have worked for you because of scholarship requirements, but at UCSD, many students who had the choice simply took 5 years to graduate in Engineering. It is truly difficult to manage the rigor of these classes while giving proper time to general requirements. On a related note, what you've described in terms of graduate preparation is also a serious problem for domestic (US) students. I think there is merit to the more generalized approach to undergraduate education in the US, but we specialize very late in the US compared to other educational systems. This becomes a problem when combined with the high attrition rates in PhD programs. When I enrolled in a PhD program at Berkeley, I noticed that the coursework seemed like review for many of my fellow students who had degrees from overseas. Some would chalk this up to superior mathematics education outside the US, but I do think that the late specialization plays a big role here as well. While I was taking those classes in literature, theater, arts, history, and so forth, my graduate classmates were specializing in mathematical optimization and stochastic processes much earlier, and in much greater depth. I don't think that this would be an issue if attrition rates weren't so high, but PhD programs in STEM fields typically have attrition rates between 35%-50%. If you aren't ready to hit the ground running, odds are very good you won't survive the first two years. This isn't an issue in graduate programs in medicine and law in the US, which don't expect undergraduate specialization (and, at the elite level, have vanishingly low attrition rates anyway, typically below one half of one percent). Nobody is expected to study law prior to law school or medicine prior to medical school, and the overwhelming majority of students who start elite programs in these fields do finish (again, 99.5% or more typically do). Unfortunately, the result is what the RAND institute already identified - top US students behave rationally by avoiding PhD programs in the sciences in favor of professional degrees in law, medicine, dentistry, etc. This is only one factor, but I do think the situation you faced - less specialization at the undergraduate level - also plays a role here.