5 ms·

Academia lives in a world where people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands to make themselves more knowledgeable in subjects which might have no economic

Academia lives in a world where people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands to make themselves more knowledgeable in subjects which might have no economic value in the world. Just look at how much of our undergrad education consists "general education" type courses. While these courses are interesting, most of them are pretty useless. I took Chinese history, Asian american film, music history, art history and so on. All of these courses were pretty much usless to me from an economic stand point. I think we need to create two tiers of higher-education: one where people focus purely on vocational/career skills while another where you can focus on non-vocational subjects. Let students decide what their general education will consist of instead of making it some top-down approach. People don't like authoritarianism.

pasabagi 8y ago
I think the problem is, that leads to a society that's a bit like a sports car being driven by a nine-year-old. STEM and vocational stuff is great for getting to places fast. It's awful for making a society that can talk critically about where it's going. I say talk, and not 'think', because I don't think STEM people are bad at thinking about problems critically. I just think a lot of humanities is about developing a common set of reference points, a common vocabulary, so you can work on social problems together. If you don't have that, you can't really stop malicious actors from drowning out their opposition, who are isolated by the fact they don't share a common conceptual toolset. And if that happens for long enough, you end up with a society that's basically a bunch of amazingly powerful machines operated by Fox News.
- joefourier 8y ago
  Do the humanities really succeed at accomplishing those goals? In my own college experience, the humanities courses I took mostly taught me how to parrot the professor's opinions, how to write long-winded dissertations with overly complicated language with the goal of appearing intelligent rather than being understood, and how to insert meaning into literary works that author likely never intended. And while I was very successful in those courses, I fail to see how they prepared me to be a better citizen, or to think critically about the direction society is going towards. For my daily life, I would probably have been better off taking a course in plumbing than literary analysis.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    I don't think the humanities departments are particularly successful - but they've been underfunded and horribly hamstrung by political and administrative interference for about half a century now. It's also not that Shakespeare's going to make anybody a better thinker. It's more that stuff like this sets the tone for the culture in general. If you don't really teach hard, interesting culture, then all the people who might have been interested just get the feeling that culture is kinda garbage and go on to engage with hard interesting ideas in other fields. Which leads to a public culture that's not in any way healthy - one that's really just people passing the time, that doesn't really push us or make us grow. History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and wearing funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to be part of something.
    - im3w1l 8y ago
      > History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and wearing funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to be part of something. Please provide a reference for this. It sounds too much like a just-so story for me to take that at face value.
      - Nasrudith 8y ago
        I'm not sure if a citation would make it any better. That line of logic makes me think of the opposite pitfall - that it leads to needless hair-shirted puritanism because anything enjoyable can't possibly be a good thing. "We can't use anesthesia in surgery because the lack of suffering is detrimental to character!" By definition it leads to needless suffering. While knowledge and culture may seem boring or useless in itself (the fine details of long dead Roman politics) it is possible that there are hidden great applications to it in the right situation. Just for two surprising relevance examples Roman gladiatorial archetypes experiencing political correctness after annexing former foes, gladiatorial endorsements, and after the extended war had resulted in consolidation of farms in the hand of slave holding elites past legal limits the idea of land reform or enforcing the existing laws being called 'unRoman'. Science alone has a history of finding bizarre peripheral finds that nobody would have expected. Take an incident that resulted in cattle bleeding to death after routine mild procedures - the source was eventually traced back to fungus affecting their feed. Useful in itself but good only for agronomy. Said fungus was used to produce the first bloodthinner on the market.
throwawayjava 8y ago
> I took Chinese history, Asian american film, music history, art history and so on. All of these courses were pretty much usless to me from an economic stand point. I majored in Math and CS and took a smattering of other courses (one course away from a minor in each of Religion, Philosophy, and Economics). The CS courses were by far the most useless. Perhaps 50% of the material I had taught myself before started undergraduate: everything up to and including data-structures as well as the pragmatic aspects of databases, OOP, and Networking courses. Another 40% I could've taught myself without much guidance (non-theoretical PL, non-optimizing compilers, and a non-proof-based algorithms course). The other 10% was project-based or independent study where the forcing function to work with people who were both above and below my skill level was the most valuable aspect of the coursework. (pre-college internships and freelancing gave me lots of experience working with others, but almost all of them were far above my skill level or else were completely non-technical). The Mathematics coursework was by far the most useful. The lower-level content courses (Calculus and Linear Algebra) are essential for accessing most of the interesting parts of the software industry (self-driving, robotics, research software engineer, etc.). Also, the proof-based coursework is full of useful thought patterns. Most of the difficult/economically important problems I've solved in my life were all relatively trivial extensions of proof techniques or theorems from my undergraduate Analysis, Algebra, and Logic coursework. The humanities courses sit right in-between CS and Mathematics in terms of usefulness. The value of regular practice writing and communicating, with a professional feedback mechanism, was extremely valuable. I don't often use the content knowledge at work, but the writing skills are extremely useful. Learning to write well without regular professional feedback is difficult. The content knowledge from my humanities courses was not immediately useful in an economic sense. However, that well-roundedness did get me an amazing spouse and extremely interesting friend group, though. I'm not sure how to put a dollar value on either of those things. So economically, Math > humanities > CS. CS is more economically valuable but the CS education isn't more valuable because the core content knowledge that's necessary to get a well-paying job doesn't require formal course-work. Basic programming, SQL, and web frameworks are definitely accessible to passionate middle schoolers. In career dimensions beyond net worth (i.e., interesting work), Math > CS > humanities. In non-career dimensions, humanities >= Math > CS. My marriage and friends are mostly a product of the humanities aspect of my education and are each easily worth the $20k I paid for undergraduate. YMMV. > I think we need to create two tiers of higher-education FWIW there are at least 4 tiers: 1. Vocational: Community College and most for-profit universities/educational programs (including bootcamps) 2. Advanced Vocational BA/BS: "industry-tracked" degrees at traditional universities. E.g., many universities have both a CS degree and an SE degree. The physics/engineering split is comparable. Theoretical technical courses are replaced with pragmatic technical courses and the more pure humanities courses are replaced with business/econ/industry-specific communications coursework. 3. Traditional BA/BS 4. Traditional BA/BS at elite academic institutions (e.g., top 10 CS programs tend to have bachelors degrees that are different in kind from small branch campuses of most state university systems)

pasabagi 8y ago

I think the problem is, that leads to a society that's a bit like a sports car being driven by a nine-year-old. STEM and vocational stuff is great for getting to places fast. It's awful for making a society that can talk critically about where it's going. I say talk, and not 'think', because I don't think STEM people are bad at thinking about problems critically. I just think a lot of humanities is about developing a common set of reference points, a common vocabulary, so you can work on social problems together. If you don't have that, you can't really stop malicious actors from drowning out their opposition, who are isolated by the fact they don't share a common conceptual toolset. And if that happens for long enough, you end up with a society that's basically a bunch of amazingly powerful machines operated by Fox News.

joefourier 8y ago
Do the humanities really succeed at accomplishing those goals? In my own college experience, the humanities courses I took mostly taught me how to parrot the professor's opinions, how to write long-winded dissertations with overly complicated language with the goal of appearing intelligent rather than being understood, and how to insert meaning into literary works that author likely never intended. And while I was very successful in those courses, I fail to see how they prepared me to be a better citizen, or to think critically about the direction society is going towards. For my daily life, I would probably have been better off taking a course in plumbing than literary analysis.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  I don't think the humanities departments are particularly successful - but they've been underfunded and horribly hamstrung by political and administrative interference for about half a century now. It's also not that Shakespeare's going to make anybody a better thinker. It's more that stuff like this sets the tone for the culture in general. If you don't really teach hard, interesting culture, then all the people who might have been interested just get the feeling that culture is kinda garbage and go on to engage with hard interesting ideas in other fields. Which leads to a public culture that's not in any way healthy - one that's really just people passing the time, that doesn't really push us or make us grow. History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and wearing funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to be part of something.
  - im3w1l 8y ago
    > History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and wearing funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to be part of something. Please provide a reference for this. It sounds too much like a just-so story for me to take that at face value.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      I'm not sure if a citation would make it any better. That line of logic makes me think of the opposite pitfall - that it leads to needless hair-shirted puritanism because anything enjoyable can't possibly be a good thing. "We can't use anesthesia in surgery because the lack of suffering is detrimental to character!" By definition it leads to needless suffering. While knowledge and culture may seem boring or useless in itself (the fine details of long dead Roman politics) it is possible that there are hidden great applications to it in the right situation. Just for two surprising relevance examples Roman gladiatorial archetypes experiencing political correctness after annexing former foes, gladiatorial endorsements, and after the extended war had resulted in consolidation of farms in the hand of slave holding elites past legal limits the idea of land reform or enforcing the existing laws being called 'unRoman'. Science alone has a history of finding bizarre peripheral finds that nobody would have expected. Take an incident that resulted in cattle bleeding to death after routine mild procedures - the source was eventually traced back to fungus affecting their feed. Useful in itself but good only for agronomy. Said fungus was used to produce the first bloodthinner on the market.

throwawayjava 8y ago

> I took Chinese history, Asian american film, music history, art history and so on. All of these courses were pretty much usless to me from an economic stand point. I majored in Math and CS and took a smattering of other courses (one course away from a minor in each of Religion, Philosophy, and Economics). The CS courses were by far the most useless. Perhaps 50% of the material I had taught myself before started undergraduate: everything up to and including data-structures as well as the pragmatic aspects of databases, OOP, and Networking courses. Another 40% I could've taught myself without much guidance (non-theoretical PL, non-optimizing compilers, and a non-proof-based algorithms course). The other 10% was project-based or independent study where the forcing function to work with people who were both above and below my skill level was the most valuable aspect of the coursework. (pre-college internships and freelancing gave me lots of experience working with others, but almost all of them were far above my skill level or else were completely non-technical). The Mathematics coursework was by far the most useful. The lower-level content courses (Calculus and Linear Algebra) are essential for accessing most of the interesting parts of the software industry (self-driving, robotics, research software engineer, etc.). Also, the proof-based coursework is full of useful thought patterns. Most of the difficult/economically important problems I've solved in my life were all relatively trivial extensions of proof techniques or theorems from my undergraduate Analysis, Algebra, and Logic coursework. The humanities courses sit right in-between CS and Mathematics in terms of usefulness. The value of regular practice writing and communicating, with a professional feedback mechanism, was extremely valuable. I don't often use the content knowledge at work, but the writing skills are extremely useful. Learning to write well without regular professional feedback is difficult. The content knowledge from my humanities courses was not immediately useful in an economic sense. However, that well-roundedness did get me an amazing spouse and extremely interesting friend group, though. I'm not sure how to put a dollar value on either of those things. So economically, Math > humanities > CS. CS is more economically valuable but the CS education isn't more valuable because the core content knowledge that's necessary to get a well-paying job doesn't require formal course-work. Basic programming, SQL, and web frameworks are definitely accessible to passionate middle schoolers. In career dimensions beyond net worth (i.e., interesting work), Math > CS > humanities. In non-career dimensions, humanities >= Math > CS. My marriage and friends are mostly a product of the humanities aspect of my education and are each easily worth the $20k I paid for undergraduate. YMMV. > I think we need to create two tiers of higher-education FWIW there are at least 4 tiers: 1. Vocational: Community College and most for-profit universities/educational programs (including bootcamps) 2. Advanced Vocational BA/BS: "industry-tracked" degrees at traditional universities. E.g., many universities have both a CS degree and an SE degree. The physics/engineering split is comparable. Theoretical technical courses are replaced with pragmatic technical courses and the more pure humanities courses are replaced with business/econ/industry-specific communications coursework. 3. Traditional BA/BS 4. Traditional BA/BS at elite academic institutions (e.g., top 10 CS programs tend to have bachelors degrees that are different in kind from small branch campuses of most state university systems)