7 ms·

Less bullshit majors seems like a very good thing.

• meesles 8y ago
  Science gives us answers. Culture gives us meaning.
  • luckylion 8y ago
    That implies that culture comes from universities, and I don't think that's true. They may be first among those describing culture, but they aren't creating it. And recently, I feel a lot of them tried to force change, leaving their role of scientist and becoming backseat politicians. They don't run for office but still try to make the rules.
  • zeppelin101 8y ago
    Yes, but should people take on substantial debt to get a 'meaningful' degree that will not provide a real ROI? Studying fluffy majors is only logical for 1%ers, basically, because you don't really have to work for a living and you can get set up with some prestigious non-profit through connections. For everyone else, they should probably get cultured on their own, without paying tens of thousands of dollars.
    • exelius 8y ago
      Money is not the only thing in the world, or even the most important. It’s a means to an end.
      • zinclozenge 8y ago
        Turns out that a lot of people would rather live comfortably. Same with me, I'm making more than triple what I would make if I had pursued my original studies into a career. My only regret is that I didn't study computer science so I could be making more than I currently earn.
      • NotSammyHagar 8y ago
        It's not. But the news is full of people who got degrees and giant college debt and it's a terrible anvil hanging over their entire lives. They can't buy a house or car (or its tremendously harder), the need to service the debt is a central part of their decision making. If you want to look at it in another lense, it hurts our whole economy because many younger people in this group aren't able to help our economy grow through buying stuff like previous generations did. When I went to college long long ago it was really cheap, like $1000 a semester. The states stopped subsidizing it so much. I was a beneficiary of this.
        • learc83 8y ago
          If you only have Federal loans (which are about 90% of total disbursements), you will qualify for income based repayment. That means that you will never pay more than 10% of any income over 1.5x the Federal poverty level. It will also be cancelled after 20 years of payments. I would vastly prefer more direct subsidies though.
      • parthdesai 8y ago
        Right, tell that to a person in 3rd world who doesn't know where their next meal is going to come from. Money is not the most important thing in the world when you are making more than maybe $60-$70k/year in NA, but if you are making anything less than that, it definitely is the one of the most important thing if not the most important thing in the world.
        • exelius 8y ago
          Okay, but I think we as a society are poorer as a result. Consumerism is not the end-all, be-all.
      • mythrwy 8y ago
        Until you don't have any. Then it is.
  • nostrademons 8y ago
    Meaning is what people seek once all the bills are paid.
    • Cacti 8y ago
      There is more to life than bills.
      • luckylion 8y ago
        Yeah, like food and shelter. I get that "bills aren't important" is a thing if you don't have trouble paying them, but that's not the situation for everybody. "Hey, lighten up, have some fun, you don't need to work that hard" is cool if you're wealthy. It's an insult to somebody living paycheck to paycheck. They do have to work that hard.
      • nostrademons 8y ago
        Yes, once the bills are paid.
    • parthdesai 8y ago
      Yeah, my dad grew up very poor and he has worked 10 hours a day, 6 days/week for 30 years without ever being "burnt out". I sometimes complain about being burnt out and needing a vacation after working for about 3 years, 9-5 max, 5 days a week that includes one day a week working from home.
  • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    Come on.. most of the people studying the arts in college are not seeking deeper meaning. They study what they enjoy and then get jobs elsewhere. And many people in non-arts majors are still taking lots of electives in the arts, getting double majors, pursuing it later in life. I was part of a group of computer science students in my undergrad college that took many years worth of philosophy courses and advanced rhetoric courses just because we all loved philosophy. I seriously doubt that a reduction in number of degrees granted in arts-focused majors actually equates to a populace that is less appreciative or knowledgeable regarding the arts. It’s not about actual arts & culture (which any given person learns through many walks of life)... it’s about these expensive arts-only degrees simply not conferring economically meaningful labor market skills.
  • tuesdayrain 8y ago
    I assign my own meaning to things in life. I don't need other people to study humanities at universities in order to do that. As far as I know none of my favorite cultural icons/entertainers have even gone to university.
  • motogpjimbo 8y ago
    Is that what the arts and humanities graduates serving my coffee in Starbucks are generating - culture? Don't conflate culture with those who study it. The vast majority of non-STEM graduates generate no activity of either cultural or economic significance. All such degree programmes could be dropped tomorrow with no detriment to society.
    • SantalBlush 8y ago
      >All such degree programmes could be dropped tomorrow with no detriment to society. That is such an outrageous and untestable claim that it is basically meaningless.
    • mythrwy 8y ago
      And possibly even a net benefit to society as many of these degree programs have become little more than people believing they are highly educated because they have been trained to hold certain cultural and political opinions.
• modriano 8y ago
  How do you define "bullshit major"?
  • m0zg 8y ago
    A major which the labor market doesn't need in the quantities that are being churned out by colleges, such as the classic "would you like fries with that" English major. It's not "bullshit" if you're independently wealthy and can pay to "study" for "fun", or as a second major to something that's in demand. But for everybody else I'd consider more in-demand professions, even though they're usually much harder. For an example, take a gander at this list: https://www.washington.edu/students/gencat/degree_programsTOC.html https://www.washington.edu/students/gencat/degree_programsTO.... All the bullshit majors are very easily identifiable. Most, but not all of them have "studies" in their name.
    • NotSammyHagar 8y ago
      You can go even farther, if less than 50% of the people studying it work in that field, maybe less than 20% work there? And their expected wages can't pay for the cost of the college education in 20 years, then it's very questionable to study in that field. Unless you are rich already.
      • modriano 7y ago
        >You can go even farther, if less than 50% of the people studying it work in that field, maybe less than 20% work there? By that metric, one of my undergrad majors (physics) is a bullshit major as very few of us went into that field. But it prepared us very well for many other fields, so I'd say that metric is not meaningful.
    • 13415 8y ago
      That doesn't make the degrees bullshit, though, it merely means that studying the respective field is less likely to be very economically rewarding. You need to make a difference between practical life advice and evaluations of areas and disciplines, or otherwise you'd also have to say that Vincent van Gogh and H.P. Lovecraft were total losers. They weren't. Wittgenstein gave away most of his inherited wealth when he was a young man. That doesn't make him an idiot either. That being said, there are some crappy degrees out there. Some disciplines are mostly just watered down philosophy and I'd go for philosophy instead anytime.
• lame88 8y ago
  This is either a low effort bait post or exactly the kind of bullshit tech-worship I've come to despise. There's more to life and learning than STEM and whatever rides the current economic wave.
  • linuxftw 8y ago
    There's a lot more to life than technical/engineering fields. The pay is just complete crap. If you don't mind being broke and living on welfare, by all means, get that liberal arts degree.
    • scottlocklin 8y ago
      One of the guys running DE Shaw has a psychology degree. One of their early hires had an undergrad degree in English romantic poetry. Pretty sure they're doing OK. IMO most talented/flexible degree per year studied is electrical engineering. Best degree is no degree though. One Vitalek or Bram Cohen is worth 10000 Harvard computer science graduates.
      • jki275 8y ago
        That's like saying don't bother studying so you can get to the NBA. For the unicorns that can pull that off, sure. For the other 99.9999999999999% of the population of the planet it's really bad advice.
        • scottlocklin 7y ago
          I consider virtually all the time I spent in higher education to be wasted. The actually educational pieces of a Ph.D. in physics; probably about 2 years worth of effort, using existing didactic techniques. Probably a year if you did it right -then maybe another year to work on a problem. Einstein getting his Ph.D. when he was 21 was considered normal once. "Higher education" is mostly make-work for pedants and busy work for students; the result is pretty similar to what high school was 100 years ago. It's also a form of dysgenic population control, and a way of growing debt peonage among the more intelligent half the of the population, which is probably useful for social control. I've considered trying to raise a bunch of little Vitaleks myself, just to see if it can be done. Cathedral scholar style. While his and, say, Bram's output is exceptional: I think one of the big reasons it was is they never went to college. Greatest individual systematic trader I know: same story -he never want to college either. Also your sigdifs are way off. I bet you learned that in collitch. ;-)