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Let's be honest: the quality of humanities degrees in Australia is bad. Could they be good, and challenging, and actually useful? Of course - but I doubt you ge

Let's be honest: the quality of humanities degrees in Australia is bad. Could they be good, and challenging, and actually useful? Of course - but I doubt you get this anywhere in Australia for undergrad. The bad thing here isn't the doubling of fees for mostly useless (and I mean intellectually useless - I couldn't care less if something isn't really directly relevant to a job) majors - it's the state of those majors in the first place. It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present in undergrad classes, and the assessments are often a joke.

christophilus 6y ago
> It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present in undergrad classes This is not a new phenomenon. I went to university in the US 20 years ago. Very few students ever thought to question the narrative they were hearing. Critical thinking was not taught where I went to school unless you were in a hard science. And from what I see around me today, it’s still not being taught.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  How good is the critical thinking that's taught in the hard sciences? My assumption would be that it's quite limited there, too - present only to the extent that it absolutely has to be for good science to be carried out. It seems that critical thinking is generally seen (by whatever system is in charge) as an ugly thing, which, in some cases, must unfortunately be allowed to rear its head, so that progress can be made. Critical thinking is really quite a natural thing for humans to do, but it is for the above reason that it is largely stamped out of us by the school system.
DomenicoMazza 6y ago
Wow what a false generalisation. As an academic across communication design and IT (i.e. humanities v science) I will say you are wrong. I have seen disengaged students across both major areas. It's not discipline specific and it not just the quality of degrees. Consider the readiness of students. I completed a year long TAFE (TAFE is technical school, 5 days a week) like foundation course prior to studying communication design at university because I originally began a degree I quit after two weeks and it was too late to restart another degree. Myself (and other students) that competed this foundation year had a major advantage. We already learned the basic tools we would need and practiced concept development so university for us was a better space for us to learn an experiment. Considering teaching contact hours a year in a TAFE is like two in a uni. Guess what! This foundation course which ran for more than 20 years lost its public funding. Furthermore, the degree I had to apply a portfolio to enter now takes in much more students with no portfolio and more or less similar amount of full-time staff with casuals picking up the rest. The problem is multi-faceted. The honest truth is any coalition government (this is the Aus Liberal Party for U.S. folk reading) is ideologically hell bent on removing public support of anything they can. On top of that they load other ideologies about the humanities being less important than the sciences. I'd start by not commodifying tertiary education and giving students the opportunity to explore and discover their flair with smaller and richer courses before going to uni.

christophilus 6y ago

> It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present in undergrad classes This is not a new phenomenon. I went to university in the US 20 years ago. Very few students ever thought to question the narrative they were hearing. Critical thinking was not taught where I went to school unless you were in a hard science. And from what I see around me today, it’s still not being taught.

garbagetime 6y ago
How good is the critical thinking that's taught in the hard sciences? My assumption would be that it's quite limited there, too - present only to the extent that it absolutely has to be for good science to be carried out. It seems that critical thinking is generally seen (by whatever system is in charge) as an ugly thing, which, in some cases, must unfortunately be allowed to rear its head, so that progress can be made. Critical thinking is really quite a natural thing for humans to do, but it is for the above reason that it is largely stamped out of us by the school system.

DomenicoMazza 6y ago

Wow what a false generalisation. As an academic across communication design and IT (i.e. humanities v science) I will say you are wrong. I have seen disengaged students across both major areas. It's not discipline specific and it not just the quality of degrees. Consider the readiness of students. I completed a year long TAFE (TAFE is technical school, 5 days a week) like foundation course prior to studying communication design at university because I originally began a degree I quit after two weeks and it was too late to restart another degree. Myself (and other students) that competed this foundation year had a major advantage. We already learned the basic tools we would need and practiced concept development so university for us was a better space for us to learn an experiment. Considering teaching contact hours a year in a TAFE is like two in a uni. Guess what! This foundation course which ran for more than 20 years lost its public funding. Furthermore, the degree I had to apply a portfolio to enter now takes in much more students with no portfolio and more or less similar amount of full-time staff with casuals picking up the rest. The problem is multi-faceted. The honest truth is any coalition government (this is the Aus Liberal Party for U.S. folk reading) is ideologically hell bent on removing public support of anything they can. On top of that they load other ideologies about the humanities being less important than the sciences. I'd start by not commodifying tertiary education and giving students the opportunity to explore and discover their flair with smaller and richer courses before going to uni.