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Many of these universities would state the point: university education enriches the mind, introducing students to a broad range of topics, perspectives, and rea

Many of these universities would state the point: university education enriches the mind, introducing students to a broad range of topics, perspectives, and readings that were pivotal to human history and human civilization. For example, at UChicago, the Core Curriculum has most of the students reading Das Kapital by Marx, a text with profound implications for the history of the 20th century. I'm agnostic about the value of this: on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically. On the other hand, we need practical skills and we don't need a massively indebted younger generation. The DIRE push for undergraduate education in many K-12 schools has probably undervalued solid vocational training. What does it say that I'm now into woodworking and making things, but in my entire 22 year education, no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool.

cm2187 6y ago
Or teaching that math is racist... If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. For STEM, completely different story, it is very hard for someone who hasn’t been trained formally to pick it up later in one’s career.
- jimbob21 6y ago
  >in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read I don't know what college you went to, but at mine, reading was the homework, and the discussion on the books (even with the professor's inherent biases) in the class with my peers is what developed the profound thoughts and ideas that I still carry with me. Humanities might not contribute to jobs, (I'm STEM) but I don't for a second regret the philosophy classes I took.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    A lot of this is dependent on class size and class level. It's not until you get to class sizes of less than 20 and at the 300 level and up classes that you get actual discussion instead of lecturing and leading questions. And even smaller class size and higher level isn't a guarantee of good critical dialogue. I went to a large well ranked public university class in the United States, have both a STEM and non-STEM degree with over 200 credit hours over 4.5 years and I can think of exactly two humanities classes that had real discussions that weren't just being assigned books, largely uncritically accepting their contents and being lectured. Both classes with real dialogue were higher level classes with just over 10 people in them. One class was about the intersection of art and technology and the other was a philosophy of science class. There was way more critical thought and dialogue on average in my STEM classes.
- rexpop 6y ago
  > most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read To you, apparently, one book is as good as another?
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  > I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. If you can read through Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and get everything out of it without help good on you, but I certainly couldn't.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Good luck with James Joyce's Ulysses ... or Samuel Beckett. Or Thomas Pynchon. Or -- the author you didn't even know existed until the domain expert (aka professor) assigned/suggested it. Or, you know ... history? Or even Shakespeare, for that matter. For some, a course makes reading such material hugely more enlightening.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    You are describing a reading list.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      A list to support my argument :)
- na85 6y ago
  >Or teaching that math is racist... Can you elaborate further?
  - cm2187 6y ago
    things like this: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-oxford-will-decolonise-degrees-c7dkhbtnd https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-oxford...
    - na85 6y ago
      Paywalled, but the part I was able to read wasn't suggesting "math is racist". Sorry I asked.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        no you're right. I was able to read the article in full and it doesn't say anything like that. the only thing it said about the math department was that they were going to allow students to apply for "lenient grading" if they felt their studies were negatively impacted by the george floyd killing. to be fair, there is a subset of leftist thought that advocates placing lived experiences above statistical arguments. you can see this play out on social media where people are scolded for not being fully convinced by an individual's personal story about {insert macro issue}. the argument here is not that math itself is racist (how could it be?), but that the study and application of it can be. in other words, if statistics is disproportionately studied by an already-dominant subset of society, its application will likely lead to conclusions that more or less support the status quo.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        If your studies were negatively impacted by <whatever factor outside your control>, why would "lenient grading" be the right response? "You get a no-penalty 'incomplete' and can complete the course later" seems vastly more appropriate than saying you learned something that you haven't. I'm sure some people were negatively impacted; they should not suffer a poor grade as a result. Nor should they be granted a better grade than the ability they demonstrated.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). The pragmatic part of humanities is argumentation and writing. You can't get that from just reading. What you're saying is like "the value of a computer science degree over just reading programming books is marginal." It's ignoring that the most important part of the learning happens in application.
whatshisface 6y ago
The irony of putting people in debt in exchange for ordering them to read Das Capital. :)
- tharne 6y ago
  I laughed so hard I almost spit out my coffee when I read this. Well done.
hoorayimhelping 6y ago
>on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically That isn't what universities are creating though. They're creating people who think one specific way about the world. The problem is that they only teach Marxist ideas about the 20th century, and you have to go elsewhere to get a balanced and realistic view of what actually happened. My humanities classes 20 years ago all glossed over the horrors of Stalin's gulags, the horrors of Mao's great leap forward, and all the death caused by Marxist ideas being put into practice at a wide scale in the 20th century. I had to learn about all these things from my history classes. My humanities classes were all talking about the evils of capitalism while glossing over the 20-100 million dead from starvation and exposure under totalitarian communist regimes. I can't imagine it's gotten any less biased and one sided in the past 20 years.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Sounds like your college did teach you a rounded viewpoint then?
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    Yeah what is this guy complaining about? Learning both sides is now "Propoganda"? They're clearly mad that they didn't experience an echo chamber.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >My humanities classes 20 years ago all glossed over >I had to learn about all these things from my history classes. So the education provided you with multiple, different viewpoints, then. If you evaluate specific, individual classes, yes, you'll find a bias depending on the specific, individual faculty. I had faculty ranging from those who extolled the virtues of a strong-man in the white house, to those who wanted a complete anarchy. I'm willing to bet most university/college educations contain a little bit of everything. Or, put more simply, wide ranging viewpoints. . . .
  - dx87 6y ago
ativzzz 6y ago
> no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool. This is because using power tools is most of the time following safety protocols and reading the instruction manual. if you learned how to read well, you shouldn't need someone to teach you this (unless you're using highly specialized tools for niche situations, but that's more of vocational training)
- sokoloff 6y ago
  What? There's a lot more to learning the intersection of power tools and a given craft area X than just how to not hurt yourself. Why would I use a spade vs a single point vs a Forstner drill bit? When would I use a backer board? When would I use conventional cutting vs climb cutting? If I want to achieve tolerance X on face F, what should be my sequence of operations? How can I fixture this work to give me the best results? When is a circular saw vs a table saw vs a jig saw vs a mitre saw appropriate?

cm2187 6y ago

Or teaching that math is racist... If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. For STEM, completely different story, it is very hard for someone who hasn’t been trained formally to pick it up later in one’s career.

jimbob21 6y ago
>in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read I don't know what college you went to, but at mine, reading was the homework, and the discussion on the books (even with the professor's inherent biases) in the class with my peers is what developed the profound thoughts and ideas that I still carry with me. Humanities might not contribute to jobs, (I'm STEM) but I don't for a second regret the philosophy classes I took.
- malandrew 6y ago
  A lot of this is dependent on class size and class level. It's not until you get to class sizes of less than 20 and at the 300 level and up classes that you get actual discussion instead of lecturing and leading questions. And even smaller class size and higher level isn't a guarantee of good critical dialogue. I went to a large well ranked public university class in the United States, have both a STEM and non-STEM degree with over 200 credit hours over 4.5 years and I can think of exactly two humanities classes that had real discussions that weren't just being assigned books, largely uncritically accepting their contents and being lectured. Both classes with real dialogue were higher level classes with just over 10 people in them. One class was about the intersection of art and technology and the other was a philosophy of science class. There was way more critical thought and dialogue on average in my STEM classes.
rexpop 6y ago
> most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read To you, apparently, one book is as good as another?
SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
> I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. If you can read through Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and get everything out of it without help good on you, but I certainly couldn't.
adamsea 6y ago
Good luck with James Joyce's Ulysses ... or Samuel Beckett. Or Thomas Pynchon. Or -- the author you didn't even know existed until the domain expert (aka professor) assigned/suggested it. Or, you know ... history? Or even Shakespeare, for that matter. For some, a course makes reading such material hugely more enlightening.
- cm2187 6y ago
  You are describing a reading list.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    A list to support my argument :)
na85 6y ago
>Or teaching that math is racist... Can you elaborate further?
- cm2187 6y ago
  things like this: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-oxford-will-decolonise-degrees-c7dkhbtnd https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-oxford...
  - na85 6y ago
    Paywalled, but the part I was able to read wasn't suggesting "math is racist". Sorry I asked.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      no you're right. I was able to read the article in full and it doesn't say anything like that. the only thing it said about the math department was that they were going to allow students to apply for "lenient grading" if they felt their studies were negatively impacted by the george floyd killing. to be fair, there is a subset of leftist thought that advocates placing lived experiences above statistical arguments. you can see this play out on social media where people are scolded for not being fully convinced by an individual's personal story about {insert macro issue}. the argument here is not that math itself is racist (how could it be?), but that the study and application of it can be. in other words, if statistics is disproportionately studied by an already-dominant subset of society, its application will likely lead to conclusions that more or less support the status quo.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        If your studies were negatively impacted by <whatever factor outside your control>, why would "lenient grading" be the right response? "You get a no-penalty 'incomplete' and can complete the course later" seems vastly more appropriate than saying you learned something that you haven't. I'm sure some people were negatively impacted; they should not suffer a poor grade as a result. Nor should they be granted a better grade than the ability they demonstrated.
munchbunny 6y ago
If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). The pragmatic part of humanities is argumentation and writing. You can't get that from just reading. What you're saying is like "the value of a computer science degree over just reading programming books is marginal." It's ignoring that the most important part of the learning happens in application.

whatshisface 6y ago

The irony of putting people in debt in exchange for ordering them to read Das Capital. :)

tharne 6y ago
I laughed so hard I almost spit out my coffee when I read this. Well done.

hoorayimhelping 6y ago

>on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically That isn't what universities are creating though. They're creating people who think one specific way about the world. The problem is that they only teach Marxist ideas about the 20th century, and you have to go elsewhere to get a balanced and realistic view of what actually happened. My humanities classes 20 years ago all glossed over the horrors of Stalin's gulags, the horrors of Mao's great leap forward, and all the death caused by Marxist ideas being put into practice at a wide scale in the 20th century. I had to learn about all these things from my history classes. My humanities classes were all talking about the evils of capitalism while glossing over the 20-100 million dead from starvation and exposure under totalitarian communist regimes. I can't imagine it's gotten any less biased and one sided in the past 20 years.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Sounds like your college did teach you a rounded viewpoint then?
- Can_Not 6y ago
  Yeah what is this guy complaining about? Learning both sides is now "Propoganda"? They're clearly mad that they didn't experience an echo chamber.
Loughla 6y ago
>My humanities classes 20 years ago all glossed over >I had to learn about all these things from my history classes. So the education provided you with multiple, different viewpoints, then. If you evaluate specific, individual classes, yes, you'll find a bias depending on the specific, individual faculty. I had faculty ranging from those who extolled the virtues of a strong-man in the white house, to those who wanted a complete anarchy. I'm willing to bet most university/college educations contain a little bit of everything. Or, put more simply, wide ranging viewpoints. . . .
- dx87 6y ago

ativzzz 6y ago

> no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool. This is because using power tools is most of the time following safety protocols and reading the instruction manual. if you learned how to read well, you shouldn't need someone to teach you this (unless you're using highly specialized tools for niche situations, but that's more of vocational training)

sokoloff 6y ago
What? There's a lot more to learning the intersection of power tools and a given craft area X than just how to not hurt yourself. Why would I use a spade vs a single point vs a Forstner drill bit? When would I use a backer board? When would I use conventional cutting vs climb cutting? If I want to achieve tolerance X on face F, what should be my sequence of operations? How can I fixture this work to give me the best results? When is a circular saw vs a table saw vs a jig saw vs a mitre saw appropriate?