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The science departments produce even more nonsense that nobody reads or cares about. It's hard to tell in advance. Plus you want a strong research culture even

The science departments produce even more nonsense that nobody reads or cares about. It's hard to tell in advance. Plus you want a strong research culture even if not all of it is directly productive. I also think people tend to underestimate the positive externalities of the humanities departments. (Nobody reads academic history mostly, but the existence of historians makes bullshit claims more difficult.) I think your proposed study groups would work at first, but eventually wouldn't be able to sustain themselves as the scholarly communities providing the background vocabulary and paradigms you need to even have a conversation collapsed.

seibelj 6y ago
I agree there is a ton of BS produced in science as well, but if we are making a pecking order then I would defund hard science last. I still don’t see why there should be no creativity. Left to their own devices the university system has produced worse product at higher prices for decades. The time has come for innovation.
- currymj 6y ago
  i think you are failing to see the value — much of what the academic community produces is a public good. i agree there are huge problems with higher education, but I think if all humanities departments were disbanded as you suggest, you would miss them after they were gone. Look at how terrible and shallow a lot of journalism and popular nonfiction is. Imagine if that was the highest level of thought available on most topics. Nothing but Medium posts forever.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    You are asking me to debate a straw man - “The only alternative to $200k a year to study English is no humanities at all”. I think if universities were forced to innovate, the same value and product can be provided at a vastly cheaper price. We shall see if I’m right, as there aren’t any alternatives.
    - currymj 6y ago
      i think it might just be a misunderstanding then — i assumed no state funding of the humanities would mean completely eliminating those departments at public universities.
    - mola 6y ago
      The tuition prices are because of market forces. Ivy league schools created brands and market themselves across the world causing huge (not very justifiable) demand, together with their lobbying for the structure of tuition loans this situation was created. Universities shouldn't be judged as businesses, it's the exact opposite of their reason for existing. You need freedom and leisure not tied to economic pressure to do research and create a reflective infrastructure for humanity. It was always subsidized by the ruling class, be it a king, or the society via taxes in democratic times. The thought that everything is a business and should be analyzed as such is just shortsighted and lazy thinking.
teorema 6y ago
I might go even further and suggest that a strong research culture implies not everything will be productive. I swear somewhere here or elsewhere I read a story that one of the major quantum computing contributions that accelerated the field was essentially the result of a faculty member spending several years doing nothing but teaching and thinking about the problem, with no grants or anything but salary. Maybe it's a myth or I'm misremembering it though; I've tried searching for it (to confirm or disconfirm my memory) with no luck because of the volumes of irrelevant results. Also, history is an interesting example, as it seems one of the first sets of experts everyone seemed to turn to with all the events of the last few years are historians. "What happened with previous pandemics?" "How did past pandemics effect economics of the time?" "What did people do then?" "Is this the first time this situation occurred?" So forth and so on. The more "unprecedented" the problem the further back in history people will look for precedents and guidance. It also seems implausible to me that the same sorts of history research could happen by hobbyists as happens at universities, just due to time and funding constraints. There's a lot of problems in academics at the moment, at least in the US, but I think 2/3 of it is actually coming from outside those in the field (pick your field). Administration problems, federal incentives, state incentives, private incentives (yes, corporate management requiring useless degrees or offloading employee training elsewhere to decrease investment costs and its consequences) etc etc etc

seibelj 6y ago

I agree there is a ton of BS produced in science as well, but if we are making a pecking order then I would defund hard science last. I still don’t see why there should be no creativity. Left to their own devices the university system has produced worse product at higher prices for decades. The time has come for innovation.

currymj 6y ago
i think you are failing to see the value — much of what the academic community produces is a public good. i agree there are huge problems with higher education, but I think if all humanities departments were disbanded as you suggest, you would miss them after they were gone. Look at how terrible and shallow a lot of journalism and popular nonfiction is. Imagine if that was the highest level of thought available on most topics. Nothing but Medium posts forever.
- seibelj 6y ago
  You are asking me to debate a straw man - “The only alternative to $200k a year to study English is no humanities at all”. I think if universities were forced to innovate, the same value and product can be provided at a vastly cheaper price. We shall see if I’m right, as there aren’t any alternatives.
  - currymj 6y ago
    i think it might just be a misunderstanding then — i assumed no state funding of the humanities would mean completely eliminating those departments at public universities.
  - mola 6y ago
    The tuition prices are because of market forces. Ivy league schools created brands and market themselves across the world causing huge (not very justifiable) demand, together with their lobbying for the structure of tuition loans this situation was created. Universities shouldn't be judged as businesses, it's the exact opposite of their reason for existing. You need freedom and leisure not tied to economic pressure to do research and create a reflective infrastructure for humanity. It was always subsidized by the ruling class, be it a king, or the society via taxes in democratic times. The thought that everything is a business and should be analyzed as such is just shortsighted and lazy thinking.

teorema 6y ago

I might go even further and suggest that a strong research culture implies not everything will be productive. I swear somewhere here or elsewhere I read a story that one of the major quantum computing contributions that accelerated the field was essentially the result of a faculty member spending several years doing nothing but teaching and thinking about the problem, with no grants or anything but salary. Maybe it's a myth or I'm misremembering it though; I've tried searching for it (to confirm or disconfirm my memory) with no luck because of the volumes of irrelevant results. Also, history is an interesting example, as it seems one of the first sets of experts everyone seemed to turn to with all the events of the last few years are historians. "What happened with previous pandemics?" "How did past pandemics effect economics of the time?" "What did people do then?" "Is this the first time this situation occurred?" So forth and so on. The more "unprecedented" the problem the further back in history people will look for precedents and guidance. It also seems implausible to me that the same sorts of history research could happen by hobbyists as happens at universities, just due to time and funding constraints. There's a lot of problems in academics at the moment, at least in the US, but I think 2/3 of it is actually coming from outside those in the field (pick your field). Administration problems, federal incentives, state incentives, private incentives (yes, corporate management requiring useless degrees or offloading employee training elsewhere to decrease investment costs and its consequences) etc etc etc