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"Most importantly, graduates in the arts, psychology and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth. Economic grow

by rwl 15y ago

"Most importantly, graduates in the arts, psychology and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth. Economic growth is not a magic totem to which all else must bow, but it is one of the main reasons we subsidize higher education." I think this is a completely misguided assumption. Maybe this is true these days. But it wasn't always true, and it shouldn't be true. Higher education, especially in the liberal arts, is for training students to become good community members, citizens and leaders. It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. And there is a lot more to solving those problems than promoting "innovation" or "economic growth". We subsidize higher education because producing citizens with those skills is valuable to our society. Are liberal arts programs perfect? No. Do they cost too much? Maybe. Would it be good for society to have more people going into STEM fields? Probably. Does all this mean that liberal arts education is "oversold"? Certainly not. Indeed, it is rare to see people express just how valuable the liberal arts are, and why.

Permit 15y ago
> It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. I suppose the counter argument is: Do you think individuals graduating in STEM fields don't pick up these skills? And if so, why are these skills limited to liberal arts majors?
- rwl 15y ago
  > Do you think individuals graduating in STEM fields don't pick up these skills? That depends, I think, on what their program is. Many STEM programs leading to a Bachelor's degree are still liberal arts programs, in name and in spirit. Let's not forget that math and astronomy, at least, have been part of the conception of the "liberal arts" since antiquity. The idea that there is a sharp division between science and math, on the one hand, and the liberal arts on the other, is a recent one. Some STEM programs, however, are purely technical programs. Their value is in a particular kind of technical training. I don't know, since I haven't gone through one of those programs myself, but I would bet that students graduating from such programs don't come away with the same kind of skills that a liberal arts education provides. In sum, I think the STEM/liberal arts distinction is a false dichotomy. The real distinction is something like: as a student in a particular program, are you primarily training to be a citizen, or a technician? You can, of course, do both.
  - ceol 15y ago
    >I don't know, since I haven't gone through one of those programs myself, but I would bet that students graduating from such programs don't come away with the same kind of skills that a liberal arts education provides. I would tend to agree with you here. STEM fields push logic and reason, but then you get students who look at the most practical solutions instead of the solutions that might not be as practical but benefit the most or offer an intangible benefit.
    - TheCapn 15y ago
      From my experience you are correct. STEM programs are about critical thinking, problem solving and planning for undesired outcomes. An Engineer is taught how to constructively deduce the situation so that a beneficial proposal can be generated. The classes I took that are "arts" classes or "business" classes taught models and programs that are supposed to be blindly followed. I failed to see how they were ever applicable because they ignored the "human factor" that exists in all real world problems. I'm seeing lots of companies/depts fail because they're being run by people who were taught these principles. They're encountering issues and trying to apply a dated/loosely correlated model to solve it and almost dumbfounded when it utterly fails.
angersock 15y ago
With all due respect... "I think this is a completely misguided assumption. Maybe this is true these days. But it wasn't always true, and it shouldn't be true." What the past state was does not matter a great deal in these issues--today's problems are what stand between us and the food on our tables. If you read that economic growth as not being responsible for funding of higher education, you are similarly incorrect. At the national level it's about having strong soft power and at the personal level about it's about "keeping up with the Joneses" re: income. "Higher education, especially in the liberal arts, is for training students to become good community members, citizens and leaders." It was my impression that high schools and parents were the mechanism for indoctrinating youths into community values. Moreover, without playing too hard to personal experience, if my classmates at uni are tomorrow's leaders I'm a great deal concerned. "It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. And there is a lot more to solving those problems than promoting "innovation" or "economic growth"." What are these "hard problems"? Hunger? Disease? Working boring jobs to shuffle little bits of paper around? I'd wager that the root of your "hard problems" is ultimately scarcity in one form or another, and the only way to address that is through technology, and the only way to get that is through STEM training. "We subsidize higher education because producing citizens with those skills is valuable to our society." You echo your given quote here--you instead handwave the "skills" involved whereas the quote specifically suggests that economic growth is the valuable criterion to pick skills with. "Are liberal arts programs perfect? No. Do they cost too much? Maybe. Would it be good for society to have more people going into STEM fields? Probably. Does all this mean that liberal arts education is "oversold"? Certainly not." I agree, disagree, agree, and disagree again. Liberal arts programs seem to consist primarily of a great deal of reading and research, augmented with the professional musings of an elder in the field. Is my impression incorrect? If it is not, is there a particular reason why it costs so much when that material is so cheaply available? I'd appreciate clarification on this matter. "Indeed, it is rare to see people express just how valuable the liberal arts are, and why." You know, there is at least one simple explanation that suggests itself for explaining this phenomena...
- rwl 15y ago
  > It was my impression that high schools and parents were the mechanism for indoctrinating youths into community values. Moreover, without playing too hard to personal experience, if my classmates at uni are tomorrow's leaders I'm a great deal concerned. Obviously, parents and pre-college education are important (though if they're doing their jobs well, I wouldn't refer to what they're doing as "indoctrination"). But why should education in cognitive, moral, aesthetic, political, etc. skills end with high school graduation? Your second sentence here underscores this point: today's 18-year olds are not fully-formed citizens, ready to become "tomorrow's leaders" without further development. > What are these "hard problems"? Hunger? Disease? Working boring jobs to shuffle little bits of paper around? I'd wager that the root of your "hard problems" is ultimately scarcity in one form or another, and the only way to address that is through technology, and the only way to get that is through STEM training. Hunger and disease are hard problems, yes. And of course, having people with technical training is required for solving them, and for solving any problem that stems from some kind of physical scarcity. But hunger and disease are two hard problems that are particularly easy to conceive, and whose solutions are likewise readily understood: basically, more food and better medicine. Once a problem and its solution are understood, implementing the solution is very often a matter of working out the technical details. I think that many of the hard problems facing us are not so easily conceived, and their solutions once conceived are far from obvious. For example: what, if anything, should we do about rising income inequality? What consequences does polarization in political discourse have for our ability to address the divergent needs and interests of different groups of people? Which of our social norms are beneficial, and which are harmful? What reasons do we have to support the production of fine art or architecture, and how (if at all) should we do it? What rights and treatment should our institutions afford to those (prisoners, revolutionaries, the merely uninterested) who directly or indirectly undermine them? I think these questions---and others like them, which we might not even have the language to express yet---are some of the hardest yet most important questions to answer. But they don't boil down to questions of "scarcity" in any obvious way, and I have a hard time seeing how technical training could ever help produce citizens who are capable of answering them in a reflective and reasonable way. That doesn't mean that STEM training isn't valuable. And as I said here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3187739 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3187739) many STEM programs are liberal arts programs that do provide the skills required to answer questions like these.

by rwl 15y ago

Permit 15y ago

> It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. I suppose the counter argument is: Do you think individuals graduating in STEM fields don't pick up these skills? And if so, why are these skills limited to liberal arts majors?

rwl 15y ago
> Do you think individuals graduating in STEM fields don't pick up these skills? That depends, I think, on what their program is. Many STEM programs leading to a Bachelor's degree are still liberal arts programs, in name and in spirit. Let's not forget that math and astronomy, at least, have been part of the conception of the "liberal arts" since antiquity. The idea that there is a sharp division between science and math, on the one hand, and the liberal arts on the other, is a recent one. Some STEM programs, however, are purely technical programs. Their value is in a particular kind of technical training. I don't know, since I haven't gone through one of those programs myself, but I would bet that students graduating from such programs don't come away with the same kind of skills that a liberal arts education provides. In sum, I think the STEM/liberal arts distinction is a false dichotomy. The real distinction is something like: as a student in a particular program, are you primarily training to be a citizen, or a technician? You can, of course, do both.
- ceol 15y ago
  >I don't know, since I haven't gone through one of those programs myself, but I would bet that students graduating from such programs don't come away with the same kind of skills that a liberal arts education provides. I would tend to agree with you here. STEM fields push logic and reason, but then you get students who look at the most practical solutions instead of the solutions that might not be as practical but benefit the most or offer an intangible benefit.
  - TheCapn 15y ago
    From my experience you are correct. STEM programs are about critical thinking, problem solving and planning for undesired outcomes. An Engineer is taught how to constructively deduce the situation so that a beneficial proposal can be generated. The classes I took that are "arts" classes or "business" classes taught models and programs that are supposed to be blindly followed. I failed to see how they were ever applicable because they ignored the "human factor" that exists in all real world problems. I'm seeing lots of companies/depts fail because they're being run by people who were taught these principles. They're encountering issues and trying to apply a dated/loosely correlated model to solve it and almost dumbfounded when it utterly fails.

angersock 15y ago

With all due respect... "I think this is a completely misguided assumption. Maybe this is true these days. But it wasn't always true, and it shouldn't be true." What the past state was does not matter a great deal in these issues--today's problems are what stand between us and the food on our tables. If you read that economic growth as not being responsible for funding of higher education, you are similarly incorrect. At the national level it's about having strong soft power and at the personal level about it's about "keeping up with the Joneses" re: income. "Higher education, especially in the liberal arts, is for training students to become good community members, citizens and leaders." It was my impression that high schools and parents were the mechanism for indoctrinating youths into community values. Moreover, without playing too hard to personal experience, if my classmates at uni are tomorrow's leaders I'm a great deal concerned. "It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. And there is a lot more to solving those problems than promoting "innovation" or "economic growth"." What are these "hard problems"? Hunger? Disease? Working boring jobs to shuffle little bits of paper around? I'd wager that the root of your "hard problems" is ultimately scarcity in one form or another, and the only way to address that is through technology, and the only way to get that is through STEM training. "We subsidize higher education because producing citizens with those skills is valuable to our society." You echo your given quote here--you instead handwave the "skills" involved whereas the quote specifically suggests that economic growth is the valuable criterion to pick skills with. "Are liberal arts programs perfect? No. Do they cost too much? Maybe. Would it be good for society to have more people going into STEM fields? Probably. Does all this mean that liberal arts education is "oversold"? Certainly not." I agree, disagree, agree, and disagree again. Liberal arts programs seem to consist primarily of a great deal of reading and research, augmented with the professional musings of an elder in the field. Is my impression incorrect? If it is not, is there a particular reason why it costs so much when that material is so cheaply available? I'd appreciate clarification on this matter. "Indeed, it is rare to see people express just how valuable the liberal arts are, and why." You know, there is at least one simple explanation that suggests itself for explaining this phenomena...

rwl 15y ago
> It was my impression that high schools and parents were the mechanism for indoctrinating youths into community values. Moreover, without playing too hard to personal experience, if my classmates at uni are tomorrow's leaders I'm a great deal concerned. Obviously, parents and pre-college education are important (though if they're doing their jobs well, I wouldn't refer to what they're doing as "indoctrination"). But why should education in cognitive, moral, aesthetic, political, etc. skills end with high school graduation? Your second sentence here underscores this point: today's 18-year olds are not fully-formed citizens, ready to become "tomorrow's leaders" without further development. > What are these "hard problems"? Hunger? Disease? Working boring jobs to shuffle little bits of paper around? I'd wager that the root of your "hard problems" is ultimately scarcity in one form or another, and the only way to address that is through technology, and the only way to get that is through STEM training. Hunger and disease are hard problems, yes. And of course, having people with technical training is required for solving them, and for solving any problem that stems from some kind of physical scarcity. But hunger and disease are two hard problems that are particularly easy to conceive, and whose solutions are likewise readily understood: basically, more food and better medicine. Once a problem and its solution are understood, implementing the solution is very often a matter of working out the technical details. I think that many of the hard problems facing us are not so easily conceived, and their solutions once conceived are far from obvious. For example: what, if anything, should we do about rising income inequality? What consequences does polarization in political discourse have for our ability to address the divergent needs and interests of different groups of people? Which of our social norms are beneficial, and which are harmful? What reasons do we have to support the production of fine art or architecture, and how (if at all) should we do it? What rights and treatment should our institutions afford to those (prisoners, revolutionaries, the merely uninterested) who directly or indirectly undermine them? I think these questions---and others like them, which we might not even have the language to express yet---are some of the hardest yet most important questions to answer. But they don't boil down to questions of "scarcity" in any obvious way, and I have a hard time seeing how technical training could ever help produce citizens who are capable of answering them in a reflective and reasonable way. That doesn't mean that STEM training isn't valuable. And as I said here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3187739 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3187739) many STEM programs are liberal arts programs that do provide the skills required to answer questions like these.