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Yet, we shouldn't abandon humanities education.
by xapata 4y ago
Yet, we shouldn't abandon humanities education.
- rayiner 4y agoWe don’t have to abandon it. But we don’t need to subsidize it with public funding.
- analog31 4y agoChoosing which degrees to support faces all of the problems of central planning. One problem is that if colleges are told to create more STEM degrees than the number of students who are already capable of studying for those degrees, it will encourage the creation of empty "STEM" degrees like "bachelor of arts in information studies" that are even more useless than an English major because everybody will know why those degree were created. It also creates boom-and-bust cycles. I graduated with a degree in physics, just as the Cold War collapsed and mandatory retirement for professors was outlawed. There was an absolute glut of physicists all looking for jobs at once.
- rayiner 4y agoWhen you’re talking about public subsidization, you have to engage in central planning.
- JamesBarney 4y agoOr at least should engage in central planning. If you're spending billions of dollars, maybe a little planning is a good thing, even if it's centralized.
- hackerlight 4y agoWe should subsidize it at community colleges with large cohort sizes and commensurate lower marginal costs. We should not subsidize it at schools trying to play the rankings game with artificially small cohort sizes and commensurate high costs to the taxpayer for no additional payoff. Why should we subsidize it at all? Because it's a public good.
- rayiner 4y agoCalling things “public goods” is hand waving to gloss over value judgments. Why is teaching humanities a public good?
- hackerlight 4y agoIt's a public good because of non-excludable positive externalities on our polity, and that's not reflected in the market price due to market failure. The positive externalities are having voters that understand history, sociology, political science and economics. This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy.
- xyzzyz 4y ago> This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy. I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. In fact, they’re probably worse. They were the ones pushing Marxism on Americans back in the day and similar insanities today, like eg. demonizing and defunding the police. I believe that it makes them negative externality. Now, you may of course disagree. But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good.
- hackerlight 4y ago> I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. They are better at evaluating certain types of policies than STEM graduates. I've met a lot of engineers who are incapable of understanding what a social construct is, or the societal consequences of hate speech, or who don't know what market failure is, or who are totally ignorant of the history of slavery and the indigenous genocide, who don't know anything about international relations, or various other things which are just child's play for humanities graduates which all have deep relevance to certain policies. This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. Without humanities education (whether self-education or otherwise), the only response to Biden talking about "white supremacy" in his speech is pitchforks and fascism, because voters miss the reasons why Biden would make such an utterance. The only response to a carbon tax is pitchforks, because they don't even understand what a market failure is. The only response to transgender protection is pitchforks, because they don't even know what a social construct is. STEM graduates don't know what they don't know, and they label their blind spots as negative externalities out of a combination of supreme arrogance (primarily), ignorance and confusion. Policy evaluation isn't really the main point. The antidote to populism is the point. > demonizing and defunding the police. The topic of police demonstrates my point. It's only people from a humanities background that showed an interest in critiquing the police, and they were the ones running the studies on policing going back decades. The STEM folks had zero interest. They'd rather ignore the situation rather than study and address it. That's why society can't function with just STEM graduates. They don't know what they don't know. > But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good. I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. And that's about 30% of the population against it by default. Argumentum ad populum. That doesn't detract from the correctness of what I'm saying.
- aortega 4y agoI don't think we should abandon it, but if you want to pay 500k usd for you degree on french poetry in the 17th century, you should pay for it yourself.
- Sakos 4y agoNo.
- marcellus23 4y agoHorrifying take. Typical of /hn/ when it comes to stuff like this, unfortunately.
- sokoloff 4y agoSuppose someone wants to spend the posited $500K on that degree. If not them, who should pay for it?
- woodruffw 4y agoThe premise here doesn't match reality: nobody wants to (much less is, to a rounding error) paying $500k for a degree. Nobody should pay for it directly. It should be virtually free to go to college, the way it is everywhere else in the developed world. It should be that way because it's single most obvious investment and high-returning investment any country can make in its future.
- aortega 4y ago>It should be virtually free to go to college If you are going to invest into something, it should be good investment that gives returns. An Useless degree clearly do not give enough returns not even to pay for itself.
- woodruffw 4y ago"Nothing is free" is an aphorism. Read the comment again: the direct cost of attending university in most developed countries is close to $0. In other words: it's free for the attending individuals, because the country understands that investing in education is in its own self interest. Whatever your particular country's failures are might be unfortunate, but they don't counteract the track record of success here. It might be worth considering whether both of our countries would do well to change, rather than presuming that your country's failure will also be mine's.
- ralph84 4y agoHumanities is reading and writing. There’s no need to pay $100k/year to read and write.
- endisneigh 4y agoSo reductionist, lol. Which desk jobs aren't fundamentally reading and writing?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoradiologist
- shigawire 4y agoIf you think a radiologist is not writing you are incorrect
- ModernMech 4y agoI guess programming is just pressing buttons then? No need to pay $100k a year to press buttons.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoso just like coding?
- metamet 4y agoHumanities is not "reading and writing". It's largely the process of developing and practicing critical analysis and how to effectively communicate it. Yes, most humanities degrees involve a lot of writing about things written, but it's wrong (and patronizing) to say that the takeaway from the degree is merely the ability to read and write. Effective communication is a thing a lot of STEM students have a deficit in, to boot. It's not a coincidence that they're the ones often brandishing the humanities as wasted effort.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gruez 4y agoWho suggested that? Even if you think that humanities education should be publicly subsidized, giving out student loans to anyone who applies (ie. without regard to academic performance or career prospects) is a terrible way of funding it. The lack of selectively ensures that the people who do the best (ie. can get a good paying job afterwards) receive the least aid because they have to pay back the loan, whereas people who do the worst get the most. Merit based scholarships and/or government grants for university humanities departments is a far better way of ensuring we get the most bang per dollar subsidized.