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What Happens When a Poor State Guts Its Public University

27 points by webmaven 3y ago

webmaven 3y ago
https://archive.ph/B2CnP https://archive.ph/B2CnP
bradley13 3y ago
Concentrating on degrees that lead to jobs? Sounds like exactly what a state school ought to do.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  Subheading: > Do West Virginia kids of modest means deserve the humanities? Larger question: what is the point of (higher?) education? If all you have access to is a subsidized state school, do you get to learn a different language, examine history, ponder philosophy, experience and make art? Or is that only reserved for folks that can afford to go to fancy schools?
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    The point is to become a productive member of society, not one that needs government support the rest of their lives.
    - seizethegdgap 3y ago
      Are people that graduate with degrees in humanities or even take humanities classes disproportionately more likely to need government support for the rest of their lives?
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Yes. Hence the term "starving artist". Have you heard the term "starving engineers"? Seattle has a large community of artists, always begging for government support, always working at low end jobs to make ends meet. The government funds theaters, the Seattle Opera, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Art Museum, and on and on. A scarce few make a profit (Taylor Swift), and the other 99% need another source of income than their art. Swift did not attend a university. What percentage of french literature majors make a living in that field? A few who manage to get a professor of french literature position?
        jmye 3y ago
        You didn’t answer GP’s question - you just made a needlessly inflammatory comment suggesting anyone with a non-STEM degree is an “artist”. This is patently false, and an absolutely absurd thing to suggest baselessly. What specific percentage of humanities majors are on public assistance?
        WalterBright 3y ago
        What I said was quite relevant. What percentage of humanities majors are working in the field they were educated in?
        throw0101b 3y ago
        > What percentage of humanities majors are working in the field they were educated in? What percentage of STEM majors are working in the field they were educated in? I know two electrical engineering majors who became lawyers, one who went into insurance, in addition to a civil engineer who went into dentistry.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        All of the ones I work with. All the ones I went to school with that I know what happened to.
        jmye 3y ago
        At the risk of you refusing to answer yet another direct question to soapbox about irrelevant anecdata: why do you think your major matters?
      - throwawa14223 3y ago
        I'm having a difficult time finding hard data but google seems to indicate the humanities produce a disproportionate amount of unpaid student debt. However, I would be happy to find better data.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - greentea23 3y ago
      If it requires government support for us to have a strong arts and humanities thread in society because the private sector can't keep it thriving, please take my tax money. STEM supports life, but art is the point of life.
      - bradley13 3y ago
        Sure, art is important, but not professional art. Almost everyone is an artist. Garage bands playing for beer money. Fanfic. Amateur theater. Choirs. I would far encourage that, than fund degrees for people who mostly wind up doing something else.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        The Beatles thrived without any government support. The government's role is not entertaining people. You can give your money directly, you don't need the government as your intermediary. > art is the point of life No argument there. Which government movies do you like?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - jwestbury 3y ago
      I outlined my current career as an English lit grad -- and my wife's as a math grad -- in another post. But I'd like to talk for a moment about why I think the humanities are important, especially in the context of my own career, because I think the reason I've been successful is often a result -- direct or indirect is perhaps unclear -- of the particular education I received. I was, in fact, a math nerd growing up. I did math competitions. I was two years advanced in school, and by seventh grade I had to go to a different school every morning to go get my math education at high school. After I was a math nerd -- because, to be honest, I finally had to think about it sometime around calculus, and I didn't really enjoy it once it stopped being pure intuition -- I was just a normal nerd. I played a lot of computer games and went to LAN parties, and I learned about building computers, maintaining a network, and troubleshooting. And I decided pure math wasn't for me, but maybe computer science was. So, I started studying that. I was in a dual-enrollment program with a local college when I was in high school, and I did the first-year sequence of CS when I was 16. I got bored, though. I didn't want to do my homework. So I decided to go find another major, and did the classic thing where I wandered through various majors trying to find a fit. Eventually, having considered history, oceanography, journalism, and philosophy, I landed on English lit. I liked the critical theory aspects -- it felt like applied philosophy, I suppose. There's some useful context here: I was an absolute dick. I was always right. I felt like I was better than everyone else. I had done well in math competitions; even though I'd quit studying it, my computer science professors were using the work I'd turned in weeks ahead as examples in class; I felt like I was better than my peers. My humanities education brought a lot of nuance to what was, before then, a very black-and-white reality for me. I learned a lot about the importance of communication, about how our backgrounds can lead to different interpretations of the same material, and about how to deal with challenging, uncomfortable subjects -- not just intellectually challenging topics, but emotionally challenging topics. The funny thing is that, in the end, I landed in tech, where I've now been for over a decade. I made my way up to senior engineer, and it was largely on the strength of my communication skills, not my technical skills; the latter were necessary but not sufficient. And I think I have a lot of potential growth left -- growth which will be enabled by soft skills, not hard skills, because the more senior you become, the more the balance shifts toward soft skills. My point here is that studying in the humanities made me a productive member of society.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    In a sense, non-remunerative pursuits being luxuries, and money being the principle (though not exclusive) means of acquiring luxuries, the answer to your question is "yes". I agree with the article and its concern about cutting opportunities for working class West Virginians, but this isn't the strongest argument to make for it.
    - toofy 3y ago
      > …but this isn't the strongest argument to make for it. i’m not sure i follow what you’re attempting to imply here. with a topic as vast and as important as society and higher education, there will be many important and necessary pieces to discuss—the gp to this comment that you dismiss is a great example. i’m just not sure why you would dismiss it because it isnt The One Sole Strongest argument, particularly when it is an important piece to the larger discussion.
  - bradley13 3y ago
    Tuition at this school is $23k/year, meaning that it is subsidized by tax dollars. Tax money should be spent wisely. The goal must be to equip students to be productive adults. Examples in the article focus on departmental finances, but carefully say nothing about the careers of students who graduate from those departments. If the students graduate, and wind up in McDonalds or Starbucks, then the departments are useless.
  - joebob42 3y ago
    Also, frankly, if you just want to learn these things, do it free online. Duolingo, YouTube, etc do honestly a great job teaching these. I'm not discounting the benefits of a teacher and a certain educational environment, but where there are so many of orders of magnitude in cost difference it's not obvious to me the value difference is there.
- maximinus_thrax 3y ago
  > Sounds like exactly what a state school ought to do Universities aren't trade schools. The moment you treat them like trade schools, they become trade schools and should not be considered higher education anymore.
apstats 3y ago
The title of this article really shows the slant in the reporting. This decision makes a lot of sense to me and I actually think all universities should do more to encourage students to major in STEM. If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  This seems like one of those Chesterton’s fence things where you say “how could it be bad for America to force a bunch of people with no aptitude for STEM to major in STEM or else have a limited education” and then you find out.
  - ITB 3y ago
    If someone doesn’t have aptitude for higher education, they shouldn’t get it. Higher education is not some universal right. But those who do get free public higher education should do it in a field that has clear downstream economic impact.
    - dkqmduems 3y ago
      Just to be clear. All those adtech companies are built on the shoulders of people who studied fine arts. See the history of advertising.
      - spondylosaurus 3y ago
        I'm all in favor of studying fine arts, but this isn't quite accurate: advertisers (i.e., brands who run ads) rely on people with arts and humanities training—it's not a coincidence that the smallest unit of advertising is called a "creative"! But adtech (i.e., the infrastructure underpinning digital advertising) is all data and code, nothing artistic at all. Check out any RTB spec: https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/openrtb2.x/blob/main/2.6.md https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/openrtb2.x/b...
      - joebob42 3y ago
ulrashida 3y ago
Apparently absent from Gee's approach: reductions to administration and management. When a university cuts $800k from its library and keeps chartering jets for executives you know this is not going to be about what is best for society or students, no matter how folksy the president wishes to appear.
- pstuart 3y ago
  This trend needs increased scrutiny. How do you get the foxes out of the henhouse when the foxes control the henhouse?
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    Build a new henhouse with none of the personnel from the old one, then cut the funding of the old fox henhouse until it shuts down.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
I actually think the humanities are wasted on undergraduates. School children should have exposure to the humanities in high school. Then college should prepare students for a job. Then after earning money, people should explore the humanities. I don’t think 18-22 in modern society really have enough life experience to really appreciate the questions the humanities seeks to answer.
- Ajay-p 3y ago
  A lot of university duplicate primary education. I think it is this way because it generates jobs and revenue, which can be very hard to give up for an institution.
- distortionfield 3y ago
  What an awful worldview to think that someone could be too young to ask questions about their place in this universe. Or that they’re somehow incapable of appreciating them. I, for one, hope you never have any say in someone’s education.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    I wish the poster above had more of a say in my education. Quite a bit of my education was wasted on the humanities.
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      Perhaps a better advisor for you could have helped you with your path, without the collateral cost of shutting down other’s opportunities. A good advisor, formal or personal, can make a lifetime of difference. If there was ever a low cost, high return opportunity for improvement it would be treating student advising with much greater priority and seriousness.
    - distortionfield 3y ago
      No, the humanities were wasted on _you_.

27 points by webmaven 3y ago

webmaven 3y ago

https://archive.ph/B2CnP https://archive.ph/B2CnP

bradley13 3y ago

Concentrating on degrees that lead to jobs? Sounds like exactly what a state school ought to do.

throw0101b 3y ago
Subheading: > Do West Virginia kids of modest means deserve the humanities? Larger question: what is the point of (higher?) education? If all you have access to is a subsidized state school, do you get to learn a different language, examine history, ponder philosophy, experience and make art? Or is that only reserved for folks that can afford to go to fancy schools?
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The point is to become a productive member of society, not one that needs government support the rest of their lives.
  - seizethegdgap 3y ago
    Are people that graduate with degrees in humanities or even take humanities classes disproportionately more likely to need government support for the rest of their lives?
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Yes. Hence the term "starving artist". Have you heard the term "starving engineers"? Seattle has a large community of artists, always begging for government support, always working at low end jobs to make ends meet. The government funds theaters, the Seattle Opera, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Art Museum, and on and on. A scarce few make a profit (Taylor Swift), and the other 99% need another source of income than their art. Swift did not attend a university. What percentage of french literature majors make a living in that field? A few who manage to get a professor of french literature position?
      - jmye 3y ago
        You didn’t answer GP’s question - you just made a needlessly inflammatory comment suggesting anyone with a non-STEM degree is an “artist”. This is patently false, and an absolutely absurd thing to suggest baselessly. What specific percentage of humanities majors are on public assistance?
        WalterBright 3y ago
        What I said was quite relevant. What percentage of humanities majors are working in the field they were educated in?
        throw0101b 3y ago
        > What percentage of humanities majors are working in the field they were educated in? What percentage of STEM majors are working in the field they were educated in? I know two electrical engineering majors who became lawyers, one who went into insurance, in addition to a civil engineer who went into dentistry.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        All of the ones I work with. All the ones I went to school with that I know what happened to.
        jmye 3y ago
        At the risk of you refusing to answer yet another direct question to soapbox about irrelevant anecdata: why do you think your major matters?
    - throwawa14223 3y ago
      I'm having a difficult time finding hard data but google seems to indicate the humanities produce a disproportionate amount of unpaid student debt. However, I would be happy to find better data.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - greentea23 3y ago
    If it requires government support for us to have a strong arts and humanities thread in society because the private sector can't keep it thriving, please take my tax money. STEM supports life, but art is the point of life.
    - bradley13 3y ago
      Sure, art is important, but not professional art. Almost everyone is an artist. Garage bands playing for beer money. Fanfic. Amateur theater. Choirs. I would far encourage that, than fund degrees for people who mostly wind up doing something else.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      The Beatles thrived without any government support. The government's role is not entertaining people. You can give your money directly, you don't need the government as your intermediary. > art is the point of life No argument there. Which government movies do you like?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    I outlined my current career as an English lit grad -- and my wife's as a math grad -- in another post. But I'd like to talk for a moment about why I think the humanities are important, especially in the context of my own career, because I think the reason I've been successful is often a result -- direct or indirect is perhaps unclear -- of the particular education I received. I was, in fact, a math nerd growing up. I did math competitions. I was two years advanced in school, and by seventh grade I had to go to a different school every morning to go get my math education at high school. After I was a math nerd -- because, to be honest, I finally had to think about it sometime around calculus, and I didn't really enjoy it once it stopped being pure intuition -- I was just a normal nerd. I played a lot of computer games and went to LAN parties, and I learned about building computers, maintaining a network, and troubleshooting. And I decided pure math wasn't for me, but maybe computer science was. So, I started studying that. I was in a dual-enrollment program with a local college when I was in high school, and I did the first-year sequence of CS when I was 16. I got bored, though. I didn't want to do my homework. So I decided to go find another major, and did the classic thing where I wandered through various majors trying to find a fit. Eventually, having considered history, oceanography, journalism, and philosophy, I landed on English lit. I liked the critical theory aspects -- it felt like applied philosophy, I suppose. There's some useful context here: I was an absolute dick. I was always right. I felt like I was better than everyone else. I had done well in math competitions; even though I'd quit studying it, my computer science professors were using the work I'd turned in weeks ahead as examples in class; I felt like I was better than my peers. My humanities education brought a lot of nuance to what was, before then, a very black-and-white reality for me. I learned a lot about the importance of communication, about how our backgrounds can lead to different interpretations of the same material, and about how to deal with challenging, uncomfortable subjects -- not just intellectually challenging topics, but emotionally challenging topics. The funny thing is that, in the end, I landed in tech, where I've now been for over a decade. I made my way up to senior engineer, and it was largely on the strength of my communication skills, not my technical skills; the latter were necessary but not sufficient. And I think I have a lot of potential growth left -- growth which will be enabled by soft skills, not hard skills, because the more senior you become, the more the balance shifts toward soft skills. My point here is that studying in the humanities made me a productive member of society.
- tptacek 3y ago
  In a sense, non-remunerative pursuits being luxuries, and money being the principle (though not exclusive) means of acquiring luxuries, the answer to your question is "yes". I agree with the article and its concern about cutting opportunities for working class West Virginians, but this isn't the strongest argument to make for it.
  - toofy 3y ago
    > …but this isn't the strongest argument to make for it. i’m not sure i follow what you’re attempting to imply here. with a topic as vast and as important as society and higher education, there will be many important and necessary pieces to discuss—the gp to this comment that you dismiss is a great example. i’m just not sure why you would dismiss it because it isnt The One Sole Strongest argument, particularly when it is an important piece to the larger discussion.
- bradley13 3y ago
  Tuition at this school is $23k/year, meaning that it is subsidized by tax dollars. Tax money should be spent wisely. The goal must be to equip students to be productive adults. Examples in the article focus on departmental finances, but carefully say nothing about the careers of students who graduate from those departments. If the students graduate, and wind up in McDonalds or Starbucks, then the departments are useless.
- joebob42 3y ago
  Also, frankly, if you just want to learn these things, do it free online. Duolingo, YouTube, etc do honestly a great job teaching these. I'm not discounting the benefits of a teacher and a certain educational environment, but where there are so many of orders of magnitude in cost difference it's not obvious to me the value difference is there.
maximinus_thrax 3y ago
> Sounds like exactly what a state school ought to do Universities aren't trade schools. The moment you treat them like trade schools, they become trade schools and should not be considered higher education anymore.

apstats 3y ago

The title of this article really shows the slant in the reporting. This decision makes a lot of sense to me and I actually think all universities should do more to encourage students to major in STEM. If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
This seems like one of those Chesterton’s fence things where you say “how could it be bad for America to force a bunch of people with no aptitude for STEM to major in STEM or else have a limited education” and then you find out.
- ITB 3y ago
  If someone doesn’t have aptitude for higher education, they shouldn’t get it. Higher education is not some universal right. But those who do get free public higher education should do it in a field that has clear downstream economic impact.
  - dkqmduems 3y ago
    Just to be clear. All those adtech companies are built on the shoulders of people who studied fine arts. See the history of advertising.
    - spondylosaurus 3y ago
      I'm all in favor of studying fine arts, but this isn't quite accurate: advertisers (i.e., brands who run ads) rely on people with arts and humanities training—it's not a coincidence that the smallest unit of advertising is called a "creative"! But adtech (i.e., the infrastructure underpinning digital advertising) is all data and code, nothing artistic at all. Check out any RTB spec: https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/openrtb2.x/blob/main/2.6.md https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/openrtb2.x/b...
    - joebob42 3y ago

ulrashida 3y ago

Apparently absent from Gee's approach: reductions to administration and management. When a university cuts $800k from its library and keeps chartering jets for executives you know this is not going to be about what is best for society or students, no matter how folksy the president wishes to appear.

pstuart 3y ago
This trend needs increased scrutiny. How do you get the foxes out of the henhouse when the foxes control the henhouse?
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  Build a new henhouse with none of the personnel from the old one, then cut the funding of the old fox henhouse until it shuts down.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

I actually think the humanities are wasted on undergraduates. School children should have exposure to the humanities in high school. Then college should prepare students for a job. Then after earning money, people should explore the humanities. I don’t think 18-22 in modern society really have enough life experience to really appreciate the questions the humanities seeks to answer.

Ajay-p 3y ago
A lot of university duplicate primary education. I think it is this way because it generates jobs and revenue, which can be very hard to give up for an institution.
distortionfield 3y ago
What an awful worldview to think that someone could be too young to ask questions about their place in this universe. Or that they’re somehow incapable of appreciating them. I, for one, hope you never have any say in someone’s education.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  I wish the poster above had more of a say in my education. Quite a bit of my education was wasted on the humanities.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    Perhaps a better advisor for you could have helped you with your path, without the collateral cost of shutting down other’s opportunities. A good advisor, formal or personal, can make a lifetime of difference. If there was ever a low cost, high return opportunity for improvement it would be treating student advising with much greater priority and seriousness.
  - distortionfield 3y ago
    No, the humanities were wasted on _you_.