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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

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.

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.