3 ms·

Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine. I know plenty of them even though I have engineering degrees myself. They may

by ghaff 2y ago

Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine. I know plenty of them even though I have engineering degrees myself. They may not get FAANG salaries in general--unless they end up in management--but plenty of people I know are just fine.

adityamwagh 2y ago
I see a problem here. Why are English majors in Management positions? With LLMs, I don't see a value on an English degree anymore. So I personally believe it's just a money sink at this point. I don't believe art can be taught in universities as a degree program. Universities should only be for domains that have tangible value.
- ghaff 2y ago
  What the hell do LLMs have to do with anything on this topic? If anything, they commodify low-level tech folks just like past tools have. I'll mostly hire a smart liberal arts major so long as they're respectful of tech and other domain expertise over someone who thinks it's only about (probably narrow) technical smarts.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  LLMs are the exact antithesis of what an English degree teaches you: how to communicate effectively and with context, and to understand nuance in what other people say. LLMs make things that sound good but have no real depth to them.
  - adityamwagh 2y ago
    You might understand this but I would like to believe and employer won't. Anyways, my main point is universities should focus more on tangible skills - accounting, engineering etc and should not have random useless degrees of little value. Maybe English major is still valuable, but I personally don't see the tangible value in it - other than being an English teacher.
    - w4 2y ago
      English is the global lingua franca. It’s how we interact with and transmit information, including ideas about accounting, engineering, etc. It’s very fair to argue about the ROI of the average undergraduate English degree given the outrageous prices that universities are charging for them. But if you cannot see the tangible value in English language expertise, I don’t really know what to tell you.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        I'm not sure an English degree vs. a history degree vs. a political science degree vs. just just working on the school newspaper is super useful. But certainly fluency and the ability to communicate is.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      You don't think about things from the perspective of someone who actually owns or starts a business, you think about things as someone who is an employee and wants to promote skills that help others get employed: accountant, engineer. Something great about engineers and accountants is that they don't ask too many questions, because many have bad social skills: many of them would never, on their own, be able to run a business or make deals or do the most important things involved in managing relations between large groups of people and making sure a product and/or service is delivered to happy customers and shareholders get paid off. Therefore, they don't constitute a threat to a business owner. A student who studies English, on the other hand, is given skills specifically to critically engage with a text in such a way that they can ask these kinds of questions about why they are doing what they are doing, why they are talking to certain people and not others, why, even, they ought to study one thing or another, why one guy runs the show and they do all the work. None of this is very helpful if you want to be a good worker bee who meets all their deadlines and collects a pay check and goes home at the end of the day and never thinks about doing anything more with their life, but, if you want to have more in the world, you need to know how to question it. I hate to use an example, but look at Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir. He has a PhD from the Institut für Sozialforschung, also known as the Frankfurt school, which is a research center whose members feature quite prominently on the syllabus of many English classes at the university level. Not exactly the same, but his education bears a remarkable resemblance at an advanced level to what many students with undergraduate degrees in English would have. But you wouldn't know that as an engineer; you would just be some employee, entirely replaceable.
  - confidantlake 2y ago
    My university english was class was more about writing an essay on what the different colors in the Great Gatsby meant. Evidently this was true across many colleges since it was trivially easy to go on sparknotes, get the answer to that exact prompt, and get an easy A.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      My university computer science classes included professors who thought that "vim was what the kids used now" and that the best way to teach operating systems was to give a lecture on how compiler authors break your code with optimizations. Maybe this is an indictment of their teaching and not the entire field?
- nkrisc 2y ago
  With the rise of LLMs an English degree may end up being desirable, considering the vapid drivel the models produce.
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  Why? LLMs are generally much better at writing code than doing whatever English major are supposedly bringing to the table. > don't believe art can be taught in universities as a degree program what does that have to do with studying English literature?
bumby 2y ago
>Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine. There's research that also shows smart people who get degrees from "non" top schools do just fine as well. They studies those who got accepted to top schools but went to "lesser" ones. Implying top schools select people who will be successful regardless, rather than helping make people successful. It's important to not confuse the causal relationship. * It's also worth noting the authors of those studies found a caveat with people on the lowest ends of the socioeconomic strata getting more benefit from the top schools.

by ghaff 2y ago

adityamwagh 2y ago

I see a problem here. Why are English majors in Management positions? With LLMs, I don't see a value on an English degree anymore. So I personally believe it's just a money sink at this point. I don't believe art can be taught in universities as a degree program. Universities should only be for domains that have tangible value.

ghaff 2y ago
What the hell do LLMs have to do with anything on this topic? If anything, they commodify low-level tech folks just like past tools have. I'll mostly hire a smart liberal arts major so long as they're respectful of tech and other domain expertise over someone who thinks it's only about (probably narrow) technical smarts.
saagarjha 2y ago
LLMs are the exact antithesis of what an English degree teaches you: how to communicate effectively and with context, and to understand nuance in what other people say. LLMs make things that sound good but have no real depth to them.
- adityamwagh 2y ago
  You might understand this but I would like to believe and employer won't. Anyways, my main point is universities should focus more on tangible skills - accounting, engineering etc and should not have random useless degrees of little value. Maybe English major is still valuable, but I personally don't see the tangible value in it - other than being an English teacher.
  - w4 2y ago
    English is the global lingua franca. It’s how we interact with and transmit information, including ideas about accounting, engineering, etc. It’s very fair to argue about the ROI of the average undergraduate English degree given the outrageous prices that universities are charging for them. But if you cannot see the tangible value in English language expertise, I don’t really know what to tell you.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I'm not sure an English degree vs. a history degree vs. a political science degree vs. just just working on the school newspaper is super useful. But certainly fluency and the ability to communicate is.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    You don't think about things from the perspective of someone who actually owns or starts a business, you think about things as someone who is an employee and wants to promote skills that help others get employed: accountant, engineer. Something great about engineers and accountants is that they don't ask too many questions, because many have bad social skills: many of them would never, on their own, be able to run a business or make deals or do the most important things involved in managing relations between large groups of people and making sure a product and/or service is delivered to happy customers and shareholders get paid off. Therefore, they don't constitute a threat to a business owner. A student who studies English, on the other hand, is given skills specifically to critically engage with a text in such a way that they can ask these kinds of questions about why they are doing what they are doing, why they are talking to certain people and not others, why, even, they ought to study one thing or another, why one guy runs the show and they do all the work. None of this is very helpful if you want to be a good worker bee who meets all their deadlines and collects a pay check and goes home at the end of the day and never thinks about doing anything more with their life, but, if you want to have more in the world, you need to know how to question it. I hate to use an example, but look at Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir. He has a PhD from the Institut für Sozialforschung, also known as the Frankfurt school, which is a research center whose members feature quite prominently on the syllabus of many English classes at the university level. Not exactly the same, but his education bears a remarkable resemblance at an advanced level to what many students with undergraduate degrees in English would have. But you wouldn't know that as an engineer; you would just be some employee, entirely replaceable.
- confidantlake 2y ago
  My university english was class was more about writing an essay on what the different colors in the Great Gatsby meant. Evidently this was true across many colleges since it was trivially easy to go on sparknotes, get the answer to that exact prompt, and get an easy A.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    My university computer science classes included professors who thought that "vim was what the kids used now" and that the best way to teach operating systems was to give a lecture on how compiler authors break your code with optimizations. Maybe this is an indictment of their teaching and not the entire field?
nkrisc 2y ago
With the rise of LLMs an English degree may end up being desirable, considering the vapid drivel the models produce.
ywvcbk 2y ago
Why? LLMs are generally much better at writing code than doing whatever English major are supposedly bringing to the table. > don't believe art can be taught in universities as a degree program what does that have to do with studying English literature?

bumby 2y ago

>Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine. There's research that also shows smart people who get degrees from "non" top schools do just fine as well. They studies those who got accepted to top schools but went to "lesser" ones. Implying top schools select people who will be successful regardless, rather than helping make people successful. It's important to not confuse the causal relationship. * It's also worth noting the authors of those studies found a caveat with people on the lowest ends of the socioeconomic strata getting more benefit from the top schools.