8 ms·

They're Killing the Humanities on Purpose

lbhdc 1y ago
https://archive.is/YbXI4 https://archive.is/YbXI4
lbhdc 1y ago
As someone with a degree in fine arts, good. A lot more of these programs need to be downsized or removed. Not because they aren't popular, they are (or were when I went) extremely popular. Rather they have poor outcomes for the students. After 4 years, I was left with the realization that I had wasted my time, and I was further away from a career than my peers. I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
- techpineapple 1y ago
  Yeah, I feel like something has got to give, maybe we don’t fund student loans for certain majors. Maybe we bring back certain types of book or social clubs to learn these materials instead. Online learning? I totally see the beauty in the humanities, it’s largely all I read for fun, But you can’t have a system that incentivizes people to take out bigger and bigger loans on investments that don’t pay back.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Student loan approval and interest rates should be based on actuarial calculations that account for risk of default based on school and major. This will allow market signals to work rather than treating everyone the same. Some people have this fantasy that everyone should be able to study their passion even if it's something with no value in the labor market but in the real world society can collectively only afford to have a tiny fraction of scholars living a life of the mind.
    - techpineapple 1y ago
      Yeah, I’d love to live in the post-agi utopia where we can all do what we want, but liberals are often not good at making trade offs within our own value systems
  - tracker1 1y ago
    That's kind of my pov, on the funding aspect. Student loans should definitely have an aspect depending on the major/minor chosen.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Long shot, but maybe require humanities as a minor for tech and business majors so that our technology might start to be built with humanity.
  - lukeinator42 1y ago
    This is what a liberal arts institution is (the university I went to is one). At my uni if you are taking a science degree you need to take 4 social science classes and 4 fine arts/humanities. and vice versa for students in fine arts/social sciences.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Yes, some colleges already require that. https://www.hmc.edu/hsa/program/ https://www.hmc.edu/hsa/program/
  - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
    Actually I think it's the other way around. Humanities should require math and science in order for people to graduate. At the minimum Calculus/Stats + a CS class + some kind of science should be the absolute bare minimum.
    - BobaFloutist 1y ago
      Wait until you guys hear about GEs.
      - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
        How many Universities require taking Calculus, from diff to multi variable, for Humanity graduates? I think even the English majors should be required to take all 3 calculus courses to graduate.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities. The reason you experienced a bad outcome is because our society doesn't care much about this, despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history. I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so. Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.
  - viscanti 1y ago
    It's more like the patient needs some fixed amount of food each day and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create lots more food than they need on the hopes that someday they'll want to eat more than they can. If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.
  - nradov 1y ago
    What is your solution? Should the rest of us all consume more art? A lot of people are struggling just to pay for housing and food.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      In many wealthy societies, there is broad funding for the arts and humanities. Here in the US we're discussing massive cuts for art and humanities funding. These amounts aren't large, and presumably we can afford them -- given the massive tax cuts we just passed for people making over $500,000 and the increased funding we came up with for ICE and the military.
      - aydyn 1y ago
        Why should I (as a taxpayer) have to pay for a luxury item like art? If you want to pay for that, you are free to do so.
- arwhatever 1y ago
  Christina P: “I graduated with a degree in philosophy only to discover The Philosophy Corporation wasn’t hiring.”
  - Analemma_ 1y ago
    A good point in general but not here specifically: among the various liberal arts degrees, philosophy majors have some of the highest average earnings.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      Because they have the highest IQs. Philosophy programs are a sink for smart students who don’t want to do math or engineering. Employers don’t actually value the philosophy degree itself.
      - Bud 1y ago
        [dead]
      - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
        Employers? Philosophy majors are generally unemployable, unless they're going into law. Though they do tend to make decent entrepreneurs or are self-employed in some other way. At least that's my assumption from experience.
    - nradov 1y ago
      A large fraction of philosophy majors go on to law school. It's great training for analyzing complex texts and writing logically sound arguments. These are timeless skills that apply to many areas even if the philosophical content itself doesn't have as much practical value in the labor market.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        I worked at a state university for 8 years writing code, and I was in contact with many of its student facing offices. There is an office that is dedicated to showing that law school students have very positive post-graduation outcomes. Basically, they send them a survey asking them if they had full or part time employment, and if they said "yes" to it, the university counted it as a positive outcome. "96% of our law school graduates find work within 12 months". I am quite confident that not only is philosophy a waste when it comes to finding gainful employment, going to law school to put that philosophy to good use is just doubling down on the same bad gamble. Large fraction? What about the remainder?
- DudeOpotomus 1y ago
  I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity. In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate. People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real. Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
  - aydyn 1y ago
    I agree with your axioms but not your conclusion. People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this. I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department. Edit: Forgot to add my second point: AI is going to let people outside the mainstream produce genuinely credible, professional-level work without a massive budget. That means further devaluing of establishment institutions like humanities departments. It strips away the gatekeeping power, deciding who gets to count as legit. AI blows that up.
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      I'm not sure why you're being down voted. Art degrees aren't aimed at artists. There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degrees, but those aren't the sort of humanities degrees that we're talking about. I vaguely recall even creative art degrees as being looked down upon by artists as teaching you to conform to certain styles, essentially mimicry rather than creativity (though it has been some years since anyone in my network attended one). In any case, despite the waxing philosophical of the personal growth value of a humanities degree, there's still the fact that every college and university also advertises job placement rates of their majors. Individual courses may focus on specific topics, but the people taking your money are promising job opportunities to parents and school councilors to convince them that the over inflated price tags are worth it.
- spandrew 1y ago
  Let me push back and say that is not the point of university. If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole. I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities. Ever watch Netflix these days? Woof.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    But that isn't the pitch. "You go to college so you can get a good job..." The fact is, the entire college/university system is outsized and wrong-fit for what most people actually need. And while I don't think humanities programs should be cut from universities, I also don't think that taxpayer backed student loans or payouts should be made for programs that have vastly more people enrolled in than the general economy has a demand/need for. I'd like to see more accredited options for trade schools beyond what people currently think of as trades. From accounting, to software development. I know there are some schools that focus on these things, I just think they should be more at the forefront and higher profile options.
    - dkarl 1y ago
      Isn't it fine if different degrees lead to different job opportunities? A nineteen year old should be able to understand the difference between the job market for a doctor or engineer and the job market for an MFA. We don't need to have different institutions to grant different degrees with different levels of marketability. A college that only taught lucrative subjects and a college that taught non-lucrative subjects would both offer less educational value than a single college that offered the full range.
      - tracker1 1y ago
        Sure... have all the options out there.. but taking on debt, and the risks associated should also account for the ability and risk of paying it back or not... which is pretty heavily dependent on the program in question. I'm fine with people choosing whatever they want... but then the question comes down to how/who pays for it... and I'm emphatically not in favor of public (taxpayer) funding for programs that don't have a direct need/demand in society or the economy in general. You want to be a fine arts major.. go for it. It may be harder if you need student loans to pay for it, when there's a few thousand people working on that degree and a few hundred jobs in the world of demand.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  >> our economy is not built on poetry and painting Really? Hollywood operates on the efforts of screenwriters and digital rendering masters, both areas very informed by poetry and painting. Graphic design and quick language are the basis of online ads, which in turn are what supports the likes of Facebook and Google. If not for the wordsmiths and visual artists, the modern internet would be a very different place.
  - holowoodman 1y ago
    Hollywood is part of the economy, but only a small one, around 3% of US GDP. All of arts and entertainment is around 4.5%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/248004/percentage-added-to-the-us-gdp-by-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/248004/percentage-added-... And without the DRM, lockdown and prosecution demands of Hollywood, the internet would indeed be a better, freer place.
- forgotoldacc 1y ago
  You're looking for a trade school. Universities have always been about education often for the sake of learning. Generating money just came to be a nice side effect as knowledge work grew in value.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    That's a nice fantasy that hasn't been true for a long time. Even university websites talk just as much about career opportunities as they do personal growth.
    - forgotoldacc 1y ago
      Them mentioning both kind of destroys the idea that university is just a job pathway.
- bevr1337 1y ago
  From a fellow classically trained artist, I too feel disenchanted with my BFA. I'm surprised so many folks defend the university system for fine arts. It's a relatively modern notion, as in only a few decades! Historically, arts education is provided in museum, academy, apprentice, and/or community settings. Academic (as in the modern university system) art is still in its early stages and deserves criticism. I assume much of our cohort are in a worse position for their commitment to an art degree.
  - lbhdc 1y ago
    I think some of the disconnect is that when people think of humanities they think of the masters, and not attending figure drawing classes while accruing 5-10 years worth of salary as debt.
delichon 1y ago
IMHO Outcome Based Funding is a better model for public education. https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-education-funding-with-student-outcomes/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-educati... As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.
- k8si 1y ago
  "Only rich kids should get to choose what they study in school, poor kids are too dumb to make their own choices"
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    The argument is rather that humanities degrees are a luxury item. Neither kids just starting out their adult lives nor society should be burdened propping up departments whose value doesn't match their price tag.
djohnston 1y ago
Good? Encouraging people to go into six-figure debt for a degree with no earning potential is gross and predatory.
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  And making it un-dischargeable in bankruptcy so people are either in perpetual debt bondage or the taxpayer picks up the tab for the inflated costs takes it from gross to downright criminal. I'd be a lot more OK with student loan jubilees if universities had to pay the remaining principal on any forgiven loans. They'd immediately get their costs under control and be a lot more careful about degree programs which don't have any earning potential.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    I don’t disagree with your general point, but for clarity, student loans are non-dischargeable because they have been federally guaranteed since 1965. Meaning that if the borrower defaulted, taxpayers would be on the hook. And the reason for the federal guarantees was that students are bad credit risks. So without the guarantees, banks wouldn’t lend to students, especially disadvantaged ones.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      The reason for the federal guarantees was because voters wanted lower taxes, or otherwise did not want to redistribute wealth to students. It’s a common way to scam today’s young and future taxpayers. See also underfunded pensions and other post employment benefits for government employees and taxpayer guaranteed 30 year fixed rate mortgages with no prepayment penalty. Instead of helping someone, society lends them money and lets future taxpayers deal with the mess. That is how you win elections in aging societies.
    - recursive 1y ago
      It almost sounds like student loans should be harder to get. Giving a student a loan seems like a bad bet. All the parties that know how to do a proper risk analysis aren't willing to take that on. So this hot potato gets passed around. Eventually it ends up back on the prospective student, who is least equipped to make a rational financial decision. Kind of makes the whole thing sound like a scam from that perspective.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mwrmwr 1y ago
This discussion would be well served if we separated concerns about the economics of higher education in general (obviously student debt burdens are too high. There has been much written about how this came to be for all major) from the value of humanities program. Where I am coming from (so source of bias) I got a BA and PhD in philosophy, make plenty in software now, and credit to some extent my time in the humanities with the ability of I do that.
- garciansmith 1y ago
  I often see comments here about how the humanities and many social sciences are pointless, should be cut, and so forth, as evidenced by this thread. Though as you say, problems with the insane cost of higher education (especially in the United States), are separate, if partially related since so many people believe that getting educated = getting a job that makes more money than if you weren't and that's education's only purpose. But I also see how so many of the upvoted and discussed articles and papers on this site are about history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, language, etc. It has always struck me as contradictory, though of course a lot of the people who are into the latter are not those writing the former. How do we continue to push the bounds of human knowledge and thought in those disciplines, if not through higher education? In my opinion the world would be a whole lot better if, for instance, people learned more history and learned how to more critically approach sources. But I'm biased of course, I have PhD in history.
poszlem 1y ago
Good riddance. The latest chapter of America’s cultural revolution has been driven largely by radical currents in the humanities and by students eager to impose them beyond campus. It is finally time for universities to reconsider what they truly want to teach. They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers and focus instead on real learning,including the humanities, when they are done honestly and not just used to push one narrow worldview. With so much changing in the world right now, we urgently need the humanities to recover their integrity and purpose.
- baerrie 1y ago
  Sorry but this is what the GOP actually did by weaponizing the uneducated evangelical zealots
  - gotoeleven 1y ago
    https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-virtue-signaling-has-become-a-threat-to-higher-ed/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-v...
    - exe34 1y ago
      > The result is not conviction but compliance. aka. being a dick gets you kicked out of social groups.
- coloneltcb 1y ago
  All right, let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy. How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and established the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts, but have I taught you anything of value this year?
- exe34 1y ago
  > They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers That's right, MAGAs can do that for themselves, and none of them are educated! > and focus instead on real learning Yep, whatever the Eternal Leader says is real is real. Climate change is a hoax, thus spake the Eternal Leader.
baerrie 1y ago
People who agree with this happening take for granted the critical ways humanities education contextualizes and guides stem research and progress. By studying the humanities you peer past the present and all of its trappings in the capitalistic race to the bottom. Shame on you humanities graduates that believe there being zero English, History, English, etc majors will lead to a better world.
- pakitan 1y ago
  Zero may not be the optimal number but nobody is arguing for zero anyway. Also, you don't need to be a History major to study history. "you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"
baerrie 1y ago
The humanities are why the internet exists. Coding is linguistics, writing is the key aspect of most software creation. Why then do we devalue this critical skill and those who wish to pursue its excellence? It seems most of ya’ll are content to make a fat check working a bs job in a marketing/business capacity where no real things of substance are being learned or progressed other than “how do i squeeze the utmost money out of the system”. Is this the world you continue to want to promote?
- holowoodman 1y ago
  No. Coding is mathematics. The internet exists because of engineering. The web was invented because of physics. Humanities came late to the game and try to claim the honor without actually having done anything. Except whine and complain about the demise of X because of this new fangled internet thingy. For X you may insert "reading", "writing", "critical thinking", "books", "education", "manners", "discussions" and another 50 things at least. I'd say the humanities hindered the progress of humanity more than they promoted it over the last 50 years.
  - baerrie 1y ago
    Coding is not mathematics, mathematics is a deterministic axiomatic system for describing quanta. Coding is the creation of instructions for computational logic that then is persisted in non-absolute matter as state. “Engineering” did not create the internet, the desire to communicate in new ways, as humans have wished to do for millennia, led to the internet. I honestly don’t even know how physics created the web when it was literally created to share text documents
  - einszwei 1y ago
    Its disingenuous to discard the contribution of humanities. To name a few of the top of my mind: Chomsky hierarchy is an important concept in programming languages and could be considered as originating from linguistics Philosophy (which is counted in humanities) has had massive contributions to Logic and formal methods in computer science. There's even more examples of humanities contribution in HCI and AI safety.
cleandreams 1y ago
I think the universities made a mistake in becoming too culturally left wing. The faculty (and students) in the humanities in particular are far to the left of the political mainstream. (I am on the left though more focused on labor rights and good jobs than identity politics.) The attack on the universities is fueled by this divergence, now that the right is firmly in power. This will just hurt the country in the long run. There was so much group think and silencing happening on the left over the last decade. It seems now to have been self-destructive.
- vehemenz 1y ago
  This is a popular criticism that is partially true, but it rings a bit hollow because conservatives (rather, Republicans) don't seem to want intellectual career paths. They're nowhere to be found in academia. And, to pre-empt the usual objection, they aren't being crowded out by ideology. They aren't there in the first place. They're not in the STEM majors outside of engineering, and they're not in the humanities except for law. Otherwise you'll find them in sales, marketing, business, and management. These people complain about academia but have little invested in it in the first place.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    They are chased out of academia. I knew professors who were proudly, vocally socialist but the professors who had any conservative leanings were very subtle about it. You don't get tenure if your fellow professors don't like you, and they've created their own echo chamber long ago. In contradiction to your point, the conservative professors and teachers that I knew were not in arts humanities at all (with one exception in law) but in crunchier fields like economics. The STEM and maths professors didn't talk social topics at all, so it is impossible to know what their feelings were.
    - vehemenz 1y ago
      If the students aren't there, there won't be professors.
- 1y ago
galleywest200 1y ago
When I was in school we were educated in STEM alongside the humanities, they called this being "interdisciplinary". One of my undergraduate chemistry professors went to Cal Tech and he told us that his professors encouraged him to ask people outside of his discipline about problems if he got stuck. I do not understand why people are unwilling to do more interdisciplinary studies. When I took courses on crop botany and plant genetics we also read books and had seminar to discuss the topics of the books - that is a humanities skill, to discuss in a group what meaning you can derive from texts. As for the people saying you should get a degree that pays well...look at all the folks who got Comp. Sci. degrees who are now being thrown in the wood chipper. Was that worth it? Time will tell.
- hx8 1y ago
  Interdisciplinary is a broad umbrella term that most people fall under to some degree. The benefit of focusing on a primary discipline is that there are well worn career paths to follow. I think the best approach is to brand yourself to one or two disciplines, and look for collaboration opportunities with other disciplines. Study them for enrichment and inspiration. Have friends and colleagues outside of your discipline. If someone says they are "interdisciplinary" it provides little information about what they actually study and are good at. If someone says they have a Masters in Philosophy with a focus on Metaphysics I have enough information about their background to ask questions they might provide insightful comments on.
- nradov 1y ago
  Sure, but to be fair to STEM fields, group discussions aren't uniquely a humanities skill. Collectively ripping apart a scientific journal article to find all of its flaws is a common activity. Interdisciplinary study is great but there can be some friction in the labor market, at least for new graduates seeking entry level positions. When corporate recruiters see a college transcript that doesn't fit neatly into one of the usual slots they don't know what to do with it. Computer Science also has its own friction with the labor market. It's really a branch of abstract mathematics and only tangentially related to commercial software product development. I think colleges ought to offer something like a "Bachelor of Fine Arts in Software Development" for students more interested in practical craftsmanship. There will always be demand for people who can build working software, even if most of them move up to higher levels of abstraction leveraging AI tools instead of directly writing code themselves.

https://archive.is/YbXI4 https://archive.is/YbXI4

As someone with a degree in fine arts, good. A lot more of these programs need to be downsized or removed. Not because they aren't popular, they are (or were when I went) extremely popular. Rather they have poor outcomes for the students. After 4 years, I was left with the realization that I had wasted my time, and I was further away from a career than my peers. I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.

techpineapple 1y ago
Yeah, I feel like something has got to give, maybe we don’t fund student loans for certain majors. Maybe we bring back certain types of book or social clubs to learn these materials instead. Online learning? I totally see the beauty in the humanities, it’s largely all I read for fun, But you can’t have a system that incentivizes people to take out bigger and bigger loans on investments that don’t pay back.
- nradov 1y ago
  Student loan approval and interest rates should be based on actuarial calculations that account for risk of default based on school and major. This will allow market signals to work rather than treating everyone the same. Some people have this fantasy that everyone should be able to study their passion even if it's something with no value in the labor market but in the real world society can collectively only afford to have a tiny fraction of scholars living a life of the mind.
  - techpineapple 1y ago
    Yeah, I’d love to live in the post-agi utopia where we can all do what we want, but liberals are often not good at making trade offs within our own value systems
- tracker1 1y ago
  That's kind of my pov, on the funding aspect. Student loans should definitely have an aspect depending on the major/minor chosen.
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
Long shot, but maybe require humanities as a minor for tech and business majors so that our technology might start to be built with humanity.
- lukeinator42 1y ago
  This is what a liberal arts institution is (the university I went to is one). At my uni if you are taking a science degree you need to take 4 social science classes and 4 fine arts/humanities. and vice versa for students in fine arts/social sciences.
- nradov 1y ago
  Yes, some colleges already require that. https://www.hmc.edu/hsa/program/ https://www.hmc.edu/hsa/program/
- lacy_tinpot 1y ago
  Actually I think it's the other way around. Humanities should require math and science in order for people to graduate. At the minimum Calculus/Stats + a CS class + some kind of science should be the absolute bare minimum.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    Wait until you guys hear about GEs.
    - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
      How many Universities require taking Calculus, from diff to multi variable, for Humanity graduates? I think even the English majors should be required to take all 3 calculus courses to graduate.
matthewdgreen 1y ago
At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities. The reason you experienced a bad outcome is because our society doesn't care much about this, despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history. I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so. Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.
- viscanti 1y ago
  It's more like the patient needs some fixed amount of food each day and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create lots more food than they need on the hopes that someday they'll want to eat more than they can. If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.
- nradov 1y ago
  What is your solution? Should the rest of us all consume more art? A lot of people are struggling just to pay for housing and food.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    In many wealthy societies, there is broad funding for the arts and humanities. Here in the US we're discussing massive cuts for art and humanities funding. These amounts aren't large, and presumably we can afford them -- given the massive tax cuts we just passed for people making over $500,000 and the increased funding we came up with for ICE and the military.
    - aydyn 1y ago
      Why should I (as a taxpayer) have to pay for a luxury item like art? If you want to pay for that, you are free to do so.
arwhatever 1y ago
Christina P: “I graduated with a degree in philosophy only to discover The Philosophy Corporation wasn’t hiring.”
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  A good point in general but not here specifically: among the various liberal arts degrees, philosophy majors have some of the highest average earnings.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    Because they have the highest IQs. Philosophy programs are a sink for smart students who don’t want to do math or engineering. Employers don’t actually value the philosophy degree itself.
    - Bud 1y ago
      [dead]
    - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
      Employers? Philosophy majors are generally unemployable, unless they're going into law. Though they do tend to make decent entrepreneurs or are self-employed in some other way. At least that's my assumption from experience.
  - nradov 1y ago
    A large fraction of philosophy majors go on to law school. It's great training for analyzing complex texts and writing logically sound arguments. These are timeless skills that apply to many areas even if the philosophical content itself doesn't have as much practical value in the labor market.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      I worked at a state university for 8 years writing code, and I was in contact with many of its student facing offices. There is an office that is dedicated to showing that law school students have very positive post-graduation outcomes. Basically, they send them a survey asking them if they had full or part time employment, and if they said "yes" to it, the university counted it as a positive outcome. "96% of our law school graduates find work within 12 months". I am quite confident that not only is philosophy a waste when it comes to finding gainful employment, going to law school to put that philosophy to good use is just doubling down on the same bad gamble. Large fraction? What about the remainder?
DudeOpotomus 1y ago
I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity. In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate. People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real. Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
- aydyn 1y ago
  I agree with your axioms but not your conclusion. People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this. I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department. Edit: Forgot to add my second point: AI is going to let people outside the mainstream produce genuinely credible, professional-level work without a massive budget. That means further devaluing of establishment institutions like humanities departments. It strips away the gatekeeping power, deciding who gets to count as legit. AI blows that up.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being down voted. Art degrees aren't aimed at artists. There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degrees, but those aren't the sort of humanities degrees that we're talking about. I vaguely recall even creative art degrees as being looked down upon by artists as teaching you to conform to certain styles, essentially mimicry rather than creativity (though it has been some years since anyone in my network attended one). In any case, despite the waxing philosophical of the personal growth value of a humanities degree, there's still the fact that every college and university also advertises job placement rates of their majors. Individual courses may focus on specific topics, but the people taking your money are promising job opportunities to parents and school councilors to convince them that the over inflated price tags are worth it.
spandrew 1y ago
Let me push back and say that is not the point of university. If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole. I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities. Ever watch Netflix these days? Woof.
- tracker1 1y ago
  But that isn't the pitch. "You go to college so you can get a good job..." The fact is, the entire college/university system is outsized and wrong-fit for what most people actually need. And while I don't think humanities programs should be cut from universities, I also don't think that taxpayer backed student loans or payouts should be made for programs that have vastly more people enrolled in than the general economy has a demand/need for. I'd like to see more accredited options for trade schools beyond what people currently think of as trades. From accounting, to software development. I know there are some schools that focus on these things, I just think they should be more at the forefront and higher profile options.
  - dkarl 1y ago
    Isn't it fine if different degrees lead to different job opportunities? A nineteen year old should be able to understand the difference between the job market for a doctor or engineer and the job market for an MFA. We don't need to have different institutions to grant different degrees with different levels of marketability. A college that only taught lucrative subjects and a college that taught non-lucrative subjects would both offer less educational value than a single college that offered the full range.
    - tracker1 1y ago
      Sure... have all the options out there.. but taking on debt, and the risks associated should also account for the ability and risk of paying it back or not... which is pretty heavily dependent on the program in question. I'm fine with people choosing whatever they want... but then the question comes down to how/who pays for it... and I'm emphatically not in favor of public (taxpayer) funding for programs that don't have a direct need/demand in society or the economy in general. You want to be a fine arts major.. go for it. It may be harder if you need student loans to pay for it, when there's a few thousand people working on that degree and a few hundred jobs in the world of demand.
sandworm101 1y ago
>> our economy is not built on poetry and painting Really? Hollywood operates on the efforts of screenwriters and digital rendering masters, both areas very informed by poetry and painting. Graphic design and quick language are the basis of online ads, which in turn are what supports the likes of Facebook and Google. If not for the wordsmiths and visual artists, the modern internet would be a very different place.
- holowoodman 1y ago
  Hollywood is part of the economy, but only a small one, around 3% of US GDP. All of arts and entertainment is around 4.5%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/248004/percentage-added-to-the-us-gdp-by-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/248004/percentage-added-... And without the DRM, lockdown and prosecution demands of Hollywood, the internet would indeed be a better, freer place.
forgotoldacc 1y ago
You're looking for a trade school. Universities have always been about education often for the sake of learning. Generating money just came to be a nice side effect as knowledge work grew in value.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  That's a nice fantasy that hasn't been true for a long time. Even university websites talk just as much about career opportunities as they do personal growth.
  - forgotoldacc 1y ago
    Them mentioning both kind of destroys the idea that university is just a job pathway.
bevr1337 1y ago
From a fellow classically trained artist, I too feel disenchanted with my BFA. I'm surprised so many folks defend the university system for fine arts. It's a relatively modern notion, as in only a few decades! Historically, arts education is provided in museum, academy, apprentice, and/or community settings. Academic (as in the modern university system) art is still in its early stages and deserves criticism. I assume much of our cohort are in a worse position for their commitment to an art degree.
- lbhdc 1y ago
  I think some of the disconnect is that when people think of humanities they think of the masters, and not attending figure drawing classes while accruing 5-10 years worth of salary as debt.

delichon 1y ago

IMHO Outcome Based Funding is a better model for public education. https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-education-funding-with-student-outcomes/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-educati... As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.

k8si 1y ago
"Only rich kids should get to choose what they study in school, poor kids are too dumb to make their own choices"
- zdragnar 1y ago
  The argument is rather that humanities degrees are a luxury item. Neither kids just starting out their adult lives nor society should be burdened propping up departments whose value doesn't match their price tag.

djohnston 1y ago

Good? Encouraging people to go into six-figure debt for a degree with no earning potential is gross and predatory.

Analemma_ 1y ago
And making it un-dischargeable in bankruptcy so people are either in perpetual debt bondage or the taxpayer picks up the tab for the inflated costs takes it from gross to downright criminal. I'd be a lot more OK with student loan jubilees if universities had to pay the remaining principal on any forgiven loans. They'd immediately get their costs under control and be a lot more careful about degree programs which don't have any earning potential.
- rayiner 1y ago
  I don’t disagree with your general point, but for clarity, student loans are non-dischargeable because they have been federally guaranteed since 1965. Meaning that if the borrower defaulted, taxpayers would be on the hook. And the reason for the federal guarantees was that students are bad credit risks. So without the guarantees, banks wouldn’t lend to students, especially disadvantaged ones.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    The reason for the federal guarantees was because voters wanted lower taxes, or otherwise did not want to redistribute wealth to students. It’s a common way to scam today’s young and future taxpayers. See also underfunded pensions and other post employment benefits for government employees and taxpayer guaranteed 30 year fixed rate mortgages with no prepayment penalty. Instead of helping someone, society lends them money and lets future taxpayers deal with the mess. That is how you win elections in aging societies.
  - recursive 1y ago
    It almost sounds like student loans should be harder to get. Giving a student a loan seems like a bad bet. All the parties that know how to do a proper risk analysis aren't willing to take that on. So this hot potato gets passed around. Eventually it ends up back on the prospective student, who is least equipped to make a rational financial decision. Kind of makes the whole thing sound like a scam from that perspective.

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mwrmwr 1y ago

This discussion would be well served if we separated concerns about the economics of higher education in general (obviously student debt burdens are too high. There has been much written about how this came to be for all major) from the value of humanities program. Where I am coming from (so source of bias) I got a BA and PhD in philosophy, make plenty in software now, and credit to some extent my time in the humanities with the ability of I do that.

garciansmith 1y ago
I often see comments here about how the humanities and many social sciences are pointless, should be cut, and so forth, as evidenced by this thread. Though as you say, problems with the insane cost of higher education (especially in the United States), are separate, if partially related since so many people believe that getting educated = getting a job that makes more money than if you weren't and that's education's only purpose. But I also see how so many of the upvoted and discussed articles and papers on this site are about history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, language, etc. It has always struck me as contradictory, though of course a lot of the people who are into the latter are not those writing the former. How do we continue to push the bounds of human knowledge and thought in those disciplines, if not through higher education? In my opinion the world would be a whole lot better if, for instance, people learned more history and learned how to more critically approach sources. But I'm biased of course, I have PhD in history.

poszlem 1y ago

Good riddance. The latest chapter of America’s cultural revolution has been driven largely by radical currents in the humanities and by students eager to impose them beyond campus. It is finally time for universities to reconsider what they truly want to teach. They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers and focus instead on real learning,including the humanities, when they are done honestly and not just used to push one narrow worldview. With so much changing in the world right now, we urgently need the humanities to recover their integrity and purpose.

baerrie 1y ago
Sorry but this is what the GOP actually did by weaponizing the uneducated evangelical zealots
- gotoeleven 1y ago
  https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-virtue-signaling-has-become-a-threat-to-higher-ed/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-v...
  - exe34 1y ago
    > The result is not conviction but compliance. aka. being a dick gets you kicked out of social groups.
coloneltcb 1y ago
All right, let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy. How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and established the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts, but have I taught you anything of value this year?
exe34 1y ago
> They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers That's right, MAGAs can do that for themselves, and none of them are educated! > and focus instead on real learning Yep, whatever the Eternal Leader says is real is real. Climate change is a hoax, thus spake the Eternal Leader.

baerrie 1y ago

People who agree with this happening take for granted the critical ways humanities education contextualizes and guides stem research and progress. By studying the humanities you peer past the present and all of its trappings in the capitalistic race to the bottom. Shame on you humanities graduates that believe there being zero English, History, English, etc majors will lead to a better world.

pakitan 1y ago
Zero may not be the optimal number but nobody is arguing for zero anyway. Also, you don't need to be a History major to study history. "you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"

baerrie 1y ago

The humanities are why the internet exists. Coding is linguistics, writing is the key aspect of most software creation. Why then do we devalue this critical skill and those who wish to pursue its excellence? It seems most of ya’ll are content to make a fat check working a bs job in a marketing/business capacity where no real things of substance are being learned or progressed other than “how do i squeeze the utmost money out of the system”. Is this the world you continue to want to promote?

holowoodman 1y ago
No. Coding is mathematics. The internet exists because of engineering. The web was invented because of physics. Humanities came late to the game and try to claim the honor without actually having done anything. Except whine and complain about the demise of X because of this new fangled internet thingy. For X you may insert "reading", "writing", "critical thinking", "books", "education", "manners", "discussions" and another 50 things at least. I'd say the humanities hindered the progress of humanity more than they promoted it over the last 50 years.
- baerrie 1y ago
  Coding is not mathematics, mathematics is a deterministic axiomatic system for describing quanta. Coding is the creation of instructions for computational logic that then is persisted in non-absolute matter as state. “Engineering” did not create the internet, the desire to communicate in new ways, as humans have wished to do for millennia, led to the internet. I honestly don’t even know how physics created the web when it was literally created to share text documents
- einszwei 1y ago
  Its disingenuous to discard the contribution of humanities. To name a few of the top of my mind: Chomsky hierarchy is an important concept in programming languages and could be considered as originating from linguistics Philosophy (which is counted in humanities) has had massive contributions to Logic and formal methods in computer science. There's even more examples of humanities contribution in HCI and AI safety.

cleandreams 1y ago

I think the universities made a mistake in becoming too culturally left wing. The faculty (and students) in the humanities in particular are far to the left of the political mainstream. (I am on the left though more focused on labor rights and good jobs than identity politics.) The attack on the universities is fueled by this divergence, now that the right is firmly in power. This will just hurt the country in the long run. There was so much group think and silencing happening on the left over the last decade. It seems now to have been self-destructive.

vehemenz 1y ago
This is a popular criticism that is partially true, but it rings a bit hollow because conservatives (rather, Republicans) don't seem to want intellectual career paths. They're nowhere to be found in academia. And, to pre-empt the usual objection, they aren't being crowded out by ideology. They aren't there in the first place. They're not in the STEM majors outside of engineering, and they're not in the humanities except for law. Otherwise you'll find them in sales, marketing, business, and management. These people complain about academia but have little invested in it in the first place.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  They are chased out of academia. I knew professors who were proudly, vocally socialist but the professors who had any conservative leanings were very subtle about it. You don't get tenure if your fellow professors don't like you, and they've created their own echo chamber long ago. In contradiction to your point, the conservative professors and teachers that I knew were not in arts humanities at all (with one exception in law) but in crunchier fields like economics. The STEM and maths professors didn't talk social topics at all, so it is impossible to know what their feelings were.
  - vehemenz 1y ago
    If the students aren't there, there won't be professors.
1y ago

galleywest200 1y ago

When I was in school we were educated in STEM alongside the humanities, they called this being "interdisciplinary". One of my undergraduate chemistry professors went to Cal Tech and he told us that his professors encouraged him to ask people outside of his discipline about problems if he got stuck. I do not understand why people are unwilling to do more interdisciplinary studies. When I took courses on crop botany and plant genetics we also read books and had seminar to discuss the topics of the books - that is a humanities skill, to discuss in a group what meaning you can derive from texts. As for the people saying you should get a degree that pays well...look at all the folks who got Comp. Sci. degrees who are now being thrown in the wood chipper. Was that worth it? Time will tell.

hx8 1y ago
Interdisciplinary is a broad umbrella term that most people fall under to some degree. The benefit of focusing on a primary discipline is that there are well worn career paths to follow. I think the best approach is to brand yourself to one or two disciplines, and look for collaboration opportunities with other disciplines. Study them for enrichment and inspiration. Have friends and colleagues outside of your discipline. If someone says they are "interdisciplinary" it provides little information about what they actually study and are good at. If someone says they have a Masters in Philosophy with a focus on Metaphysics I have enough information about their background to ask questions they might provide insightful comments on.
nradov 1y ago
Sure, but to be fair to STEM fields, group discussions aren't uniquely a humanities skill. Collectively ripping apart a scientific journal article to find all of its flaws is a common activity. Interdisciplinary study is great but there can be some friction in the labor market, at least for new graduates seeking entry level positions. When corporate recruiters see a college transcript that doesn't fit neatly into one of the usual slots they don't know what to do with it. Computer Science also has its own friction with the labor market. It's really a branch of abstract mathematics and only tangentially related to commercial software product development. I think colleges ought to offer something like a "Bachelor of Fine Arts in Software Development" for students more interested in practical craftsmanship. There will always be demand for people who can build working software, even if most of them move up to higher levels of abstraction leveraging AI tools instead of directly writing code themselves.