5 ms·

The liberal arts themselves aren't the problem. For those of us on HN that went to college and got a computer science degree, I'm sure a lot of took a handful

by nhashem 14y ago

The liberal arts themselves aren't the problem. For those of us on HN that went to college and got a computer science degree, I'm sure a lot of took a handful of liberal arts courses as electives. It's even possible that we remember the reading, discussions, and papers in those classes even more than Introduction to the Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science II. As the OP indicated, there is no reason why learning subjects related to logic, writing, psychology, and history can't be complementary to the practical knowledge required for math and science. In my opinion however, the real issue isn't just the students that get solely a liberal arts degree, but the amount of debt racked up to get one. Getting a philosophy degree at a state university and being $25,000 in debt is one thing, but getting that degree at a private university is being $100,000 in debt is another. I'd imagine the younger generations will gradually stop pursuing these degrees because of the terrible ROI in terms of debt to future income. If this happens, our economy will be healthier in the short term without so much accumulated debt, but it may come at a cost of eliminating the programs that nurture our future philosophers and artists.

ricksta 14y ago
>I'd imagine the younger generations will gradually stop pursuing these degrees because of the terrible ROI in terms of debt to future income. The problem with this is that most 17-18 year old don't have a sense of what ROI of their education will get them. Many of high-school graduates will be thinking "oh I like to read shakespeare so I'm going to major in English", and they probably have no idea how long the $100k will take to get paid off after their job. I think if anything that will solve this problem once and for all is to make liberal arts minor degrees and only offer STEM as majors.
- ktizo 14y ago
  That is a ludicrous suggestion. Even hard line soviets weren't that materialistic about education.
- reader5000 14y ago
  $100k STEM degrees aren't pumping out ROI either.
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  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Huh? My son did graduate work in CS at CMU. He's paying back his reasonable loans at a staggering rate; won't be in debt in a year or two after graduation. STEM is absolutely worth the money.
    - rjbond3rd 14y ago
      Just curious, your son is paying back $100k in loans within 2 years of graduation?
      - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
        Didn't have that big a loan; and yes, earns big money at a Silicon Valley startup doing JBoss programming.
001sky 14y ago
Isn't the issue that liberal arts educations have not changed in the past 40 years, but the cost has gone from $10K to $100-200K?. So, there is an order of magnituded cost and some minor Nx delta on the Return (~inflation). English/logic/philosophy/history etc should be plumeting in cost. With the internet, the cost of books/articles should have gone to zero by now. Non-profit universities could force sharing of peer-reviewed work online for the priviledge of the peer review publication (for example). A degree of this type is not worth more or less (especially as a social rank signifier) today than yesterday. And they are valuable. But they sure as hell cost way more than they should. Its time to question why they are priced as if they were luxury, brand name handbags. Rather than public goods being distributed by non-profit, tax exempt organizations.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Capital gets cheaper, labour gets more expensive. This has been the general trend in education since the invention of the printing press.
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  - 001sky 14y ago
    Relevant data: _________ Princeton: Endowment US$ 17.1 billion (2011) Harvard: Endowment US$ 32.0 billion (2011) Yale: Endowment US$ 19.4 billion (2011) Stanford: Endowment US$ 16.5 billion (2011) ___________ Facebook: IPO US$ 10.0 billion (2012) _________ Its not the payout to the staff. That its typically 1/3 of the budget spent at a University. Princeton just raised $1.8B for its latest fundraising project. etc.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      I'm not sure if generalising from a handful of massively-endowed private universities to all universities everywhere is a meaningful thing. It used to be that books were so rare and expensive that they were chained to desks. A single copy would be read aloud to students -- the very word "lecturer" means "reader". These days, for a liberal arts education heavy in classics and great books, the cost of the materials is close to nought. That's what I meant by the capital.
tzs 14y ago
> For those of us on HN that went to college and got a computer science degree, I'm sure a lot of took a handful of liberal arts courses as electives. Now I'm curious. At Caltech, you must have a minimum of 486 units to graduate (Caltech units are based on the amount of time a course is expected to take (lectures + labs + reading/homework) a week: 1 hour == 1 unit). Of that, 108 units must be in humanities and social sciences. At least 36 must be humanities (art, English, film, history, history and philosophy of science, humanities, music, and philosophy), and at least 36 must be social sciences (anthropology, business economics and management, economics, law, political science, psychology, social science). Half of those must be introductory courses and half must be advanced courses. Generally, this means a Caltech CS major (or any other major except a humanities or social science major) takes one humanities or social science course every term, which is about 20% of their total course load. Anyone happen to know the humanities and social science requirements for other top schools, like MIT, Berkeley, and so on for people in technical majors like CS, math, physics and so on?
- storborg 14y ago
  MIT is basically the same (average of one course per term), with an additional "distribution requirement" which means that a selection of your humanities courses must be spread across a certain number of categories. http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/ http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/
  - tzs 14y ago
    Cool. Caltech seems to have an implicit distribution requirement, through the requirement that that part of the units be split evenly between introductory and advanced courses--I think one would run out of introductory courses if one tried to do them all in one area. I suspect that MIT and Caltech students end up taking as much humanities and social sciences as do STEM majors at liberal arts colleges, and could plausibly claim to have obtained a liberal arts education.

by nhashem 14y ago

ricksta 14y ago

>I'd imagine the younger generations will gradually stop pursuing these degrees because of the terrible ROI in terms of debt to future income. The problem with this is that most 17-18 year old don't have a sense of what ROI of their education will get them. Many of high-school graduates will be thinking "oh I like to read shakespeare so I'm going to major in English", and they probably have no idea how long the $100k will take to get paid off after their job. I think if anything that will solve this problem once and for all is to make liberal arts minor degrees and only offer STEM as majors.

ktizo 14y ago
That is a ludicrous suggestion. Even hard line soviets weren't that materialistic about education.
reader5000 14y ago
$100k STEM degrees aren't pumping out ROI either.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Huh? My son did graduate work in CS at CMU. He's paying back his reasonable loans at a staggering rate; won't be in debt in a year or two after graduation. STEM is absolutely worth the money.
  - rjbond3rd 14y ago
    Just curious, your son is paying back $100k in loans within 2 years of graduation?
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      Didn't have that big a loan; and yes, earns big money at a Silicon Valley startup doing JBoss programming.

001sky 14y ago

Isn't the issue that liberal arts educations have not changed in the past 40 years, but the cost has gone from $10K to $100-200K?. So, there is an order of magnituded cost and some minor Nx delta on the Return (~inflation). English/logic/philosophy/history etc should be plumeting in cost. With the internet, the cost of books/articles should have gone to zero by now. Non-profit universities could force sharing of peer-reviewed work online for the priviledge of the peer review publication (for example). A degree of this type is not worth more or less (especially as a social rank signifier) today than yesterday. And they are valuable. But they sure as hell cost way more than they should. Its time to question why they are priced as if they were luxury, brand name handbags. Rather than public goods being distributed by non-profit, tax exempt organizations.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Capital gets cheaper, labour gets more expensive. This has been the general trend in education since the invention of the printing press.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- 001sky 14y ago
  Relevant data: _________ Princeton: Endowment US$ 17.1 billion (2011) Harvard: Endowment US$ 32.0 billion (2011) Yale: Endowment US$ 19.4 billion (2011) Stanford: Endowment US$ 16.5 billion (2011) ___________ Facebook: IPO US$ 10.0 billion (2012) _________ Its not the payout to the staff. That its typically 1/3 of the budget spent at a University. Princeton just raised $1.8B for its latest fundraising project. etc.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    I'm not sure if generalising from a handful of massively-endowed private universities to all universities everywhere is a meaningful thing. It used to be that books were so rare and expensive that they were chained to desks. A single copy would be read aloud to students -- the very word "lecturer" means "reader". These days, for a liberal arts education heavy in classics and great books, the cost of the materials is close to nought. That's what I meant by the capital.

tzs 14y ago

> For those of us on HN that went to college and got a computer science degree, I'm sure a lot of took a handful of liberal arts courses as electives. Now I'm curious. At Caltech, you must have a minimum of 486 units to graduate (Caltech units are based on the amount of time a course is expected to take (lectures + labs + reading/homework) a week: 1 hour == 1 unit). Of that, 108 units must be in humanities and social sciences. At least 36 must be humanities (art, English, film, history, history and philosophy of science, humanities, music, and philosophy), and at least 36 must be social sciences (anthropology, business economics and management, economics, law, political science, psychology, social science). Half of those must be introductory courses and half must be advanced courses. Generally, this means a Caltech CS major (or any other major except a humanities or social science major) takes one humanities or social science course every term, which is about 20% of their total course load. Anyone happen to know the humanities and social science requirements for other top schools, like MIT, Berkeley, and so on for people in technical majors like CS, math, physics and so on?

storborg 14y ago
MIT is basically the same (average of one course per term), with an additional "distribution requirement" which means that a selection of your humanities courses must be spread across a certain number of categories. http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/ http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/
- tzs 14y ago
  Cool. Caltech seems to have an implicit distribution requirement, through the requirement that that part of the units be split evenly between introductory and advanced courses--I think one would run out of introductory courses if one tried to do them all in one area. I suspect that MIT and Caltech students end up taking as much humanities and social sciences as do STEM majors at liberal arts colleges, and could plausibly claim to have obtained a liberal arts education.