4 ms·

Pretty depressing reading, but good on him for trying to spread the word. I'm sorry that the chances of getting a professorship in humanities is small, but I'm

by zcrar70 18y ago

Pretty depressing reading, but good on him for trying to spread the word. I'm sorry that the chances of getting a professorship in humanities is small, but I'm even sorrier that there doesn't seem to be many/any viable careers for a humanities student aside professorship.

anamax 18y ago
> I'm even sorrier that there doesn't seem to be many/any viable careers for a humanities student aside professorship. What do you think that they can do for "the rest of us" by virtue of said training that we should want to pay for?
- etal 18y ago
  That's problem #1 in the current format of humanities graduate education. The assistantships train students to teach classes and grade papers, and the research and dissertation process teach students how to get an academic paper published. It's optimized for generating new professors (tenure-track or otherwise), and there's not much demand to tailor it in other directions since the dream career of most humanities grad students is being a tenured professor. This is less of a problem in subject areas where entering students already have a different career in mind, e.g. engineering. I won't speculate what those alternative careers could be, but in other improbable fields that attempt to reassert their relevance, applied career paths have a tendency to pop out and eventually be reincorporated into academia as a new, related discipline. For example, psychology has already forked and merged a few times.
  - gaius 18y ago
    the dream career of most humanities grad students is being a tenured professor Well that kinda sorta is the problem. The dream career of a science grad student is to make some great discovery and win a Nobel prize - academia is a means, not an end in itself. Academia for the sake of academia is fine in principle - but who's going to pay for it?
- zcrar70 18y ago
  Our society as a whole benefits from diversity, in the same way that humanity benefits from a wide gene pool. If you bias heavily towards similarity, you end up with a highly specialised but weak society. Like etal, I won't speculate on what alternatives might be, but not having them is our collective loss.
  - anamax 18y ago
    > Our society as a whole benefits from diversity I'm pretty sure that society doesn't benefit from all possible diversity. (And then there's the small details that humanities isn't all that diverse and we can get its diversity from a much smaller population.) I note that "mother nature" weeds out most mutations.
    - zcrar70 18y ago
      > I note that "mother nature" weeds out most mutations 'Mother nature' actually creates mutations; without them, we wouldn't be able to adapt to nature's changing circumstance. > And then there's the small details that humanities isn't all that diverse I didn't say that humanities was diverse; I said that a diverse society needed to encompass the humanities as well, because that diversity is necessary for it to thrive. I'd argue that Socrates and Plato (philosophy) are as well remembered as Pythagoras (maths). Surely that says something about the importance of the humanities?
      - anamax 18y ago
        I'm not saying that all diversity is bad. I'm saying that some/most diversity is useless at best. Note that I'm also not saying that the humanities are useless or bad. I'm saying that it's quite possible that we could get all the benefits from the humanities and spend far less on them. No, that doesn't imply that we shouldn't let people study the humanities and end up driving cabs.

by zcrar70 18y ago

anamax 18y ago

> I'm even sorrier that there doesn't seem to be many/any viable careers for a humanities student aside professorship. What do you think that they can do for "the rest of us" by virtue of said training that we should want to pay for?

etal 18y ago
That's problem #1 in the current format of humanities graduate education. The assistantships train students to teach classes and grade papers, and the research and dissertation process teach students how to get an academic paper published. It's optimized for generating new professors (tenure-track or otherwise), and there's not much demand to tailor it in other directions since the dream career of most humanities grad students is being a tenured professor. This is less of a problem in subject areas where entering students already have a different career in mind, e.g. engineering. I won't speculate what those alternative careers could be, but in other improbable fields that attempt to reassert their relevance, applied career paths have a tendency to pop out and eventually be reincorporated into academia as a new, related discipline. For example, psychology has already forked and merged a few times.
- gaius 18y ago
  the dream career of most humanities grad students is being a tenured professor Well that kinda sorta is the problem. The dream career of a science grad student is to make some great discovery and win a Nobel prize - academia is a means, not an end in itself. Academia for the sake of academia is fine in principle - but who's going to pay for it?
zcrar70 18y ago
Our society as a whole benefits from diversity, in the same way that humanity benefits from a wide gene pool. If you bias heavily towards similarity, you end up with a highly specialised but weak society. Like etal, I won't speculate on what alternatives might be, but not having them is our collective loss.
- anamax 18y ago
  > Our society as a whole benefits from diversity I'm pretty sure that society doesn't benefit from all possible diversity. (And then there's the small details that humanities isn't all that diverse and we can get its diversity from a much smaller population.) I note that "mother nature" weeds out most mutations.
  - zcrar70 18y ago
    > I note that "mother nature" weeds out most mutations 'Mother nature' actually creates mutations; without them, we wouldn't be able to adapt to nature's changing circumstance. > And then there's the small details that humanities isn't all that diverse I didn't say that humanities was diverse; I said that a diverse society needed to encompass the humanities as well, because that diversity is necessary for it to thrive. I'd argue that Socrates and Plato (philosophy) are as well remembered as Pythagoras (maths). Surely that says something about the importance of the humanities?
    - anamax 18y ago
      I'm not saying that all diversity is bad. I'm saying that some/most diversity is useless at best. Note that I'm also not saying that the humanities are useless or bad. I'm saying that it's quite possible that we could get all the benefits from the humanities and spend far less on them. No, that doesn't imply that we shouldn't let people study the humanities and end up driving cabs.