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It's not that you can't learn rigor and critical thinking skills as an English major, it's that it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without lea

It's not that you can't learn rigor and critical thinking skills as an English major, it's that it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. Hence the word "signals".

michaelochurch 12y ago
Also, grades don't have a lot of signal in the humanities because there's such a wide spectrum of easy vs. hard grading. Some English professors give one A every 5 years. Others give 75+ percent A's. I don't think it's as common as people make it out to be, but there are students who game the system, and the crass pre-professionals (though a minority) fuck it up for the rest of the students who haven't yet been corrupted by the corporate world and genuinely want to learn. Gaming the system is a lot harder to do in, say, linear algebra or real analysis or quantum mechanics. The corporate world is deeply negative and anti-humanistic and will typecast you to the lowest calibre of person consistent with your resume. The issue in English is that the floor is lower. It has little to do with the ceiling. (Yes, there are plenty of English teachers from whom it's harder to get an A than it is to get an A in an advanced math class.) It's about what is concluded about someone when the worst possibility is assumed.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "Gaming the system is a lot harder to do in, say, linear algebra or real analysis or quantum mechanics." To some degree, but I definitely recall some dramatic differences in difficulty from various professors or classes that purportedly covered similar material and met the same requirements. When someone gets all A's, I always wonder whether they were one of the students who said "Why are you taking the second compiler course? That's hard. XYZ is a much easier A..." Of course, someone who doesn't have all A's could still be someone who tried that and failed, which would be kind of the worst case...
YarnBall 12y ago
As former English literature and philosophy student (I am studying computer science while working for a startup now) I can tell you at that at my university you would not get an A if your reasoning and critical analysis were poor. When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty. If an undergraduate got 100% for an English essay that essay would be worthy of publication in a literary journal which only happened once while I was there.
- nhebb 12y ago
  As the time of me writing this, it looks like you're being downvoted (which I don't think is fair), but I think your answer points to one of the problems. Grading in the humanities is more subjective. By analogy, Olympic gymnastic scores are subject to a lot more disagreements than 100 meter sprint times.
  - YarnBall 12y ago
    Let them downvote me: let them bring their slings and arrows! :) I can't argue against what you have said. The humanities are subjective but that does not mean that they are not valuable but the greater problem is that there is very little demand in the global economy for essays on social contract theory and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and anti-industrialism. The best thing we can hope for is that the humanities plays a complimentary role in education. i.e. studying a humanities major like philosophy in addition to a computer science degree. In my "subjective experience" when building consumer facing apps for my company having a humanities degree has helped to make these apps better. Being able to code well is not a guarantee that your app will appeal to a consumer but knowing what people want in a product for instance, is an enterprise for the humanities because it demands introspection, divergent and subjective thinking which is a different kind of thinking altogether. That is why I am irked when people from the sciences dismiss the humanities too readily because the humanities does have something to give to the world. In short, tech + humanities = better products/ideas.
    - nhebb 12y ago
      I agree with you. I think the humanities are important not only for what they teach, but also in that they attract people with a different view of the world (and way of thinking, perhaps) than is common in the sciences. From the perspective of the Google hiring manager, though, filtering based on degree type is probably one of the easiest cuts to make when you're operating at that scale.
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  > When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty. Does this mean that grading in the humanities is more difficult or more arbitrary?
mapgrep 12y ago
> it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. How do you know this? (You know, since we're talking about logical rigor.)
- joelgrus 12y ago
  Based on the English (and other humanities) courses I took as an undergrad, in which the key to getting good grades was not rigor but repeating back what I imagined the professor wanted to hear, and based on my friends who were English (and other humanities) majors, who were delightful people but (for the most part) not particularly rigorous thinkers in the sense that Google is trying to hire for.
  - matwood 12y ago
    Did you take any high level literature or english courses? Repeating back what the teacher wants to hear is fairly standard across all disciplines in low level courses. The people who I know who didn't just complete english degrees, but excelled were all very critical thinkers. The classes required reading, understanding, and then writing critically about what was read. Thinking was highly valued, particularly about nuances of the language and meaning. Of course people who are not good can slide by and get through school, but that can happen in any field. See CS grads who cannot write FizzBuzz for example.
  - MisterBastahrd 12y ago
    Not much different than CS classes where you're learning methodology and showing that you can regurgitate it on a test, really.
  - MisterBastahrd 12y ago
    Not much different than CS classes where you're learning methodology and showing that you can regurgitate it on a test, really.
- pingswept 12y ago
  (I''m not the OP.) I have a degree in English, and another one in mechanical engineering. The 9 English classes that I took were uniformly less difficult and less rigorous than the 25 or so engineering classes I took. When I studied English, I already had a reasonably well-developed understanding of logic, but it was not used in my English classes. I would estimate that I could have earned a B average in English with 5-10x less time spent than in engineering. Standardized tests suggest that I have more aptitude for engineering (or at least math), so English should have been harder for me if the curricula were of the same difficulty.
noblethrasher 12y ago
I did a Math and a History degree simultaneously, and I believe that a 4.0 in history is much harder than a 3.0 in math with respect to critical thinking skills. At one point during the pursuit of my BA in History, I was reading about 1000 pages of primary and secondary source material per week. Reading primary source material is comparable to reading mathematical exposition in that you have to proceed slowly and carefully. Then, I had to analyze the material using the various methods of historical analysis/criticism. You are not going to get an 'A' if you just regurgitate facts. You're also not going to get an 'A' if the analysis/argument is sloppy. Math didn't really get that hard until the proof-based courses, and math degrees usually require only two of those (though I did four). The “computation courses” just consisted of exercises that are only difficult until you discover a small set of tricks. Now, I'm not sure about what it takes to be a very successful English major, but my anecdotal evidence indicates that the high achievers are pretty smart: One did a math double major, one went from being a LaTex whiz to handling most of the IT at a mathematics journal, and the other is a better-than-average DBA.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Also, grades don't have a lot of signal in the humanities because there's such a wide spectrum of easy vs. hard grading. Some English professors give one A every 5 years. Others give 75+ percent A's. I don't think it's as common as people make it out to be, but there are students who game the system, and the crass pre-professionals (though a minority) fuck it up for the rest of the students who haven't yet been corrupted by the corporate world and genuinely want to learn. Gaming the system is a lot harder to do in, say, linear algebra or real analysis or quantum mechanics. The corporate world is deeply negative and anti-humanistic and will typecast you to the lowest calibre of person consistent with your resume. The issue in English is that the floor is lower. It has little to do with the ceiling. (Yes, there are plenty of English teachers from whom it's harder to get an A than it is to get an A in an advanced math class.) It's about what is concluded about someone when the worst possibility is assumed.

dllthomas 12y ago
"Gaming the system is a lot harder to do in, say, linear algebra or real analysis or quantum mechanics." To some degree, but I definitely recall some dramatic differences in difficulty from various professors or classes that purportedly covered similar material and met the same requirements. When someone gets all A's, I always wonder whether they were one of the students who said "Why are you taking the second compiler course? That's hard. XYZ is a much easier A..." Of course, someone who doesn't have all A's could still be someone who tried that and failed, which would be kind of the worst case...

YarnBall 12y ago

As former English literature and philosophy student (I am studying computer science while working for a startup now) I can tell you at that at my university you would not get an A if your reasoning and critical analysis were poor. When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty. If an undergraduate got 100% for an English essay that essay would be worthy of publication in a literary journal which only happened once while I was there.

nhebb 12y ago
As the time of me writing this, it looks like you're being downvoted (which I don't think is fair), but I think your answer points to one of the problems. Grading in the humanities is more subjective. By analogy, Olympic gymnastic scores are subject to a lot more disagreements than 100 meter sprint times.
- YarnBall 12y ago
  Let them downvote me: let them bring their slings and arrows! :) I can't argue against what you have said. The humanities are subjective but that does not mean that they are not valuable but the greater problem is that there is very little demand in the global economy for essays on social contract theory and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and anti-industrialism. The best thing we can hope for is that the humanities plays a complimentary role in education. i.e. studying a humanities major like philosophy in addition to a computer science degree. In my "subjective experience" when building consumer facing apps for my company having a humanities degree has helped to make these apps better. Being able to code well is not a guarantee that your app will appeal to a consumer but knowing what people want in a product for instance, is an enterprise for the humanities because it demands introspection, divergent and subjective thinking which is a different kind of thinking altogether. That is why I am irked when people from the sciences dismiss the humanities too readily because the humanities does have something to give to the world. In short, tech + humanities = better products/ideas.
  - nhebb 12y ago
    I agree with you. I think the humanities are important not only for what they teach, but also in that they attract people with a different view of the world (and way of thinking, perhaps) than is common in the sciences. From the perspective of the Google hiring manager, though, filtering based on degree type is probably one of the easiest cuts to make when you're operating at that scale.
nerfhammer 12y ago
> When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty. Does this mean that grading in the humanities is more difficult or more arbitrary?

mapgrep 12y ago

> it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. How do you know this? (You know, since we're talking about logical rigor.)

joelgrus 12y ago
Based on the English (and other humanities) courses I took as an undergrad, in which the key to getting good grades was not rigor but repeating back what I imagined the professor wanted to hear, and based on my friends who were English (and other humanities) majors, who were delightful people but (for the most part) not particularly rigorous thinkers in the sense that Google is trying to hire for.
- matwood 12y ago
  Did you take any high level literature or english courses? Repeating back what the teacher wants to hear is fairly standard across all disciplines in low level courses. The people who I know who didn't just complete english degrees, but excelled were all very critical thinkers. The classes required reading, understanding, and then writing critically about what was read. Thinking was highly valued, particularly about nuances of the language and meaning. Of course people who are not good can slide by and get through school, but that can happen in any field. See CS grads who cannot write FizzBuzz for example.
- MisterBastahrd 12y ago
  Not much different than CS classes where you're learning methodology and showing that you can regurgitate it on a test, really.
- MisterBastahrd 12y ago
  Not much different than CS classes where you're learning methodology and showing that you can regurgitate it on a test, really.
pingswept 12y ago
(I''m not the OP.) I have a degree in English, and another one in mechanical engineering. The 9 English classes that I took were uniformly less difficult and less rigorous than the 25 or so engineering classes I took. When I studied English, I already had a reasonably well-developed understanding of logic, but it was not used in my English classes. I would estimate that I could have earned a B average in English with 5-10x less time spent than in engineering. Standardized tests suggest that I have more aptitude for engineering (or at least math), so English should have been harder for me if the curricula were of the same difficulty.

noblethrasher 12y ago

I did a Math and a History degree simultaneously, and I believe that a 4.0 in history is much harder than a 3.0 in math with respect to critical thinking skills. At one point during the pursuit of my BA in History, I was reading about 1000 pages of primary and secondary source material per week. Reading primary source material is comparable to reading mathematical exposition in that you have to proceed slowly and carefully. Then, I had to analyze the material using the various methods of historical analysis/criticism. You are not going to get an 'A' if you just regurgitate facts. You're also not going to get an 'A' if the analysis/argument is sloppy. Math didn't really get that hard until the proof-based courses, and math degrees usually require only two of those (though I did four). The “computation courses” just consisted of exercises that are only difficult until you discover a small set of tricks. Now, I'm not sure about what it takes to be a very successful English major, but my anecdotal evidence indicates that the high achievers are pretty smart: One did a math double major, one went from being a LaTex whiz to handling most of the IT at a mathematics journal, and the other is a better-than-average DBA.