[alberte]

>I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them.

I believe someone from the humanities would have trouble with this statement. Of what use is all the techno gadgets if we lose what makes us human? I'm a techie, but I've also studied some humanities, and delve into some in my spare time, things like communication, psychology, arts these all make life a lot richer, even if they do have less flashing lights.

Humanities professors on the other hand have had it pretty easy, and that seems to be coming to an end, the same for universities in general. It's something I'm torn about, I always loved my time at university, but the reason I went there was for the knowledge, because that was where it was stored. Now universities are in many ways obsolete - all the knowledge is in the cloud. If you need to ask an expert then just ask online, so we still need experts, just the renumeration model is being disrupted - like everyone elses pretty well.

What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for. I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.

[jackcosgrove]

I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.

[superuser2]

And yet at this moment you are engaged in philosophy.

People should grapple with these questions in a sustained, deliberate way, with reference to what's already been said and where arguments are evaluated critically by many eyes. That's what academia is for.

[tmptmp]

You can engage in philosophy without having to have a humanities department sucking up tonnes of state money. You can prepare yourself for philosophical and critical thinking without some people leading cushy life doing nothing in state funded humanities departments.

He engaging in philosohpy doesn't necessarily justifies the existence of humanties departments in universities. With spread of internet and MOOCs the first even departments that should cease to exist on state money are the humanities departments.

[superuser2]

I'd say the exact opposite: if industry requires trained worker bees, it can pay for their training. It is not our collective responsibility to meet workforce needs. State-funded engineering and CS programs are corporate welfare.

Humanities are the only departments that should exist on tax money.

[jqm]

History is interesting otherwise I generally agree that much of the humanities are opinions masquerading as knowledge.

It's not there is no value in opinions, there is, it's just that people have come to expect the rewards of knowledge for having opinions. And reality doesn't work that way.

[alberte]

You do make my point well. What used to be taught in an arts degree is how to structure an argument, e.g. 'psychology studies cannot be replicated' should really be 'some psychology studies cannot be replicated' use of the existential quantifier changes the statement totally. This used to be taught in a first year philosophy subject, but do they even teach philosophy any more?

[jackcosgrove]

You're trying to change the topic based on grammatical nitpicking, while being haughty in the process and ignoring the larger point. I spy an academic!

And for anyone who actually cares about this point, there was a well known study of psychological experiment replicability I was alluding to which should be part of the assumed context for anyone discussing such topics. It is also painfully formalistic to attach qualifiers to every statement when that is not the cant of a forum like this. You should know this, but instead you're latching onto a lingusitic formalism as a defense of your point instead of arguing the point head-on.

Sorry humanities people. The science and technology people are way more useful than you and most of them are smarter than you too. There is no intellectual equivalency between the domains despite the perennial protestations of the humanities faculty.

[alberte]

It's not grammatical nitpicking it's teleological nitpicking. You've made some incredibly broad statements without a shred of evidence, this I grant you is the norm for an internet forum, however it is not something that an arts graduate should be involved in. That was one of the points of an arts degree - critical thinking. Thats one of the reasons they called it an ivory tower imho, because instead of indulging in tabloid rants academics argued in logical progression to make their point.

If we lose this, then it will be a sad day imho.

Edit: PG even wrote a post on this http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[ghaff]

>I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.

Oh please. You were doing fine up to that point. There's always been a tension between theory and practice.

[alberte]

I'm not sure how this relates to MBA's? Please expand if you would

[ghaff]

The rest of the comment:

"What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for."

What I took away was an assertion that degrees are now about checking off practical checkboxes and that this is the fault of MBAs.

My take is that there has always been a tradeoff between broader education and teaching critical thinking with learning specific skills.

[alberte]

yes I see your point. Mine was degrees have been dumbed down and in many was are glorified vocational courses now, the courses have more people, a greater student to teacher ratio, and stray from theoretical considerations to the more immediate. The driver for this is cost and what can be readily identified as a useful function by the bean counters (said MBA's).

Some thing's are easy to quantify and this is what the focus is on. How do you quantify something like critical thinking, what quantifiable value is there in a knowledge of history - how do these things help little Johnny get a job. Well they don't really. I think of the results of learning these things as emergent properties, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Wouldn't it be more interesting to have a population educated in the humanities? wouldn't a democratic society be better served by a population educated with at least a base in the humanities? A society of people that can make rational arguments and evaluate the political arguments of the day would be a lot different from the one we live in now.

These sort of arguments are for a qualitative change - and I don't see how you can quantify them in a spread sheet. The thinking that drives MBA’s currently drives education from what I can see - keep costs down, standard courses, pack as many into a class as you can, and so on.