[gnosis]

Our society simply does not value intellectual achievement or learning as ends in themselves.

What is valued and rewarded is making money, entertaining, acquiring power, and being "practical", which the humanities are just not focused on.

The humanities are also constantly denigrated (especially by the right-wing, but also by many in the sciences). This trend is fueled largely by ignorance, but also somewhat by a reaction to the criticisms they see coming from the humanities departments towards the status quo, "traditional institutions", and the view of science and technology as savior (ie. scientism).

Given these attitudes, financial disincentives, and attacks, it's really no wonder fewer young people choose to major in the humanities.

[tokenadult]

Our society simply does not value intellectual achievement or learning as ends in themselves.

Does intellectual achievement or learning happen in the typical English department? Frederick Crews,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Crews

mentioned in the submitted article, is a smart man whose essays are well worth reading, but he is very much of an exception among professors of English.

[anonjon]

/Does intellectual achievement or learning happen in the typical English department?/

Huh? What type of question is that?

You seem to be at once completely proving the parent comments point (that the humanities are consistently denigrated), and failing to provide an argument.

(Outside of a backhanded attack with the implication that English professors whose essays are worth reading are few and far between.)

At least provide some evidence that Literature degrees are useless. (Or that other degrees are less useless than Literature...)

[tokenadult]

I have a humanities degree myself (as my profile makes clear). It has been my dismaying observation that students in various colleges (sampled through parents I know trying out distance learning programs for their children) can't count on English departments to teach English grammar or English literature anymore. Perhaps it reinforces my point to mention that both of my paternal grandparents had degrees in English, so we have a family tradition of expecting achievement and learning to happen in English departments.

Frederick Crews is a good example of an English professor who is an intellectual, but he is a rare example.

provide some evidence that Literature degrees are useless

The submitted article already provided the example of the revealed preference of college students. But I suppose to that the objection is that college students are gauging usefulness along a dimension of expediency in getting a job after college graduation. That's a good criterion of usefulness, but to turn to "intellectual achievement or learning," I'll point out that business majors probably write quite as many thoughtful, evidenced books about public policy per year per 100,000 graduates as English majors do. Computer science majors very likely write considerably more thoughtful, evidenced books about public policy per year per 100,000 graduates than English majors do. I consider writing a book that provides good information value to readers to be a good criterion of intellectual achievement.

[anonjon]

If that is true then it is indeed dismaying.

I will mention that college level English departments should not need to teach basic English grammar. I would expect that anyone requiring help in that area would be directed towards remedial courses (or a different discipline).

My (small) experience with the English department , was that it did indeed teach English literature... (although really you should be getting an education in not just English literature, but literature in general). Of the few classes that I took, I found it to be very multidisciplinary. It bridges philosophy, sociology, history and art (at the very least).

In reality, very few people who graduate from college actually end up publishing a book, let alone a one that is really worth reading.

I think it will be very hard for you to pull together specific data about what major will write a well evidenced book in some subject, but it seems to be begging the question to say that a computer science major is more likely to write a book on public policy than English or Business majors. It is kind of a speculative claim.

I personally consider college education to be a process of learning how to learn.

Yes you are forced to focus in a specific discipline, but the end result of an English undergraduate degree is not to be an expert able to discuss the western literary cannon (that is the point of a PHD). I would expect an English undergraduate to spend his or her time reading books mindfully and learning how to recognize the themes, ideas and relevant social commentary from the book.

That sort of meta-cognition is what makes you good at learning in general. Being good at generalized learning is much more useful that having abstruse knowledge of Chaucer...

[tokenadult]

So is there evidence that English majors are better at that kind of metacognition than, say, engineering majors? (I certainly don't credit MOST business majors with a high level of metacognition, but maybe all we have going on now is yesterday's former marginal English majors becoming today's marginal business majors. Maybe neither major program adds value to the students enrolled in it.) I strongly suspect that engineering majors have more experience reading harder material more closely than most humanities majors, but I'm basing that mostly on my close acquaintance with my contemporaries. There may well be published research on this subject--what does that research say?

[anonjon]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the case that the best English majors and the best Engineering majors (or business majors) have similar (high) levels of meta cognitive ability. I also wouldn't be surprised if the mediocre students all had similar (low) levels of meta-cognitive ability.

Having fought my way through a number of Greek and German philosophers, I can tell you that there is no shortage of dense and difficult material to read in the humanities. (There is plenty of English lit that isn't a cakewalk either). In my current line of work I often find myself reading technical papers involved in computer science and engineering. I can tell you that while there is sometimes math that I have trouble with and have to learn, the level of of writing is certainly not more difficult than Nietzsche, Wittgenstein or Joyce.

What I intended to convey was that in general the particular major probably doesn't make as much difference as we would think. I think it is misguided to believe that you can learn any career in four years at college, I would argue that it is more important that you learn how to learn, so that you can keep learning for the next 60 years of your life/career. A good student will use his or her time at college to develop meta-cognition.

As a matter of fact, a quick Google turns up a plethora of information about reading comprehension and meta-cognition (in both the sciences and liberal arts). There seems to be much less information about specific majors and meta-cognition.