[geebee]

That's a very important observation. It's been almost 20 years since I was an undergraduate, but at the time (I went to UCSD), general college requirements were overwhelmingly tilted toward the humanities. Specific requirements varied on which particular college you attended, but often required a 2 lower division survey of world history and cultures, 2 years of a foreign language, and 1-2 courses in performing arts. Often considerable upper division work in a branch of the humanities was required as well (for instance, an upper division series in literature or history). Science requirements were much lighter, and could often be fulfilled without taking calculus (non-calc based stats or symbolic logic for math, non-calc based physics, that sort of thing).

I don't really understand why people act like humanities majors are "well rounded" compared to science or engineering majors - it seems like the absolute opposite. To confirm this, just pick a respectable college and read the degree requirements for students in different majors (I don't mean elite colleges, there are hundreds of colleges that meet this standard).

[tomjakubowski]

Gen-ed humanities courses taught to giant lecture halls aren't quite the same as the much smaller courses the majors take. You are extremely likely to be put on the spot and made to defend a subjective position you've taken. They're tough and require you have tons of knowledge at hand to succeed in them. In math, and to some extent engineering or science, you can often reason your way through if you get stuck, or at worse there are often simple procedures you can rote memorize.

I do agree that non-STEM degrees should have stronger math requirements. But K-12 math education in the US is such a disaster that the universities wouldn't stand a chance if they wanted to do it.

[geebee]

I agree, but I also believe stem majors are more likely to take upper division humanities courses than the other way around. Gen ed requirements are sufficient to take an upper division history course, whereas upper div stem courses typically require two years of calculus, linear algebra, and ordinary differential equations.

[notbob]

> Gen-ed humanities courses taught to giant lecture halls aren't quite the same as the much smaller courses the majors take

This depends on the type of institution. Liberal arts and most honors colleges at large universities have small class sizes with high-quality instruction for their gen-ed humanities.

> You are extremely likely to be put on the spot and made to defend a subjective position you've taken.

This is also true in (good) mathematics and computer science programs, where you'll need to learn how to communicate well to technical audiences and defend all manner of subjective positions.

Also, something similar is true for the transferability of humanities skills! The writing skills you develop in humanities courses do not directly transfer to technical writing. Learning to write well for any audience will teach you a lot about good writing, but your random English major will probably be completely useless when it comes to writing proofs, design/requirements documents, technical documentation, or especially useful comments in their code. And if I had a dollar for ever business person with a humanities background who made an ass out of themselves in a technical meeting because they have no idea how to communicate with a technical audience about a technical subject... ;-)

> In math, and to some extent engineering or science, you can often reason your way through if you get stuck, or else there are simple procedures you can rote memorize.

I disagree. Your observation about lower vs. upper division courses is as true for STEM as it is for humanities courses. There's a lot of subjectivity/taste involved in upper-division courses, especially any proof-based or project-based course!

> But K-12 math education in the US is such a disaster that the universities wouldn't stand a chance if they wanted to do it.

That's a big problem. It's also a chicken-and-egg problem. Our elementary and middle school teachers are often innumerate, which makes it hard to prepare students for HS (where the quality is often still bad despite subject-area qualifications), which in turn creates problems for gen ed STEM at universities.

[nathanlied]

I have one more anecdata point to add in your favour, and mine's more recent (past 5 years), as well as in a different continent (Europe).

I'm a CS/Engineering grad that had some of those, and my colleagues in other STEM degrees had requirements that weren't dissimilar from what you describe. We were required to take classes in philosophy (with emphasis on ethics), history, as well as required to take some electives that could be in all sorts of areas, some in other scientific areas, others in arts, theatre, music. Effectively, it was required of us to at least be cognizant of the goings-on in other fields, even if just the conversational basics.

As for colleagues of mine in humanities degrees, most of them didn't see a single STEM class, and if they did, they were very superficial one-semester courses on Excel spreadsheeting, LaTeX, or very basic physics/probability mathematics, which were effectively a rehashing of high school, but with easier exams.

I echo your sentiment, maybe at some point in the distant past, STEM degrees were isolated in their own bubble and only had very theoretical classes, but I don't know anyone who experienced that, and that's most certainly not been a reality for the past couple of decades.

[bumby]

My understanding is that colleges used to focus more on humanities because they allowed one to better understand culture. However, it seems like the view of college has changed to that of vocational training and with that the the running of schools like a business where costs are inflated and degree economics are emphasized.