[dreamux]

I think that's backwards. Make Science/Engineering cheaper and liberal arts more expensive... arts degrees should be considered luxury items: nice to have but not strictly necessary. I think many people would be better off not going to University than get an arts degree, whereas there is huge societal benefit to pushing out more scientists and engineers.

Liberal arts should exist, just at a much smaller (frankly, more reasonable wrt actual demand) scale.

[keiferski]

If the objective is to maximize short-term economic gains, then yes, that would work.

If the objective is to create well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens, then no, that is a horrible idea.

Regardless, I think it's a false dichotomy. Why does one have to be expensive while the other is cheap? And why can't someone get both a liberal arts education and a "practical" education? I see no reason why a student can't pay 5k for a 2-3 year liberal arts degree, and then go on to (competitively-priced) a 2-3 year engineering degree.

[abhimishra]

> If the objective is to create well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens, then no, that is a horrible idea.

Why is it that everyone thinks a STEM education means you are automatically not well-rounded or cross-disciplinary? There are universities with STEM programs that mitigate this problem successfully by creating the right requirements for the degree.

As an example, the requirements for breadth were FAR more stringent at my university for technical fields than for the humanities/social sciences. The 'science' breadth requirement for a humanities major could be satisfied by first-semester courses like the introductory Nutritional Science course, but the breadth requirements for technical majors required that students end up taking at least a couple 3rd/4th year courses in liberal arts fields (which in turn had lower-level prerequisites, naturally). This resulted in the inverse problem from my POV, whereby the majors generally assumed to create well-rounded students actually failed to do so.

Furthermore, being well-rounded is a lot more than what you study in college IMO. A well-rounded citizen has to continually invest in 'upkeep' that earns them that label. The most well-rounded folks I know read throughout their life (often across a broad set of topics), continually invest in their education on their own time through this reading, keep up on current-events, and so forth. I don't see a lack of liberal arts education precluding these activities or any other activities that might contribute to being well-rounded.

> And why can't someone get both a liberal arts education and a "practical" education?

I generally agree that this would be ideal, but it is also constrained by how much money we have as a society. Remember - you and I are contributing our own funds indirectly to subsidize this same education, and it is certainly not cheap these days (see other comments on cost of education). The trick of course is to strike the right balance and realize a good return on that educational investment. Personally, I can see value in something like a Minor in a field that is completely different than one's Major, but I don't see the benefit being much greater if one were to get two full degrees.

[reissbaker]

> > If the objective is to create well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens, then no, that is a horrible idea.

Why is it that everyone thinks a STEM education means you are automatically not well-rounded or cross-disciplinary? There are universities with STEM programs that mitigate this problem successfully by creating the right requirements for the degree.

...

> And why can't someone get both a liberal arts education and a "practical" education?

I generally agree that this would be ideal, but it is also constrained by how much money we have as a society.

---------------------

So, a) we'll require everyone take liberal arts, to solve the problem of b) it's too expensive for everyone to take liberal arts?

The main issue I've heard people cite with majoring in the liberal arts is that liberal arts majors don't make enough money to cover costs. Raising the costs of being a liberal arts major seems like a pretty roundabout way of solving that problem.

[anamax]

> If the objective is to create well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens, then no, that is a horrible idea.

How about some evidence that liberal arts graduates have anything to do with "well-rounded, cross-disciplinary citizens"?

As someone noted above, STEM folk are far more cross-disciplinary than liberal arts grads.

[reissbaker]

I think the key there is the plural. If you're given two subsets of the population, where:

Subset A roughly corresponds to the current population's mix of educational backgrounds, and

Subset B is the transformation of A where all liberal arts majors have been replaced with STEM graduates,

I think it's obvious that subset A would be more "cross-disciplinary" and "well-rounded" taken as a group. It's not that individual liberal arts majors are more well rounded, it's that having a well-rounded collective of citizens is important.

[anamax]

> I think the key there is the plural.

I don't think that that's the intent of the claim, but I'll play along.

> It's not that individual liberal arts majors are more well rounded, it's that having a well-rounded collective of citizens is important.

But, how much do liberal arts majors contribute to said "well-rounded collective" and at what cost?

For example, it might be more cost-effective to add a bit more "rounded" to STEM majors.

And, that's ignoring the benefit of having this "rounded" within individuals instead of across groups.

[reissbaker]

I'm down for some banter. Let's try this out.

> But, how much do liberal arts majors contribute to said "well-rounded collective" and at what cost?

Are you asking how they contribute to well-roundedness, or are you asking to value their individual contributions to society while ignoring contributions to well-roundedness as a valuable asset? How they contribute to well-roundedness is handled with the whole Subset A vs Subset B thing, I think. In regards to value -- I'm pretty sure that Hunter Thompson guy was good to have around. I dunno.

As to the cost: I guess that depends on whether you view liberal arts majors as a detriment to society, or at least intrinsically inferior to STEM majors. If they're equal then they're no additional cost, because their education costs exactly the same dollar amount.

> And, that's ignoring the benefit of having this "rounded" within individuals instead of across groups.

Certainly well-rounded individuals are important. But unless everyone is forced to be dual-degree, there will inevitably end up being biases towards the main major -- and I say this as a well-rounded STEM grad.

And doesn't requiring the well-roundedness to be at the individual level ignore the benefit of having some number of single-focus specialists within a society? It's not like Salman Rushdie spends his spare time proving P=NP, or Dijkstra's out writing papers on critical race theory.

[anamax]

>> But, how much do liberal arts majors contribute to said "well-rounded collective" and at what cost?

> Are you asking how they contribute to well-roundedness

Yes.

> How they contribute to well-roundedness is handled with the whole Subset A vs Subset B thing

Not clear. You're claiming that an LA degree has some "roundedness" value. That's not obvious. And, even if it's true, that doesn't imply that we need a lot of LA degrees to get whatever benefit there is. For example, how much worse off would we be with half as many English majors?

> I'm pretty sure that Hunter Thompson guy was good to have around.

I'd agree, but would ask whether his existence depended on the existence of a large number of LA majors. I'd point out that similar folks existed before we had a lot of LA majors and we don't have more Hunter Thompsons now.

> If they're equal then they're no additional cost, because their education costs exactly the same dollar amount.

Huh? It doesn't matter whether LA majors cost more or less than STEM majors. The question is the relationship between the cost of LA majors and the benefits of LA majors. (There's a similar question about STEM majors.)

It's interesting that we had a thread a while back about how China was better because its political leadership had engineering degrees....