[apstats]

The title of this article really shows the slant in the reporting.

This decision makes a lot of sense to me and I actually think all universities should do more to encourage students to major in STEM. If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.

[stevenbedrick]

I would be very curious to understand a bit more about why you think that formal higher education in the humanities is not "good for America". Speaking as an academic researcher in a STEM field, I strongly believe the opposite to be true- we need _more_, not less, humanities education in this country. Even just restricting myself to a STEM-focused perspective, it is clear to me that the things that I teach students about computer science are of course important when it comes to understanding _how_ to build something, but they are not particularly useful when it comes to deciding _whether_ something needs to be built, _what_ to build, and then how to decide if it's working well- for this you need understanding and knowledge beyond what can be found in an engineering or biology textbook. This is particularly important in my area of specialization (medical informatics)- many of the most important things we think about in terms of system development and evaluation, and many of our most important methodological tools, are heavily informed by the humanities.

Zooming out beyond academia, Bret Devereaux, a historian whose writing appears with some regularity on HN, wrote a superb essay a few years ago on the practical case for the humanities and puts it better than I ever could, so I will link to his post: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case...

[robocat]

Aren't you presuming that humanities have humanity and STEM/business graduates are somehow less moral? I suspect there is an insidious presumption behind your comment. Some discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37097655

One effective but evil engineer in power could do a lot of damage. Hitler wanted to be an artist but couldn't get into university. Although if I'm going to use selection bias: some of our tech overlords seem morally repugnant.

I wonder if we could show that:

(1) humanities graduates have better morals, and

(2) that those graduates got those morals by going to university (versus had them as children - selection bias of those choosing to do humanities).

> when it comes to deciding _whether_ something needs to be built, _what_ to build

Can of worms: how to successfully teach people to be ethical. Certainly our churches seem to me to often fail: fail at the level of the individual (I have met enough arsehole Christians), and fail at the level of a society (a group of Christians deciding to do extremely unchristian things).

[jmye]

Did I miss something in OP’s comment? It doesn’t read as if it’s about ethics, so much as qualitative decision making. It seems as though you’re responding to an argument that I don’t think was made.

I’m also unclear what tax money has to do with anything - why does the funding method matter, with regards to educating students? What, specifically, makes a physics major “better” or more worthy of your tax dollars, than an English major?

[robocat]

Fair call. I'm probably creating a strawman by deconstruction. I should have been more careful.

I do believe in the value of the academic humanities.

I'm not sure I agree that the linked article is well reasoned (although I have liked some of their other articles). It finishes:

  We look for scientific solutions to humanistic problems (where our forebears, it must be confessed, often looked for humanistic solutions to scientific problems) and wonder why our wizards fail us. We have all of the knowledge in the world and yet no wisdom.
  We would do well to go back to the humanities.

That probably shows the bias I stereotypically see: only humanities gives us wisdom?

[stevenbedrick]

I think at this point in the discussion we are getting to a very interesting question: about the meaning of the word "wisdom". To my eye, Devereaux is using the word in a way that sounds a lot like how it is conceptualized in Ackoff's Data/Information/Knowledge/Insight/Wisdom model (sometimes instead of "insight" people use "understanding" as the penultimate level). Its Wikipedia page is a little bit rambling (which is actually quite fitting given how many different ways it's been formalized), but is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid

"Wisdom" is probably the hardest part of the framework to define clearly, but across formulations it's about being able to integrate different kinds of knowledge from difference sources, and then using that to be able to know when and why to take a certain action, or to know what the right thing to do might be. Obviously this is something that is frequently informed by knowledge derived from science and scientific reasoning, but usually also relies on some of the ways of thinking and understanding that the humanities can help provide. So that's how I'd understand what Devereaux was saying (allowing for some rhetorical flourish on his part)- it's a "both-and" kind of situation rather than an "either-or"; in other words, science and humanities on their own are both necessary and insufficient.

And of course for a humorous take on the matter, SMBC is always a reliable source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-10-18

[kstrauser]

> If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.

I enjoy living in a society with music, literature, dance, plays, sculpture, painting, architecture, and not-strictly-necessary decoration. Those are all good for Americans, individually and collectively.

[TacticalCoder]

> I enjoy living in a society with music, literature, dance, plays, sculpture, painting, architecture, and not-strict-necessary decoration.

There may be an argument for university degrees in these domains but that isn't one. All these things existed before students had to be 100 K or 150 K in debt to learn them.

There's a big difference between actual artists and the people studying them.

[elashri]

Not that I want to abolish university degrees for either STEM or humanities but your argument can go about STEM fields too. Engineers, physicists and Mathematicians existed before the students had to be in debt too to learn those things. But to be honest in many STEM fields like particle physics, aerospace engineering (just examples) it is very difficult to practice it without rigorous and formal education.

Addition: Most of great Mathematicians in last two centuries did not graduate with a math degree. That doesn't mean that we should abolish math degrees. People also built cities and beautiful huge buildings before there was a university degrees in architecture and civil engineering. No one will say that we don't want them because of that

[trimbo]

Studying the humanities puts people in debt to the tune of $100K, sometimes $250K, to get a job that pays $50K.

The problem isn't that humanities jobs are all worthless, it's that there are a very, very limited number that have enough of a value add to society to make a good living. For every successful author/artist there are 100 or 1000 struggling ones. The numbers just don't work.

Universities--especially private big-name art schools--have preyed on this lack of perspective on this asymmetry. The other commenter is right about administrative costs, but this particular scam of selling an unrealistic dream has got to stop somewhere.

[UncleMeat]

> Studying the humanities puts people in debt to the tune of $100K, sometimes $250K, to get a job that pays $50K.

Does it? I'm serious. I see people say all the time that incomes of people with stem vs humanities degrees get so cleanly bucketed. But the actual data that I see from the universities I've been involved with are far less clear. The distributions are wide and overlap within individual majors, within BA/BS distinctions, and within STEM/Humanities distinctions. We don't see this sort of discourse about how sad it is that biology majors exist when they could otherwise be studying computer science.

Yes, computer science graduates have higher average starting salaries than music performance graduates. But it does not clearly convert into "humanities graduates get low paying jobs and stem graduates get high paying jobs." It is further complicated by the actual social merit of various jobs coming out of these disciplines. A math major who goes to graduate school to do pure math research gets paid way way less than a math major who goes and does analytics for a trading firm. But... I'm not certain that we actually want the government to push people towards doing analytics on Wall Street.

[spondylosaurus]

A humanities degree doesn't mean you have to rely on art as your primary source of income. I have a B.A. and work in software; my partner has a B.A. and works in finance.

[jwestbury]

I have a degree in English lit from a second-tier state school (admittedly, a very good second-tier state school, as these things go -- my favorite professor/mentor was a UC Berkeley grad in medieval studies). My wife has a degree in mathematics from the University of Washington -- generally considered a top-10 math program in the US, and a top-50 university internationally.

I work in a front-office engineering role at a successful quant hedge fund, after a decade working in FAANG and equivalents. My wife is a stay-at-home wife/fur-mom.

Incidentally, I also graduated with total debt of about $13k, which I paid off six years after graduating with my first paycheck from Amazon. I know several other people from my English program who are equally successful -- one who graduated from a top-20 law school, one who was the lead narrative designer for Halo: Infinite, several software engineers.

Let's stop this stupid argument about STEM vs. humanities, and talk about integrative learning. (And, let's stop treating university as job training -- but that's a harder battle.)

[pstuart]

That's blaming the student for the high price of education. The boomers got it really cheap and it worked out ok for them: https://dailycal.org/2014/12/22/history-uc-tuition-since-186...

As pointed out elsewhere, a significant increase in the cost of education (the actual operating budgets) is the increase in the administrative class. That needs to be addressed as part of fixing the issue with high costs.

[jmye]

Why is it that you think the major on your university degree matters?

[snakeyjake]

>If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.

Media and advertising comprise a $500 billion annual market in the United States. The Humanities teaches people to write and writing is the start of every media product.

When I got my CS degree my university required four semesters of creative and business writing. Students complained and now they do not. Many universities have followed suit.

Recent graduates now tend to write as though they are suffering from a head injury. Even worse they have started to rely on AI tools so now they tend to communicate like robots with head injuries.

I hated with the fury of a thousand suns all of the writing I had to do in school. Now I hate how bad new hires are at communicating even more-- to the point that I believe that a mediocre engineer who can write effectively and present data effectively is better for the company than a "rockstar" whose emails read like, well, someone with a head injury wrote them.

[matthewdgreen]

This seems like one of those Chesterton’s fence things where you say “how could it be bad for America to force a bunch of people with no aptitude for STEM to major in STEM or else have a limited education” and then you find out.

[ITB]

If someone doesn’t have aptitude for higher education, they shouldn’t get it. Higher education is not some universal right. But those who do get free public higher education should do it in a field that has clear downstream economic impact.

[dkqmduems]

Just to be clear. All those adtech companies are built on the shoulders of people who studied fine arts. See the history of advertising.

[spondylosaurus]

I'm all in favor of studying fine arts, but this isn't quite accurate: advertisers (i.e., brands who run ads) rely on people with arts and humanities training—it's not a coincidence that the smallest unit of advertising is called a "creative"!

But adtech (i.e., the infrastructure underpinning digital advertising) is all data and code, nothing artistic at all. Check out any RTB spec: https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/openrtb2.x/b...

[danaris]

While it's true that the individual employees creating ads probably studied the arts in some way or other (not necessarily fine arts; "graphic design" is a major not generally included in that category that would absolutely fit an advertising creator), the people who actually run them probably studied either STEM, or, even more likely, business/management.

[joebob42]

Could you elaborate more? It isn't super obvious to me the connection between fine art and ad tech.

[pstuart]

I agree with your first statement but you lose me at the end.

There's been the push that everybody should go to college, which is well-intended but misses the mark.

Everybody who can learn and grow from it should go. Those who can't should have access to vocational training. They shouldn't be denied because they can't afford it. The boomers got affordable education that they could pay for with a part time job and graduate debt-free. That seemed to work out well for them and the country as a whole.

As for who should pay for it, as a public good it should primarily be payed for by the public coffers. But treating college as a glorified trade school (clear downstream economic impact) is short-sighted.

[jedberg]

How many days a week do you watch TV or read a book? My guess is probably 7 days a week.

What do you think the people who made those things studied in college? Unless you're watching Futurama exclusively, it wasn't STEM.

Non-STEM majors have value too. A society of nothing but engineers and scientists isn't one I'd want to live in.

[Whoppertime]

The number of students graduating Per Year in psychology is greater than the total number of psychology jobs in the country. It fits in the category of "things that cannot last forever will not last forever"

[jedberg]

There are many great jobs for psychology majors that aren't "psychology" jobs. Advertising, journalism, HR, administration, are just a few examples.

[throw0101b]

> If taxes are paying for the school we should subsidize things that are good for America not individuals.

If all you have access to is a subsidized state school, do you get to learn a different language, examine history, ponder philosophy, experience and make art? Or is that only reserved for folks that can afford to go to fancy schools?

Are citizens who are aware of history, other languages and cultures, know how to create and understand art, not good for America?

[rblatz]

Not if they’re stuck working at Starbucks.

[UncleMeat]

I truly encourage you to go look at the statistics for history graduates. They aren't stuck working at Starbucks.

[araes]

Since the data was not provided, here are links to some by the American Historians Association. [1][2][3]

[1] Data List - https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development...

[2] "Where Historians Work (interactive charts)" - https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork

[3] AHA Jobs Report 2022 - https://www.historians.org/ahajobsreport2022

Personal take: One issue I think some people have, is that there's not a "lot" of private sector historian work. As a percentage of the profession, its relatively small. Higher-Ed (Tenure, Non-Tenure, Admin) is close to 70%.

[UncleMeat]

The stats for professional historians are indeed horrible, but this is not the only place where people with history degrees can go. If you asked me "should anybody consider going to a phd program in history, except perhaps at the top five institutions and with some financial backup" I'd say "no." But things are a bit different for undergrad.

[canarypilot]

Best drop that M from STEM; from the article, and similar recent reporting, the graduate Maths program is one of the indulgences Virginians can do without.

[tptacek]

The article is at pains to connect the humanities courses being cut to the careers they feed into.

[Ajay-p]

The universities have become bloated and mismanaged with great resistance to change. Tenured professors and administrators are very opposed to anything that reduces their jobs or makes them redundant. A lot of universities are carrying dead weight, professors who have no classes to teach because students are not required to take them, or worse, classes whom if not for a student requirement would not exist. Administrators whose jobs are duplicative if not unnecessary. Streamlining higher education is a very noble goal and one that is grossly overdue.

[tptacek]

I'm dubious of any analysis that treats "tenured professors" and "administrators" as a unified bloc.

[Ajay-p]

Why not? Both can and in some cases do represent unnecessary bloat, which is an increased cost often passed on to the students, and can be extremely difficult to reduce.

[Nevermark]

Anything can be bloat. Thats not an argument for treating completely different functional roles, tracks, types of people in a university as interchangeable.

You don’t fix engines, or any sophisticated system, by treating its various parts as functionally the same.

Unless that information isn’t available, but universities are openly observable systems.

[maximinus_thrax]

> I actually think all universities should do more to encourage students to major in STEM.

Weird take. Universities aren't trade schools.

[frozenport]

They are already doing that.