[rmk2]

Maybe everyone should become an engineer, so everyone can be happily living in a technocracy were we make everything remotely tangible into money.

Maybe we should tell people to stop doing psychology, art history, history, political sciences, theology, literature etc. I mean, it's on Wikipedia, right? You can just go there and read about it, you know, as a hobby, so, why bother studying it?

Maybe we can all become engineers and convert everything into profit. What do you mean I probably shouldn't track someone's every movement? Why? It's the logical solution, it's possible, it's doable, it gives the greatest monetary return. And it's the best developmental solution! It's perfect!

[marknutter]

That's a false dichotomy. Nobody is suggesting that nobody should choose a liberal arts degree. What's being suggested is that less people should be doing it because there's more supply for those professions than there is demand. There's very high demand for technology degrees and trade skills (welders are in desperate demand, for instance). These truths aren't being communicated to college freshmen as well as they should be, and that's causing a major crisis for a lot of liberal arts college grads who enter a job market that simply doesn't need them.

[rmk2]

Why is it a false dichotomy? Do you honestly believe that people will all of a sudden flog to STEM subjects just because somebody tells them they will forever be unemployed otherwise?

We might just have this arguement because this is, after all, HN, but it still astounds me how hard it seems to grasp for many here that not everyone is actually even remotely interested in programming or "building a product".

I am absolutely convinced that ultimately a society as a whole can only benefit from a workforce (how I hate that word) that is educated beyond the requirements of their day jobs. The more you are interested in outside of your actual occupation, the more these interests will also play into your work and thus influence its outcome.

We have a constant stream of articles here that tell us how people became programmers without studying CS etc. Why however do people always assume everyone else is incapable of learning something else after studying something in the humanities? I know only very few people who expect to work directly with their field of study. In fact, most of the people who do are the ones who will at least try to go on and go into academia. Most other people I have ever met were very aware of the fact that there might be quite a disjunction between their area of study and their future job.

[ali255]

When I think about innovative companies in software and computer engineering, Apple is one of several companies that comes to mind. It's worth noting that Steve Jobs turned innovative artistic design, not just innovative engineering, into economic value. One of Job's criticisms of Microsoft and Google was their lack of appreciation for "the humanities and liberal arts" ( http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mo...). He saw Social Science as a component to making great products.

I'm a Computer Science Major. If I was recommending a Freshman what to Major in, I would recommend looking into something within Science, Engineering, or Business. They're unlikely to get an upper middle class salary majoring outside of those three fields.

However, just because a field doesn't produce dividends doesn't mean that it does not have educational value. A political science degree doesn't make money, but we can't have functioning governments without an understanding of politics and government.

Instead, we ought to consider the fact that college spending is only 3.3% of U.S. GDP. Re-prioritization of spending, and optimization of spending can carry American education forward. That's not a huge chunk of the American economy's wealth. People are falling into debt because the burden of college spending has been placed on individuals, rather than on federal and state funding. Over the last 30 years Federal and State expenditures to college education have dropped. In result, Colleges increase their tuition rates, and students and their families have a tougher time paying for college.

[hanibash]

There's no reason for Liberal Arts majors to be paying obscene amounts of tuition, and especially shouldn't be going into debt, for a degree that isn't going to get them hired.

It's just a fact of the broken system. Tuition is justified by the job you get after it. But if you can't get a job in it, the high tuition is completely unjustified.

There have got to be better alternatives to getting a liberal education. Got any ideas?

[ali255]

The core problem is that state and federal funding of colleges has consistently been going down over the last 30 years, and continues to go down. When colleges get less money from government spending colleges either have to cut spending (and in result provide less to students) or increase tuition.

The high tuition causes student debt, so the only way to cut student debt is to decrease tuition.

Their are only three ways to get tuition to decrease.

1. Increase Federal and State funding of colleges. As I mentioned in an earlier response, this is doable. College spending is 3.3% of GDP in the USA. Looking at the economy and country as a whole, that's not huge. Re-arrangement of spending, increased federal and state investment, and optimization of spending could reduce student debt a lot.

2. Get rid of much of Universities. Turn Universities into Trade schools and get rid of many University programs. This is not really the approach I want to see, as I think universities have a lot to offer the world in their current complexity.

3. Find Technological solutions and applications that reduce the cost of education without reducing its quality. This is the Entrepreneur's job.

[jmtame]

I don't think engineers are all about making things into money. I think they're more interested in doing things efficiently. Think about a barber shop: would an engineer repeat the same task every day, or would they automate it? I think most would try to automate it. The tradeoff would be efficiency for personality, and I think some people value it enough to keep it, while others wouldn't. That's probably a separate debate: would life be happier if everyone were an engineer?

I'm also not saying everyone should be an engineer on this thread. I'm saying it's an interesting thought to change the way lending the money out works. What I'm getting at is this: is the non-absolvable nature of student debt a conflict of interest with the creditors, and are they giving it out indiscriminately?

[rmk2]

No, but companies are all about making things into money. That's why they choose a number of subjects (and degrees) that they deem useful and disregard everything else.

What people fail to understand is that a degree in the humanities also provides qualifications other than "let me tell you about the depiction of French rats in late medieval English clay paintings." However, these skills are not seen as being easily converted into revenue and thus ignored.

Such skills include independent problem solving, a high degree of organisation, formulation and proof of theories, descriptive and abstract work etc.

However, if you have an engineer who builds you parts for a car or a website or a backend or what not, you can immidiately slap a price tag on it and give more money to your shareholders.