[ndriscoll]

I don't think that's really a counterpoint. My point was that I get the impression that even those in the humanities seem to be losing familiarity with liberal ideas. So it's even worse now (or we've just lied to ourselves as we pretend to expand access to higher education).

[UncleMeat]

Where do you get this impression from? Faculty? Published research? My observation is that people working in the humanities have a deeper and wider reading list than at any point in prior history.

If you are complaining about students then I don't see what the problem is with not having read these particular texts. The humanities is so incredibly wide and it is good that we have widened curricula to not just focus everybody down a particular reading list of western intellectual tradition. A humanities education isn't there to just pump out classical liberals.

A polisci major who studies ancient chinese politics or 21st century dictatorships is just as legitimate as somebody who studies Locke and western liberal democracy.

[ndriscoll]

I'm mostly speaking to the students, but certainly there are faculty that would apply to as well.

If we're talking about some intangible benefit to society for having lots of educated people, I would interpret that as being in service to civic contributions, so yes I would expect that means a liberal arts education should teach Western canon, and certainly it should not undermine it. If not in service to economic utility or propagating our values and traditions, then why exactly would we support a large portion of the population to do nothing but pursue hobby study in something no one else wants for years? Actually it's not even clear that the students even want to do that study either, given the apparent mass cheating or AI usage. So who is it for?

[UncleMeat]

What does it mean to undermine it? Is your position that no matter what the rigorous application of some research method produces that you should always come to a predetermined conclusion that some particular form of western liberalism fro the 17th century is the best? Or is it possible to place these texts in complex and even critical dialog with other texts?

Can you be specific about which "values and traditions" you need to see forcefully propagated through higher education? And are we to assume that a particular form of libertarian economic project is best for "economic utility?" And should we even be optimizing for economic utility rather than human flourishing?

Hobby study? Graduates in the humanities also consistently get jobs that require degrees and go into the work force.

I am curious how much time you've spent engaged with the college humanities departments of today.

[ndriscoll]

You can place them in a dialog with other texts, but that implies that students are reading and becoming intimately familiar with the canon being critiqued. And generally speaking, I'd expect more of a refinement than a critique per se.

I didn't say we should forcefully propagate anything; I said we shouldn't fund things that aren't useful somehow. Some basic values would be that e.g. governments derive their authority from the citizenry, and should therefore always act in the interests of the citizens. If the citizens aren't seeing some benefit, then they shouldn't be taxed to fund a thing. Assuming people disagree on whether they want something, it follows that government should be as local as possible, so if we do fund such things, we shouldn't do so at the federal level unless there is widespread agreement (e.g. maybe we all agree to fund STEM degrees for their economic utility but there is disagreement on social science so those are done locally).

Or that as a high level idea, our entire system is predicated on the idea that people are qualified and able to define their own destiny and self-govern, which is generally in opposition to the idea that we are determined by various privileges and circumstances that require all sorts of compensatory adjustments. Basically, if you want to flourish, just go do that. Again, the books are all there. Most if not all of them are free. We already have 13 years of free, compulsory schooling to learn how to read them.

Or the idea that rights should be principled (e.g. carry some symmetry), not arbitrary. c.f. elsewhere in the thread about natural rights. And by extension, that some systems (e.g. ours) are better than others.

The context here is targeting programs that do not produce economic benefit, so that is hobby study, yes. There's nothing wrong with hobby study. I read textbooks all the time for fun. I think we should encourage everyone to do a lot more of it instead of e.g. Instagram. But I also have a day job.

[UncleMeat]

I don't understand how the only use of the humanities is to teach people about classical liberalism. Surely my polysci friend who worked on 21st century dictatorships and my history friend who worked on early modern communication networks are doing something valuable too? You are begging the question here and just starting from a position that only your very narrow conception of the humanities has any value at all.

I don't think that your claim that "our entire system is predicated on the idea that people are qualified and able to define their own destiny and self-govern" is actually well supported by the evidence. You are excising nuance and evidence in favor of a top down constraint on allowable ideas. You are doing the thing that University of Iowa is doing now, which is insisting on coursework that explicitly teaches things like "capitalism is the best system" rather than being driven by expert analysis and research.

I also feel that my wife, also a historian, contributes far more to our society than somebody working at Instagram finding a way to make children look at more ads or somebody working at DraftKings find a way to get problem gamblers to restart their addiction. But those people have STEM degrees so they are automatically net benefits to the world.

Also, a humanities education is not typically built from textbooks.

[ndriscoll]

I'm not making nearly that strong of an argument, and indeed neither is the regulation under discussion. They need to demonstrate that it's somehow beneficial on average to economic outcomes. That could mean:

  * You were able to apply that knowledge to something someone wanted. 
  * The experience somehow inspired you to find your own path to success. 
  * Your degree helped convince someone else that you're a generally intelligent or knowledgeable person and therefore more valuable to them. 

etc. I added on top that as a liberal society, we could perhaps agree that being well versed in liberal tradition is itself valuable.

I take your friends' work to mean they're in some academic position? Because funding some small number of those is a different proposition from funding a significant portion of the population to study whatever.

Though actually if we back up a bit here, my original point was more that I doubt people are even learning things. e.g. if your history friend is unfamiliar with important parts of their own country's history (stuff that might even be expected in high school or earlier, but people don't do the readings), I'd be skeptical of the value of their program in the same way that I'd be skeptical of an engineer that doesn't know the difference between an ionic and covalent bond, or Newton's laws, or some basic programming, or RLC circuits, or other basic things that someone technical should know.

Self-governance and self-determination are the founding assumptions underlying our democracy. This is pretty clearly stated in our founding documents. This has nothing to do with capitalism.

I agree that people at Instagram and DraftKings are negatives to society, and probably they also failed to obtain their liberal arts education. Largely I think people with these things on their resume should be blacklisted by others as they proudly wear their lack of morals, and we should do more to regulate such things.

Maybe my wording was off; by textbook my meaning was more along the lines of treatise, i.e. not casual.