[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.

[UncleMeat]

> They need to demonstrate that it's somehow beneficial on average to economic outcomes.

Well we can demonstrate conclusively with data that people who get a humanities education have lower unemployment and earn higher wages than people without college degrees. What else is needed?

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

I do not agree that being well versed in liberal tradition is more valuable than being well versed in other humanities domains. The things that a humanities education teaches that are good for society are not adherence to libertarian philosophy.

> Though actually if we back up a bit here, my original point was more that I doubt people are even learning [these] things

And I asked where you are getting this conclusion from. This is a pretty strong claim given that you don't seem to be engaged with humanities departments in a meaningful way.

> 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.

Why then can we assume that a STEM education is good for society in ways that you insist we cannot assume for a humanities education? If this education can be actively harmful to society then surely we need to apply your same concerns there.

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

Usually "monograph" is the term used for academic books in the humanities.

[ndriscoll]

People earning higher wages as the result of their degree are explicitly and exactly not the topic of discussion. The discussion is about funding for programs that measurably do not produce economic benefits, and some supposed intangible benefit to just being educated.

I get the conclusion from having been a student, having socialized with other students, observing discussions from teachers online and seeing that things are either the same or worse, and observing my fellow citizens. It's like asking how I know most young people in the US have premarital sex or how I know the obesity epidemic isn't actually a bodybuilder epidemic: because I live here. If studies said otherwise, I'd have to assume the study was wrong.

STEM education is easy to demonstrate the utility of because it shows how to make things that improve our lives. People working at Instagram should face criminal stalking charges, and gambling (or at least advertising it) should likely be made widely illegal again. That doesn't mean people programming inventory management systems or ensuring bridges have adequate safety factors and avoid catastrophic resonance aren't directly providing value with skills they learned.

[UncleMeat]

I don't understand what you mean by "do not produce economic benefits" then. So you say STEM majors do this and that humanities majors do not. But I truly do not understand.

I really do not think that your understanding of a modern humanities education is correct. I get my conclusion by being married to a humanities professor and friends with a lot of humanities professors. I also get this from reviewing syllabi at large universities. The idea that there is some widespread project to deliberately undermine texts that are part of the western canon because of some bias against them is just simply not based in reality.

What would be an example of a piece of evidence that you see that you find compelling here?

[ndriscoll]

The original post defined it:

> The test itself is simple: If an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. The same goes for any graduate program whose graduates earn less than someone with only a bachelor's degree.

I'm not going to go so far as to claim that there's a widespread project to undermine our society (as opposed to individual indifference or disdain), but you yourself demonstrated the issue: when I express my doubts that supposedly educated Americans have ever actually read their own constitution, you ask why that's an issue an why we should privilege that above other reading. Ancient Chinese political theory is neat and all but how about knowing the basics of our own country?

[UncleMeat]

If that is the test then it is plainly obvious from the data that humanities majors earn more than workers who never went to college. Where are you getting this idea that this isn't happening?

In my state the text of the constitution is taught in 8th grade civics as part of the mandated state curriculum. How is this tied to undergraduate education? You immediately expanded this to "liberal ideas" and then "western canon." Are you just talking about the constitution or are you talking about reading Locke and Shakespeare?