[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?

[ndriscoll]

I didn't say humanities majors don't earn more. People who earn more with their degree aren't the contention. The contention is the nebulous, intrinsic value of a "more educated society", c.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880930

The constitution might've been mandated as part of the curriculum. That doesn't say much. The question in this subthread was about the relation between "education received" and "amount of knowledge possessed", to which I replied that I doubt most American college educated adults have actually read the constitution.

To illustrate, I had never actually bothered to read the constitution at the time that I got a 4 on the AP US History Exam. It is not hard to pass tests without reading or thinking about the material, and when it comes to what's part of state standards, we all know it's nearly impossible to fail US K-12.

So I am talking about all of those things; the constitution and Locke and Shakespeare and Homer are all supposed to be on the curriculum. How many people actually read them? To what extent is even more education a delusion? If you don't need expensive lab equipment (and this includes some STEM fields like math/CS), do we need everyone going to universities? Or if you actually want to learn the material, can you just do so?

[UncleMeat]

> I didn't say humanities majors don't earn more. People who earn more with their degree aren't the contention. The contention is the nebulous, intrinsic value of a "more educated society", c.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880930

What? What is going on with this quote then?

"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."

> The constitution might've been mandated as part of the curriculum. That doesn't say much. The question in this subthread was about the relation between "education received" and "amount of knowledge possessed", to which I replied that I doubt most American college educated adults have actually read the constitution.

Up thread you said you doubted most college educated adults had read the constitution. You then repeated this. Now reading it isn't relevant? I have absolutely no idea what you are looking for here.

If your position is to simply assume that everybody is not doing any of the reading in a humanities class and then conclude that the classes must be useless then what can I possibly do here? We can have data demonstrating that humanities graduates earn higher wages than non-graduates. We can have curricula that include the materials you want people to learn.

> Or if you actually want to learn the material, can you just do so?

A university education gives you access to faculty members who are experts in the material they are teaching and who construct syllabi that are effective at teaching certain concepts and who can provide feedback on a student's analysis of those readings. They can also teach archival research skills that you'd never learn by just looking up famous books online. That is valuable.

----

I still am really struggling to understand specifically what you are frustrated by here. Can you give me an example of some specific interaction you've had with a person that you would attribute to the ineffectiveness of a contemporary humanities education?