[vineyardmike]

> The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction

Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education.

That said, not everything is about a job or work. Sometimes (usually) education is itself a goal.

[WalterBright]

> Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education

That's the plan, but it doesn't seem to work out too well.

> not everything is about a job or work

Yes, if you are independently wealthy. Need to pay back those student loans!

[imtringued]

If education is the goal then it is a form of consumption and there is nothing wrong with consumption, but why should the government give out subsidized loans for consumption to young people?

If people want to have an education for the sake of an education they should stop arguing in favor of maximally inflated tuition.

You want the benefits of the consumer good while paying the least amount of money for it.

Meanwhile the standard narrative is that people should be allowed to get into massive unpayable debts that trap them in deadend jobs while people who focus on money end up using their freedom to do the very thing the people who got into debt claim you can only do by getting into debt.

[adrianN]

Arguably an educated populace is a corner stone of democratic societies. Too much of a focus on economic applicability of education is dangerous imo.

[fwn]

It is worth noting that most of liberal arts education is fantastically cheap compared to many STEM degrees, especially medicine. Whenever you need a laboratory, a hospital.. it gets much more expensive than anything a liberal arts teacher can come up with.

I think it is a uniquely American perspective to automatically assume that worthy (or even just prestigious) education somehow has to cost at least 200k USD financed through life-altering, non-defaultable student loan contracts.

I do understand that the money is not just drained. Whenever I was on an American campus as a student, I was in awe at their extravagant setups. Lots of food, an irritating amount of sports, more like a small resort town than a place to do educational work.

No wonder there is only a very small fraction of the population who would choose to study humanities in such a system. But it says much more about the system than about the humanities or liberal arts.

[SanjayMehta]

A STEM grad can learn history, literature etc fairly easily.

The other direction is possible but not so easy.

[vineyardmike]

Did you read the article? As it highlights elegantly, "liberal arts" is about the educational methodology and structure, not the course material. You can learn STEM subjects in a liberal arts education.

> fairly easily... not so easy.

Yea, totally, STEM majors are inherently special and better at learning ;)

[WalterBright]

> STEM majors are inherently special and better at learning

I learned how to learn by going through STEM.

Also, STEM produces right and wrong answers. If the airplane you design doesn't fly, you cannot pretend that it is flying.

That isn't true with liberal arts. Any failure can be explained away.

[SanjayMehta]

STEM majors are inherently better overall. Are you trying to be sarcastic or funny? I can't tell.

I've yet to find a liberal arts grad who even knows what a partial differential equation is.

[defrost]

You might need to get out more, many BAs understand what differential equations are.

  He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890 and graduated in 1893 with a Bachelor of Arts.

  At Cambridge, Russell was introduced to philosophy 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

[WalterBright]

My college econ textbook went through a couple pages of math. I read through it and realized they were showing how to do a derivative, without using any of the usual nomenclature for calculus.

It was clear the authors did not expect the econ students to know calculus, and they obfuscated the calculus so they would not scare the students off.

[SanjayMehta]

Never met him. Have you?

[defrost]

You'd have to be about my age or older to have met him, and, at least according to my mother, I did meet him in Wales and was bounced on his knee. Go figure.

I learnt more about his work from his successors who were / are a mix of philosophy and mathematics majors, the majority fully aware of partial differential equations at the very least.

Of the people my age, there are folks such as Dominic Hyde who majored in liberal arts while studying both math and physics alongside Jerome Gauntlett (who did not major in liberal arts .. although he has acted alongside Nicole Kidman) and others. They all grok PDEs.

Closer to our mutual "home", HN on ycombinator, I understand that Paul Graham, the forum founder and co-creator of the Arc programming language, is yet another liberal arts major who understands what PDE's are.

* https://hpi.uq.edu.au/profile/388/dominic-hyde

* https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.gauntlett

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)

It's a wide world, get out and meet more people.

[vineyardmike]

> Are you trying to be sarcastic or funny? I can't tell.

Take a liberal arts class and your reading comprehension may improve.

> knows what a partial differential equation is.

I’ve met a few but tbh that’s a pretty weird way to judge “inherently better”.