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Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

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Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#41

Post by chrisseaton »

matwood wrote: post #29
chrisseaton wrote: post #5

I have friends from university with degrees in history, classics, theology, that make 3x what I do as a software engineer with a PhD. They work in things like corporate intelligence, risk analysis, planning and operations. Really high-powered serious stuff that makes what I do look rather trivial. They get hired as their companies want diversity of thought and the main job requirement is just being smart, switched-on…

A couple interesting anecdotes. My first boss had multiple degrees in music, and was a professional touring classical musician. He self taught himself programming because he needed to actually make some money. Now he's a CTO at a large company. My next boss had a degree in English. His thought was that no matter what he did with his life, communication was always at the center. He had founded 2 different tech compani…

Yes most jobs don't care whatsoever what degree you did.

You can do a degree in history of art and then become a fighter jet pilot if you want.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#42

Post by lordnacho »

IMHO most people should take a STEM degree if they're going to uni. Not because of the labour market, which is a fickle thing.

The main reason is that you will be able to pick up a humanities/social science course with the skills you already have at the end of high school. What do people do in those degrees? Read text, think critically, express ideas. And you've not only practised that a fair bit in school, but also after education, where you're reading the newspaper, looking at art, and so on. Importantly you aren't going to lose the text reading skill because you'll be using it a little each day.

So you have plenty of practice in the humanities, at least to get you started doing it seriously if you need it later in life. And you have enough that you're not gonna be surprised when someone mentions there was a civil war in the US.

Math stuff seems to be use it or lose it. You can easily avoid linear algebra and big-o thinking, and you will if you aren't forced to think about it. If you do a STEM degree at least you will have heard of stuff and practiced a load of otherwise obscure topics, giving you a starting point that isn't years behind on prerequisites, and leaving you where you won't know what's interesting.

I've met plenty of STEM people who knew a thing or two about history, economics, and the arts. It's relatively rare the other way round, though you do get the occasional renaissance man from that side.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#43

Post by throwawaymath »

jaabe wrote: post #21

I’ve seen philosophy, English and history majors work in tech, I’ve never seen the reversal. Personally I’m a little worried about ageism, something that doesn’t even enter the mind space of any of my friends with degrees in the humanities. So maybe there is something to it. I mean, they had much harder times finding jobs than me, and aren’t rigoursly headhunted, but every one of them found jobs.

> I’ve seen philosophy, English and history majors work in tech, I’ve never seen the reversal.

I don't think you can draw a meaningful conclusion from this, other than the idea that it's easier to demonstrate competence in tech versus humanities.

If someone asks you to demonstrate your programming ability, you can point them to something you threw up on GitHub. If someone asks you for a critical analysis of Chaucer, Sein und Zeit or the death of Franz Ferdinand, what are you going to do? A degree is expected in the absence of any clear and demonstrable competency.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#44

Post by gryson »

At the large public university where I am employed, there has been a recent sharp drop in enrollment in humanities departments, which has sparked a lot of concern about what the future holds for these departments. The business school, on the other hand, is overwhelmed with applicants and growing rapidly.

From personal observations, it seems that students are becoming more and more focused on practical skills development. I would also say this seems to be the prevalent viewpoint on HN. But it is hard to deny the enormous benefits that a liberal arts education can have.

I have a background in the hard sciences, but I would say I owe the heart of my education to the many humanities electives that I took as an undergrad. I can only hope that the pendulum swings back at some point.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#45

Post by [deleted] »

jeffdavis wrote: post #11

The main problem with the humanities is that they have been consumed by the political far left. That's sad, because English, history, and philosphy could be great programs. I remember I was struggling to get decent grades on my history papers. I was running out of patience and decided I just wanted to pass. So I just wrote what I thought the professor wanted to hear (far left BS) and started getting B's and even an A…

[deleted]

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#46

Post by bluedevil2k »

jeffdavis wrote: post #11

The main problem with the humanities is that they have been consumed by the political far left. That's sad, because English, history, and philosphy could be great programs. I remember I was struggling to get decent grades on my history papers. I was running out of patience and decided I just wanted to pass. So I just wrote what I thought the professor wanted to hear (far left BS) and started getting B's and even an A…

It’s funny to read that because I had the same experience when I was in school. I’m in the US and took a Canadian and Mexican History class, and had a TA from Canada. When I wrote positive things about America it would be crossed out in red with comments like “wrong!”, “at the expense of others”, things like that. I did a 180 for the later papers and talked about “evil American imperialism” and suddenly started getting A’s.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#47

Post by cowsandmilk »

matwood wrote: post #29
chrisseaton wrote: post #5

I have friends from university with degrees in history, classics, theology, that make 3x what I do as a software engineer with a PhD. They work in things like corporate intelligence, risk analysis, planning and operations. Really high-powered serious stuff that makes what I do look rather trivial. They get hired as their companies want diversity of thought and the main job requirement is just being smart, switched-on…

A couple interesting anecdotes. My first boss had multiple degrees in music, and was a professional touring classical musician. He self taught himself programming because he needed to actually make some money. Now he's a CTO at a large company. My next boss had a degree in English. His thought was that no matter what he did with his life, communication was always at the center. He had founded 2 different tech compani…

> often even then only if they want to work at a FAANG for that first job. Where people end up 5-10-15-20 years later in their career has little to do with their degree.

As someone who doesn't have a CS degree, I found that FAANG companies were much more willing to take a risk on someone without a degree getting their first job than many smaller companies.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#48

Post by newen »

pgeorgi wrote: post #9
softwaredoug wrote: post #2

I have History and CS degrees. The CS experience (at a top engineering school) felt fairly vocational. But being rigorously taught how to research, construct arguments, and communicate ideas in my Liberal Arts degree has been what made me successful past my first hire. I definitely recommend double majoring in a Liberal Arts degree. Also perhaps there’s a lesson here about the CS curriculum being too vocational at mo…

> Also perhaps there’s a lesson here about the CS curriculum being too vocational at most colleges? Or not needing a 4 year college if it aims to be vocational? I heard a claim that sounded plausible to me: CS in the US originated from electrical engineering, and so is based on a degree that is based on the ability to directly influence things and make stuff happen - pretty vocational. In Germany CS is derived from m…

This actually depends on the university, with CS in some colleges in the US splitting off from the Math department and others from EE or CE.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#49

Post by your-nanny »

your-nanny wrote: post #37
fallingknife wrote: post #14

In my experience the liberal arts classes I was required to take were all big 100+ person lecture -> memorize -> test classes. I tend to think a lot of the praise heaped on liberal arts is the fallacy that since these skills are not learned in STEM classes, they must be learned in liberal arts classes. It also seems like those classes are taught at a much lower level. Plenty of people fail out of STEM and go on to be…

Almost none of my liberal arts classes were like that, and a lot of the lowest level science classes were. So there you have the power of anecdotal evidence. My liberal arts classes required lots of writing and a hell a lot of hard thinking.

on further reflection, theliberal arts degree taught me how to think about complexity and ambiguity, and how to think about intersubjectivity, whereas computer science taught me to think in the clean room of mathematics where things mean what they mean.

Re: Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life

#50

Post by fwip »

veryworried wrote: post #10

I am not convinced it is wise to abandon an opportunity for a STEM degree in favor of humanities when it seems like it’d be far easier to DIY a humanities education than it would be to DIY a STEM education.

Much of STEM is self-teachable. It is easy to self-evaluate "yes, I understand this math, and I get the right answers / produce working tools."

It is not easy to learn the humanities without direct feedback from an expert, or robust experience with your peers.

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