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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

#81

Post by b_tterc_p »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #34

This paragraph amused me: > And while there’s often an assumption that the careers humanities graduates pursue just aren’t as good as the jobs snapped up by, say, engineers or medics, that isn’t the case. In Australia, for example, three of the 10 fastest-growing occupations are sales assistants, clerks, and advertising, public relations and sales managers – all of which might look familiar as fields that humanities…

A little annoyed at the downvotes, but perhaps I can rephrase.

1) On average humanities majors do worse

2) Some proportion of humanities majors do great

Ergo, it seems unlikely that the humanities majors that do great do so because they studied humanities. There is little evidence that these assumptions of attribution make sense.

That doesn't mean they're bad, but people are typically terrible at explaining why they were successful in life and we don't need to justify these areas of study to existing market forces. It would be pragmatic to be realistic and communicate to the average person that, normalized to network effects, pre-existing wealth, and baseline prestige of the institution, humanities leads to worse economic outcomes. People studying humanities tend to be richer to begin with[1], the fact that they do economically worse on average should be surprising. They're also more likely to be underemployed[2].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college...

[2]https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-r...

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

#82

Post by mter »

overgard wrote: post #64
lordnacho wrote: post #42

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…

I also think that STEM degrees teach you to break down problems mechanically and "think like a machine". It also can teach you to be able to project an idea to a logical conclusion even if that end point is uncomfortable or surprising. That might not sound like a skill to a lot of people, but I've noticed people without STEM educations or who aren't self-taught in some sort of similar way aren't always great at doing…

> It's not about one being better than the other, they both have very useful things to teach.

Did you do a humanities degree and a cs degree? I did a psychology degree then went back to school later to get my cs degree.

The intellectual rigor just isn't there in any humanities classes because most of the students shouldn't be in college at all. Yes, there was a small handful of really smart people in psychology but most of the students were there to party for 4-5 years while their parents paid for it.

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

#83

Post by chrisseaton »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #67
chrisseaton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they generally need to complete a relevant Master's degree first No that's not the case at all - most people do a three-years bachelors and then a three-year PhD. That's the expected route for a PhD in the UK. Doing a masters in between would look like you were starting to drag it out a bit. And the first year of your PhD is worth a masters if you chose to drop out at that point.

For mathematics, all the top-tier UK universities expect you to do a one-year taught masters (i.e. not a research masters) before starting a PhD. This certainly includes Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Imperial, UCL and KCL. Cambridge calls its masters a "Part III" or "Certificate of Advance Studies" but it's definitely just a regular masters, albeit a really hard one. Mathematics PhDs in most of these institutions have…

Cambridge for example does not require a masters to begin a CS PhD (it doesn't even require your undergraduate degree to be in CS.)

I don't know about other fields, but applications to do a CS PhD in the UK are usually pretty informal. It's a case of finding an advisor and if they want to take you on that's usually basically the only requirement. How they judge that is up to them.

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

#84

Post by burfog »

paublyrne wrote: post #26
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…

That's very strange to hear. I'm not sure where you studied but when I studied history at university papers were assessed in terms of argument construction, and how you assessed other historians work, and all you said had to be referenced in some way. Whether the lecturer agreed with your conclusion or not was not the basis of your mark.

You can't see the bias if it is your own. If you can't see the bias, then naturally you will assume that argument construction actually matters.

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

#85

Post by jaabe »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #63
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'm not sure how you define the reverse, but Amazon's head of HR majored in electrical engineering. I would say that's a traditionally liberal arts job with someone who majored in tech.

That is exactly how I would define the reverse.

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

#86

Post by exelius »

lordnacho wrote: post #15
exelius wrote: post #12

I have a philosophy degree, and I believe it’s a big part of why I’ve been successful in technology. It taught me to think in patterns and layers upon layers of abstraction; while giving me general-purpose tools that can be applied to problem solving in complex, interrelated systems. I thought I was making a mistake choosing that degree path over CS; but CS was making me miserable with the crazy workload — which ende…

> but CS was making me miserable with the crazy workload Didn't you have to do a load of reading/essays in the philosophy course?

Yes; however many of the early philosophers are incredibly verbose in their arguments and you can learn a lot from a 2-page summary of a 50-page essay.

Once you get to Nietzsche, the readings actually started to get interesting and I found myself wanting to read and discuss them.

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

#88

Post by dianeb »

mter wrote: post #82
overgard wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think that STEM degrees teach you to break down problems mechanically and "think like a machine". It also can teach you to be able to project an idea to a logical conclusion even if that end point is uncomfortable or surprising. That might not sound like a skill to a lot of people, but I've noticed people without STEM educations or who aren't self-taught in some sort of similar way aren't always great at doing…

> It's not about one being better than the other, they both have very useful things to teach. Did you do a humanities degree and a cs degree? I did a psychology degree then went back to school later to get my cs degree. The intellectual rigor just isn't there in any humanities classes because most of the students shouldn't be in college at all. Yes, there was a small handful of really smart people in psychology but m…

Generalizations are such fun; when you say, "The intellectual rigor just isn't there in any humanities classes because most of the students shouldn't be in college at all" I think you are conflating rigor with substance. Computer Science is easy but tedious if you're a Math major as I was. On the other hand, Native American literature was anything but easy because it required the clarity of a different world view as well as being able to write about it within the reality of the "inside-outside" nature where much of the literature originates. That understanding and the ability to write well is a rigor of its own.

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

#89

Post by overgard »

mter wrote: post #82
overgard wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think that STEM degrees teach you to break down problems mechanically and "think like a machine". It also can teach you to be able to project an idea to a logical conclusion even if that end point is uncomfortable or surprising. That might not sound like a skill to a lot of people, but I've noticed people without STEM educations or who aren't self-taught in some sort of similar way aren't always great at doing…

> It's not about one being better than the other, they both have very useful things to teach. Did you do a humanities degree and a cs degree? I did a psychology degree then went back to school later to get my cs degree. The intellectual rigor just isn't there in any humanities classes because most of the students shouldn't be in college at all. Yes, there was a small handful of really smart people in psychology but m…

I don't know, rigor is really hard to define outside of sciences, and even then, a science can be not as rigorous as others and still tell you useful things. I mean, economics isn't quite as rigorous as physics, but it's still useful.

One of the hardest but most rewarding classes I took in college was creative writing. There's not a ton of "rigor" to that; a lot of it is really subjective, and even with the widely agreed upon rules, there are certainly times when it's useful to break them. But I learned a ton from that class all the same.

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