Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Wren
Bostonian, is this your argument that tuition should be subsidized across all subject matters and majors?
I've started to argue against myself smile. I'd like education financing to be largely privatized, and student lenders who thought English majors were good credit risks would be free to lend accordingly. I am wary of politicians directly trying to decide which fields of study are useful. Commentators on the right, including me, sometimes criticize the humanities, but in the data I've seen, the earnings of biology majors are closer to those of humanities majors than to the earnings of engineers. If majors are going to be criticized for having lots of low-earning graduates, the problem goes beyond the humanities and social sciences.


{nodding}

It's quite difficult to predict-- even for people with a lot more on the ball than those who have a political interest in grandstanding on the subject. (And by that I do NOT mean anyone commenting here, since we're clearly not in it for the glory. wink )

I've commented elsewhere that I think it's problematic that so many undergraduate institutions have become educational boutiques. That defeats the entire purpose of such an education, in my opinion. My problem with "sports physiology" and "queer studies" as majors has nothing to do with lack or presence of rigor, or with the relative worth of such endeavors when compared with, say, "physics" or "English."

It's the fact that I firmly believe in a general education core and that I think that undergraduate education is DIFFERENT fundamentally than graduate study. Making students happy by not making them take anything that they don't actually want to take in pursuit of a degree doesn't strike me as being very helpful to most 16-24 yo students. That's often where students are stretched the most and learn the most. I also believe in a broad education because I think it provides a better foundation for advanced study in any area, which serves a person far better for life. It also seems to me to serve the society better as "retraining" is almost never an issue if your universities are turning out lifelong learners and polymaths (at a low level generally, but nonetheless, not one-dimensional in education terms).


Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.