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And all of them have been frustrated artists with no technical skills and thus no place in society and with no real idea or experience on what it takes to put food on the table, build homes, cure disease, or engage in commerce. They then engage in and create fantasies that then lead to catastrophe.


Having a hard, objective education and extensive experience in industry does allow for one to carefully consider claims by any side and test them using verifiable means or other sources of information.

Who is more prepared to make judgments on what should be done in the future - a construction manager who puts up houses for a living or an artist who paints landscapes? The construction manager deals with subcontractors, the city planners, the banks, the weather, neighbors, and the new owners. The job requires good judgment, tact, ability to read people, and the ability to blend all these together. Who is a more informed voter? Its no contest.

DW's sister is in retail. She opens and manages stores for large clothing lines and juggles all kinds of stuff like the construction manager. She is also a gifted artist. But she got a degree in accounting while minoring in fine art. Her artistic skills allow her to set up the stores and manage the daily flow very well. It was her accounting skills that got her the first job and allowed her to focus on the other sides of the business.


At the end of the day those "skills for the future" are what puts food on the table and keeps the lights on. The emphasis on "liberal arts" rather than "skills for the future" has led us to a huge crisis not only in education ( the huge bubble which will burst) but economically where people are totally unemployable because they cannot work with their hands and minds on real things. Large segments of the population who are not polymathic have had their futures permanently damaged by not getting marketable skills.

This affects us all, too, because resources were used to teach them that are now wasted and these people cannot do something useful without retraining, if at all.

I would love nothing more than to spend my whole day learning stuff - history, sociology, biology, but NONE of that will put food on my table.

Are you suggesting that people with money and power only contribute in positive ways? That they are never the ones who act in ways that are destructive to society? Really?

Learning biology won't put food on the table? Really? I thought "curing disease" was one of those marketable skills you were talking about. How do you propose to do that without learning biology? Ever take a look at the MCAT?

Lol Am sitting here reading this as I take a break from studying my philosophy major.

I tried not to post because I feel these kinds of arguments are kind of futile on the basis that they are so subjective... But I couldn't let it go. I have been there and done the white collar senior management thing and hated every minute of it. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have a chance to be studying something I am passionate about and I do plan to couple it with a more vocational and marketable Masters. But I guess I feel there is great value in liberal arts disciplines (and in the arts in general). I am curious Austin, about what you think could be dispensed with as not useful? I personally can live without fine arts and theatre, though I know many who couldn't. I couldn't live without music, quality film and television, books. Perhaps we could do without someone like my dad, who is a historian, in part taking oral histories of indigenous and ageing communities? Are their stories not worth recording for posterity? Would the world really be a better place if we were all ignorant of the mistakes already made? Of the things that had brought great benefit? An atheist, I would argue that the world would in many ways be better without theologians, but many would obviously disagree. Teachers, social workers, aid workers, legal aid? Poorly paid, but what would we do without them?

I can appreciate that it must be very rewarding to be successful in a role that you value and feel is important and useful. And my husband, extraordinarily smart, happily turns up to work motivated almost solely by money. But for me it was extraordinarily depressing to be successful in something I cared not a jot for. No doubt food needs to be put on the table, but for many gifted kids, I think multipotentiality and an awareness of the world make choosing a study path much more complicated than just choosing what is going to pay most.

I have noticed this change in the 35 years since I entered college. In 1978, one needed money, stamina, and a good educational background to enter college. We were tracked in school and only the students who took English IV, Chemistry, and Algebra II attended college. Often the major did not matter and college grads were accepted into other fields.

Now, the tracking is gone and I see students in dual credit that should not be there. Students are taking College Algebra that don't even have multiplication skills - and they pass.

At our community college, I often see writing that was not even accepted as a high school freshman in 1974.

So, what do we do? We go to grad school where we need money, stamina, and a good educational background.

It's not a bubble. It's more of a pyramid scheme.

Sadly, it's also one of the few areas in the economy that is still "functioning" well because of massive federal credit origination.

I understand that debt ceiling increase legislation has sliced federal subsidized loans.

Law school is the worst for this. It's a major cash cow for the universities. I had $120,000 in debt (with basically a full year tuitionn scholarship). Graduated in 2000 so all I had to do was show I had a law degree and got a nice job handed to me.

The economy is quite different now.

I don't think anything should be dispensed with.

Rather, people need to have a fundamental understanding of the economics of their situation and clearly understand the tradeoffs and then make wise choices based upon clear priorities. You need a plan and need to monitor the plan.

A lot of people have no priorities. They think that any want they have is just as valid as any other and that somehow everyone of them will get fulfilled. Reality is not a concept to them.

A historian is not going to be able to focus on taking oral histories if they have to service 40K in debt. But if they have no debt, then they can work odd jobs part of the year and then work on their real job otherwise. Do you even need a degree to do history?



There is a tension between taking it all in and getting something done, true. I struggle with this like many others.

Perhaps another way to look at it is from a freedom standpoint. Studying one thing gives you a lot more options down the road than studying something else.

I think of history as being a science of the humanities, primarily because you have to provide evidence for what you're claiming. People who do PhDs in history are just like graduate students in biology or chemistry: they seek data for analysis. Lots of data!!

I'm not sure I understand the criticism of the field (or of the humanities in general) that's going on in this thread. I'm a scientist and understand that it's essential to have a society that's technologically literate. But I also have a degree in history and took a lot of undergraduate classes in philosophy and English literature.

The humanities force us to think about ideas and what they mean in a way that science and technology don't. Science and technology (especially these days) are all about moving forward --- fast. When we move too quickly without thinking about the potential ramifications of our actions, we risk getting ourselves into trouble. As only a single example out of probably hundreds or thousands I could come up with, history teaches us about what can happen as a consequence of actions. When the historical record is good, we can analyze exactly what happened, how things went right or wrong, and how to prevent or repeat events of the past.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but we need to ground ourselves in philosophy and history and many other areas in order to understand how we (as individual societies and as a species) tend to react to events and how we deal with change and other important things.

I suppose I'm arguing in favor of what I've called thoughtfulness in another thread. Philosophy, great works of literature and art, history, and other areas of the humanities play a huge role in that respect.

Val, thanks-- nicely said.


Actually, all fields of the humanities are like this-- art history, literary criticism, any of these fields requires evidence for one's interpretations. Sometimes evidence comes from within the text one's analyzing ("see this passage? I understand it to mean...") and sometimes from outside the text (historical/contextual). But there should always be evidence.

DeeDee

I love that post, Val.