“I view the humanities as very hobby-based,” she said.
February 28, 2023 10:19 AM Subscribe
It’s like thinking back to when Latin was the center of the world— Nathan Heller (previously) explores the decline of the English major in American higher education. (SLNY) (Archive.is copy)
Even at the primary level the focus is all STEM (Sometimes they will add arts into it making it STEAM at which point it stops meaning anything). Maybe the old-school English major needs to go, to be replaced with a Communications major, or Narrative major, or something else that develops many of the same skills but packages them in a more market friendly manner. For most people the university degree is more a stepping stone to a certain class of job and life than anything else and if that English or History degree isn't able to take you someplace useful anymore then it probably does need to change so that it can.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
One can now obtain a bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama without taking a single humanities course. STEM FTW!
posted by DJZouke at 12:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by DJZouke at 12:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I haven't read the article yet, but a story anyway. I work for a tech consulting company. I do design and product strategy work. I'm in the minority. Most of the employees are developers. Historically, they've been the bread and butter of the company. They get paid better. We focus our efforts toward ensuring that whatever we help a client do, it involves building software.
Recently, we, like much of the tech world, had layoffs. In the US, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't fun either. What was interesting was who got laid off. The majority of people were developers. Very few product managers. Zero designers. You would expect since there are more developers than any other role, they'd be higher, but even then, the layoff numbers didn't match roles. I have a theory as to why this is.
Our clients can hire us to help them with big hairy problems, and then build solutions to those problems, but if they want to do it cheaper, they get us to use our off-shore developers, in China, India, Brazil. I know that off-shoring isn't a new idea, but it always makes me wonder, why the educational system keeps pushing kids toward programming. In this day and age, being a software developer is like being a line worker. It's a skilled job, but it's super easy to outsource. Further, with the improvements in AI, it's fast becoming something that can be automated.
Meanwhile, product strategy and design are much harder to automate, because they deal with messy, flawed, humans. With all of their unique and interesting viewpoints and personal histories and habits and ways of doing things. It's basically impossible to automate for that. Especially when you have to convince them to do things, or buy things. Or change their hard-formed habits. This is true of customers and clients alike.
You know what helps with that kind of work? Storytelling. You have to find some way to resonate with them personally. You have to find that thing that makes them go, 'aha' and get on board with what you need to them to understand. Everybody knows the whole Carousel scene from Mad Men, but it's not just for pitches. It's working with people every day. For all the decisions they have to make. You build trust. You find the best way to communicate with them and then you do it.
You know how to become a good storyteller? You fucking. Study. Stories. You read history, and literature, and religion. You watch movies and theater and tv. You read long-form articles in periodicals. You get yourself a fucking liberal arts degree. Because all stories are, are ways to frame problems and solutions. And that's all anybody in business is doing, ever. They're facing problems, real problems faced by real, flesh-and-blood people, and trying solutions to those problems.
English majors aren't important because we need more people reading Paradise Lost. English majors are important because they have the tools to solve human problems.
posted by nushustu at 12:31 PM on February 28, 2023 [80 favorites]
Recently, we, like much of the tech world, had layoffs. In the US, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't fun either. What was interesting was who got laid off. The majority of people were developers. Very few product managers. Zero designers. You would expect since there are more developers than any other role, they'd be higher, but even then, the layoff numbers didn't match roles. I have a theory as to why this is.
Our clients can hire us to help them with big hairy problems, and then build solutions to those problems, but if they want to do it cheaper, they get us to use our off-shore developers, in China, India, Brazil. I know that off-shoring isn't a new idea, but it always makes me wonder, why the educational system keeps pushing kids toward programming. In this day and age, being a software developer is like being a line worker. It's a skilled job, but it's super easy to outsource. Further, with the improvements in AI, it's fast becoming something that can be automated.
Meanwhile, product strategy and design are much harder to automate, because they deal with messy, flawed, humans. With all of their unique and interesting viewpoints and personal histories and habits and ways of doing things. It's basically impossible to automate for that. Especially when you have to convince them to do things, or buy things. Or change their hard-formed habits. This is true of customers and clients alike.
You know what helps with that kind of work? Storytelling. You have to find some way to resonate with them personally. You have to find that thing that makes them go, 'aha' and get on board with what you need to them to understand. Everybody knows the whole Carousel scene from Mad Men, but it's not just for pitches. It's working with people every day. For all the decisions they have to make. You build trust. You find the best way to communicate with them and then you do it.
You know how to become a good storyteller? You fucking. Study. Stories. You read history, and literature, and religion. You watch movies and theater and tv. You read long-form articles in periodicals. You get yourself a fucking liberal arts degree. Because all stories are, are ways to frame problems and solutions. And that's all anybody in business is doing, ever. They're facing problems, real problems faced by real, flesh-and-blood people, and trying solutions to those problems.
English majors aren't important because we need more people reading Paradise Lost. English majors are important because they have the tools to solve human problems.
posted by nushustu at 12:31 PM on February 28, 2023 [80 favorites]
I was just on a call with one of my board members (we are all in the art world although not the museum world, I assume everyone has a degree in the humanities) and she said that the humanities are growing since the pandemic, presented it as absolutely received knowledge but didn't quote anything, and then a day later the New Yorker feeds are all talking about this article.
My partner teaches English at a SLAC where the English department is the largest one on campus, and creative writing is a big draw for incoming students. Not every institution is treating humanities as disposable right now.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
My partner teaches English at a SLAC where the English department is the largest one on campus, and creative writing is a big draw for incoming students. Not every institution is treating humanities as disposable right now.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
The overall message for decades has been that being an English major is the most worthless thing you can get in a degree short of "communications" or "liberal studies" and that being good at reading and writing is absolutely awful and useless. And people who do reading and writing for a living are always the first ones to get laid off and their careers are expendable. This was absolutely true in my case and why I am in my current career, because much as I don't like it, it's actually considered to be valuable. It's why I'll never have a creative career again, it's why I'll never have a craft business even though people tell me every day I should have one. (To which I say, nobody is going to pay $1500 for a hand crafted costume of mine, nobody pays $60 for a knitted hat when they can get one for $5 at Wal-Mart, and I gave up selling when I could only sell necklaces for $1-2. There is no audience for this. The people who like that don't have that money, the people who have that money would not want it.)
But not everyone can be good at STEM and accounting, and I am NOT. If I had the option to do a smarter, more useful major, I could have and should have, but I'm not. My "smarts," such as they are, are considered useless and un-valuable. What job are you gonna do? Journalism? (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.) K-12 teaching? (Also expendable, you get laid off every year and treated like shit.) Adjuncting at five colleges at the same time is likely if you want to go the college route. You end up in tech writing or grant writing if you're doing well, you end up a clerical worker otherwise.
WaPo: Marymount University cuts English, several other majors
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:43 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
But not everyone can be good at STEM and accounting, and I am NOT. If I had the option to do a smarter, more useful major, I could have and should have, but I'm not. My "smarts," such as they are, are considered useless and un-valuable. What job are you gonna do? Journalism? (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.) K-12 teaching? (Also expendable, you get laid off every year and treated like shit.) Adjuncting at five colleges at the same time is likely if you want to go the college route. You end up in tech writing or grant writing if you're doing well, you end up a clerical worker otherwise.
WaPo: Marymount University cuts English, several other majors
Marymount University trustees voted unanimously Friday to phase out majors in English, history and several other fields that the Catholic school in Northern Virginia says have drawn low student interest.I may be Team English, but I can't deny or fudge how it is all totally disdained in our culture because it's not worth anything in the job world and is the first thing to go. This has been going on forever, I can't say I'm at all shocked to hear that people are leaving, because trust me, everyone tells you to leave and get that accounting major. If you're going to be in debt for the next 40 years, it might as well be for being a computer science major because you might pay it off.
The 20-0 vote, according to a university spokesman, represents a watershed moment for a regional university of about 3,700 students that is seeking to increase enrollment and revenue. It also shows the continuing vulnerability of humanities in higher education at a time when pressure is high to deliver degrees that many students and families perceive as more valuable in the job market.
“The impacted majors are rarely selected by Marymount students and, in fact, have only graduated a handful of students in the past decade,” the university said in a statement.
The majors to be eliminated are art, English, history, mathematics, philosophy, secondary education, sociology, and theology and religious studies. A BA program in economics will be eliminated, but the BS in that field will remain. The university is also cutting a master’s program in English and the humanities.
St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, which is Catholic-affiliated, announced in May that it is phasing out English, history, theology and eight other undergraduate majors.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:43 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
You know how to become a good storyteller? You fucking. Study. Stories. You read history, and literature, and religion. You watch movies and theater and tv. You read long-form articles in periodicals. You get yourself a fucking liberal arts degree. Because all stories are, are ways to frame problems and solutions. And that's all anybody in business is doing, ever. They're facing problems, real problems faced by real, flesh-and-blood people, and trying solutions to those problems.
Of course I, too, have yet to read the article. But I do think that your description is interesting because in a casual kind of way you seem to be describing a lot of things people do anyway. People read books, they read long-form periodicals, they watch movies and go to plays (though less of the latter, alas.) It does seem like the value of the English degree must be sold as something greater than “you read a lot of things”.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:46 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Of course I, too, have yet to read the article. But I do think that your description is interesting because in a casual kind of way you seem to be describing a lot of things people do anyway. People read books, they read long-form periodicals, they watch movies and go to plays (though less of the latter, alas.) It does seem like the value of the English degree must be sold as something greater than “you read a lot of things”.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:46 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, which is Catholic-affiliated, announced in May that it is phasing out English, history, theology ...
NEEDLE SCRATCH A Catholic school without a theology degree? Hang on... *clickety-click* Oh, them -- it's that tiny school in farm country (Winona, MN) with a thousand undergrads and three thousand grad students. This is NOT a traditional, "ivy-covered walls" university.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:52 PM on February 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
NEEDLE SCRATCH A Catholic school without a theology degree? Hang on... *clickety-click* Oh, them -- it's that tiny school in farm country (Winona, MN) with a thousand undergrads and three thousand grad students. This is NOT a traditional, "ivy-covered walls" university.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:52 PM on February 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
People read books, they read long-form periodicals, they watch movies and go to plays (though less of the latter, alas.) It does seem like the value of the English degree must be sold as something greater than “you read a lot of things”.
But there are so, so, so many people--smart people--who don't like to read. And like to write or present even less. And they try to squirrel out of work obligations that require those skills, or they do a half-assed job, and make the company look bad and/or give an impression of not caring and/or fail to convey all that needs to be conveyed in the given setting.
Being a person who doesn't really mind writing a few paragraphs or quickly reviewing a volume of text has started to feel like a superpower at work. Because a lot of people just really would rather not do the reading.
posted by knotty knots at 12:56 PM on February 28, 2023 [25 favorites]
But there are so, so, so many people--smart people--who don't like to read. And like to write or present even less. And they try to squirrel out of work obligations that require those skills, or they do a half-assed job, and make the company look bad and/or give an impression of not caring and/or fail to convey all that needs to be conveyed in the given setting.
Being a person who doesn't really mind writing a few paragraphs or quickly reviewing a volume of text has started to feel like a superpower at work. Because a lot of people just really would rather not do the reading.
posted by knotty knots at 12:56 PM on February 28, 2023 [25 favorites]
It does seem like the value of the English degree must be sold as something greater than “you read a lot of things”.
I mean, yah the rest of my post is the selling point. The reading of a lot of things is just how you get the degree. The purpose of the degree is to train you to use all of those things you read to help frame contemporary, human problems. The storytelling is just one of the ways you do that.
You know the story of Oedipus Rex? Everybody remembers him sleeping w/ him mom, but fewer people remember why he got to be king in the first place. He answered the sphinx's riddle, which made the sphinx leave the people of Thebes alone. The riddle was "what walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?" The answer is man.
Anthony Burgess adapted this play. In it, he creates a scene where the chorus tells this story, and then a child asks "that riddle is easy. A child could answer it. How is it that nobody did before Oedipus came along?" And the answer basically is, anyone could have, but nobody was willing to pay the price to do so, because answering that question comes with its own curse. There's more to it, but that's it in a nutshell, and I think it's an interesting point.
Spending formative years studying literature starts you on that path to get from the child of the story to the wise man who understands the story. Studying English, or theater, or philosophy, or yes, even the sciences can help you to do that. But jesus, there is more to the universe than physics, and just because there is not a bright line between English Major and Good-Paying Job doesn't mean they don't exist. I was a drama major. For a short time, I made a living as a theater director. I've done work on three continents, I've worked with Derek Walcott and Erik Ehn.
Now I help organizations rejigger themselves so they can build better tools that provide better experiences for their customers so they (the organizations) can see more profit. I had to noodle with computers some, but I'm not a techie guy. I went to library school, ffs.
Many of the designers with whom I work also did things like theater and library school. There are ways to use your natural skills and interests and make a bit of a living. STEM is fine, but god in heaven science kind of sucks at people, and I have yet to see any problems that don't involve people.
posted by nushustu at 1:08 PM on February 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
I mean, yah the rest of my post is the selling point. The reading of a lot of things is just how you get the degree. The purpose of the degree is to train you to use all of those things you read to help frame contemporary, human problems. The storytelling is just one of the ways you do that.
You know the story of Oedipus Rex? Everybody remembers him sleeping w/ him mom, but fewer people remember why he got to be king in the first place. He answered the sphinx's riddle, which made the sphinx leave the people of Thebes alone. The riddle was "what walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?" The answer is man.
Anthony Burgess adapted this play. In it, he creates a scene where the chorus tells this story, and then a child asks "that riddle is easy. A child could answer it. How is it that nobody did before Oedipus came along?" And the answer basically is, anyone could have, but nobody was willing to pay the price to do so, because answering that question comes with its own curse. There's more to it, but that's it in a nutshell, and I think it's an interesting point.
Spending formative years studying literature starts you on that path to get from the child of the story to the wise man who understands the story. Studying English, or theater, or philosophy, or yes, even the sciences can help you to do that. But jesus, there is more to the universe than physics, and just because there is not a bright line between English Major and Good-Paying Job doesn't mean they don't exist. I was a drama major. For a short time, I made a living as a theater director. I've done work on three continents, I've worked with Derek Walcott and Erik Ehn.
Now I help organizations rejigger themselves so they can build better tools that provide better experiences for their customers so they (the organizations) can see more profit. I had to noodle with computers some, but I'm not a techie guy. I went to library school, ffs.
Many of the designers with whom I work also did things like theater and library school. There are ways to use your natural skills and interests and make a bit of a living. STEM is fine, but god in heaven science kind of sucks at people, and I have yet to see any problems that don't involve people.
posted by nushustu at 1:08 PM on February 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
The other reason was money. Shapiro put down the phone and glowered at it. “You get what you pay for!” he said, and grabbed a departmental memo that lay on his desk. With a blunt pencil, he scribbled on the back a graph with two axes and an upside-down parabola. “I’m talking about the big fire hose.”
As I watched, he labelled the start of the graph “1958”—the year after the Soviets launched Sputnik, when the National Defense Education Act appropriated more than a billion dollars for education.
“We’re not talking about élite universities—we’re talking about money flowing into fifty states, all the way down. That was the beginning of the glory days of the humanities,” he continued. Near the plummeting end of the parabola, he scribbled “2007,” the beginning of the economic crisis. “That funding goes down,” he explained. “The financial support for the humanities is gone on a national level, on a state level, at the university level.”
Shapiro smoothed out his graph, regarded it for a moment, and ran the tip of his pencil back and forth across the curve.
“This is also the decline-of-democracy chart,” he said. He looked up and met my gaze. “You can overlay it on the money chart like a kind of palimpsest—it’s the same.”
While I can accept the point I kind of want to see the data for his decline-of-democracy chart (echoing the bit about statistical thinking becoming more prevalent).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:09 PM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
As I watched, he labelled the start of the graph “1958”—the year after the Soviets launched Sputnik, when the National Defense Education Act appropriated more than a billion dollars for education.
“We’re not talking about élite universities—we’re talking about money flowing into fifty states, all the way down. That was the beginning of the glory days of the humanities,” he continued. Near the plummeting end of the parabola, he scribbled “2007,” the beginning of the economic crisis. “That funding goes down,” he explained. “The financial support for the humanities is gone on a national level, on a state level, at the university level.”
Shapiro smoothed out his graph, regarded it for a moment, and ran the tip of his pencil back and forth across the curve.
“This is also the decline-of-democracy chart,” he said. He looked up and met my gaze. “You can overlay it on the money chart like a kind of palimpsest—it’s the same.”
While I can accept the point I kind of want to see the data for his decline-of-democracy chart (echoing the bit about statistical thinking becoming more prevalent).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:09 PM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
But there are so, so, so many people--smart people--who don't like to read. And like to write or present even less. And they try to squirrel out of work obligations that require those skills, or they do a half-assed job, and make the company look bad and/or give an impression of not caring and/or fail to convey all that needs to be conveyed in the given setting.
But this isn't a problem solve by having more English/lit majors. Indeed, its not like the people designing English curricula, teaching English classes, and producing Literary scholarship are known for their communications skill.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:12 PM on February 28, 2023
But this isn't a problem solve by having more English/lit majors. Indeed, its not like the people designing English curricula, teaching English classes, and producing Literary scholarship are known for their communications skill.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:12 PM on February 28, 2023
Instead, he said, the Americans created the “multiversity”: a kind of hodgepodge of both types and more. The multiversity incorporates the tradition of land-grant universities, established with an eye to industrial-age skill sets. And it provides something for everyone. There is pre-professional training of all sorts—law schools, business schools, medical schools, agricultural schools—but also the old liberal-arts quadrangle.
This is basically it. US universities are expected to cultivate the minds of youths, advance the total sum of human knowledge, and provide practical vocational training (on top of running sports franchises). You can pick up vocational skills from academic training, and the link is more obvious for some subjects than others, which makes them look like safer bets in bad times.
Maybe the solution is to split all these functions. If you want people to be better at product strategy, it's more efficient to design a program around being a PM (which might involve reading novels) than to haphazardly retrofit a classic English BA.
On the other hand, this hodgepodge might be the only chance that less-privileged teens get exposure to "impractical" modes of thinking. Everyone should have the luxury of learning for learning's sake for once in their lives, and sometimes they come by way of mandatory undergrad breadth requirements.
posted by airmail at 1:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
This is basically it. US universities are expected to cultivate the minds of youths, advance the total sum of human knowledge, and provide practical vocational training (on top of running sports franchises). You can pick up vocational skills from academic training, and the link is more obvious for some subjects than others, which makes them look like safer bets in bad times.
Maybe the solution is to split all these functions. If you want people to be better at product strategy, it's more efficient to design a program around being a PM (which might involve reading novels) than to haphazardly retrofit a classic English BA.
On the other hand, this hodgepodge might be the only chance that less-privileged teens get exposure to "impractical" modes of thinking. Everyone should have the luxury of learning for learning's sake for once in their lives, and sometimes they come by way of mandatory undergrad breadth requirements.
posted by airmail at 1:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
“A lot of it has to do with us seeing—they call them ‘influencers’ online,” Harmanian said, pronouncing the word slowly for my benefit. “I’m twenty-one. People my age have crypto. People have agents working on their banking and trading. Instead of working nine to five for your fifteen-dollar minimum wage, you can value your time.” She and her peers had grown up in an age that saw the lie in working for the Man, so they were charging out on their own terms. “It’s because our generation is a lot more progressive in our thinking,” she told me.
the kids, they're alright
posted by chavenet at 1:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
the kids, they're alright
posted by chavenet at 1:18 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Wow, this thread is full of a lot of long-winded comments.
posted by slogger at 1:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by slogger at 1:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have a lot of Thoughts, as one of the resident English professors, but I'll confine myself to wincing at the people in the article complaining that students can't and/or won't read longform material any more. Look, I'm a Victorianist, even the short books are long, my students can read them (and I teach at Cute Underfunded SUNY in a Rural Area, not Harvard). Moreover, at no point in the past few decades have students found 19th-century prose easy to read without practice, let alone 18th-century prose. In my first year of teaching 25 years ago, as a sabbatical replacement at Much More Prestigious Big R1 Campus, I had to tutor students in how to parse Edmund Burke--who is not remotely "difficult" by 18th-c. standards. This predates cell phones! Sentences that run for a full paragraph aren't common anymore! It's OK that students are initially startled!
posted by thomas j wise at 1:47 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 1:47 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
>Wow, this thread is full of a lot of long-winded comments.
It's English majors all the way down
posted by chavenet at 1:52 PM on February 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
It's English majors all the way down
posted by chavenet at 1:52 PM on February 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
Is there something wrong with amateurism-hobbyism in the humanities, I wonder? Go through the canon and in almost every culture it’s amateurs, the privately rich, or the precarious jobbers, who’ve produced the enduring texts and works of art.
I wonder why the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t identified as an inflection point here. The Cold War forced Western governments to support humanities as professional bodies of knowledge as a non-materialist, democratic, alternative to interpreting the world, but since Communism isn’t in business any more, that incentive is gone.
It’s not that there’s less demand for literature or history. Those demands will disappear when we cease to live in societies—history still fills the bookshelves. It’s just that the figure of the professional humanities academic and the respected Lit Degree is in a lot of ways specific to the political landscape of the twentieth century.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:53 PM on February 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
I wonder why the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t identified as an inflection point here. The Cold War forced Western governments to support humanities as professional bodies of knowledge as a non-materialist, democratic, alternative to interpreting the world, but since Communism isn’t in business any more, that incentive is gone.
It’s not that there’s less demand for literature or history. Those demands will disappear when we cease to live in societies—history still fills the bookshelves. It’s just that the figure of the professional humanities academic and the respected Lit Degree is in a lot of ways specific to the political landscape of the twentieth century.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:53 PM on February 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
the kids, they're alright
Or they're youthful suckers being preyed upon by slightly older and more experienced grifters. This idea that "oh, I can be an influencer and work ten hours a week and my agent will handle all the awkward career stuff and I'll put all my money in crypto and I'll be fine" would just be embarrassing if people weren't trading their educations and career prospects for it. I guess if Mom and Dad Boomer don't run through their life savings in that last year in long-term care and leave the kids some money, they might be okay? To me, this doesn't represent so much a rejection of careerism (which would be perfectly awesome if not framed as "only losers work minimum wage," enjoy that comeuppance, kid) as an extremely dumb idea of how you can make money some other way. And, like I said, it's coming from a scam atmosphere promoted by more or less shady older people, but geez. Perhaps if you studied the humanities, you might begin to learn to recognize when you're being snowed.
posted by praemunire at 2:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
Or they're youthful suckers being preyed upon by slightly older and more experienced grifters. This idea that "oh, I can be an influencer and work ten hours a week and my agent will handle all the awkward career stuff and I'll put all my money in crypto and I'll be fine" would just be embarrassing if people weren't trading their educations and career prospects for it. I guess if Mom and Dad Boomer don't run through their life savings in that last year in long-term care and leave the kids some money, they might be okay? To me, this doesn't represent so much a rejection of careerism (which would be perfectly awesome if not framed as "only losers work minimum wage," enjoy that comeuppance, kid) as an extremely dumb idea of how you can make money some other way. And, like I said, it's coming from a scam atmosphere promoted by more or less shady older people, but geez. Perhaps if you studied the humanities, you might begin to learn to recognize when you're being snowed.
posted by praemunire at 2:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
My degree is in music composition. I've been a professional software developer for 23 years now, with some intervening musical escapades. By far the most valuable skill I have, almost more important than my technical problem solving acumen, is my ability to interface with people. People of all stripes: nice people, difficult people, insecure people, people who like to storm around the room shouting the F word, etc. Those skills are 100% not taught in CS classes. Did I get those skills during my music education? Yeah, kind of! Lots of Big Egos there to navigate. And having to corral people to play my music was also no walk in the park.
Which is to say that the skills you need to succeed in the workforce are not necessarily the skills you learn getting a degree tailor-suited for your particular industry. More English majors, please!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:22 PM on February 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
Which is to say that the skills you need to succeed in the workforce are not necessarily the skills you learn getting a degree tailor-suited for your particular industry. More English majors, please!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:22 PM on February 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
Wow, this thread is full of a lot of long-winded comments.
apparently we need more.. haikutellers?
I edited the comment to say: driveby snark is totally fine and totally fulfilling and the world needs more of that /s
I happen to find the topic interesting, glad to read people's views, and it's a mystery to me why some people click some links and stick around to say some things.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:48 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
apparently we need more.. haikutellers?
I edited the comment to say: driveby snark is totally fine and totally fulfilling and the world needs more of that /s
I happen to find the topic interesting, glad to read people's views, and it's a mystery to me why some people click some links and stick around to say some things.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:48 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Whee, so I get to be all over the place on this one. My bona fides: comparative literature major as an undergrad, one humanities master's and a library master's, librarianated for a while, was/am techie as librarians go, currently teaching in an information school (which offers a library degree among other degrees) and am likely (though not certain) to do so until I retire.
I guess what I can add here is: it IS possible to integrate humanities stuff into more coldbloodedly venal course offerings; I do it on the reg. But the system isn't really set up to facilitate it (do not get me STARTED on the "learning outcomes" craze, may it die a swift and horrible death). Blah blah interdisciplinarity, there are lots of rants online about how bad current academia is at it with respect to research -- it's no better with teaching, really.
Teaching this way is also just kind of intrinsically difficult? Because courses that span this particular divide have to manage two bimodal curves of students: one for the non-readers/readers, another for the non-techies/techies (or whatever the non-humanities component is, it doesn't HAVE to be tech). It can be done! I do it! But it's hard. I don't know that I'm great at it; I do know I could be better.
But I think it's a fruitful space to explore. There just aren't that many explorers for this style of space in academe, partly because of hyperspecialization, partly because of the hostility to interdisciplinarity. I'm a fascinatingly horrible chimera of William Morris and Kipling's Elephant's Child. I think that's a good thing to be and a good place to teach from, honestly! But academia is not set up to value breadth over depth pretty much ever; I'm the exception that proves the rule.
posted by humbug at 4:00 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I guess what I can add here is: it IS possible to integrate humanities stuff into more coldbloodedly venal course offerings; I do it on the reg. But the system isn't really set up to facilitate it (do not get me STARTED on the "learning outcomes" craze, may it die a swift and horrible death). Blah blah interdisciplinarity, there are lots of rants online about how bad current academia is at it with respect to research -- it's no better with teaching, really.
Teaching this way is also just kind of intrinsically difficult? Because courses that span this particular divide have to manage two bimodal curves of students: one for the non-readers/readers, another for the non-techies/techies (or whatever the non-humanities component is, it doesn't HAVE to be tech). It can be done! I do it! But it's hard. I don't know that I'm great at it; I do know I could be better.
But I think it's a fruitful space to explore. There just aren't that many explorers for this style of space in academe, partly because of hyperspecialization, partly because of the hostility to interdisciplinarity. I'm a fascinatingly horrible chimera of William Morris and Kipling's Elephant's Child. I think that's a good thing to be and a good place to teach from, honestly! But academia is not set up to value breadth over depth pretty much ever; I'm the exception that proves the rule.
posted by humbug at 4:00 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
(and before somebody beats me to it...)
Metafilter: a fascinatingly horrible chimera of William Morris and Kipling's Elephant's Child
posted by humbug at 4:08 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: a fascinatingly horrible chimera of William Morris and Kipling's Elephant's Child
posted by humbug at 4:08 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
One can now obtain a bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama without taking a single humanities course. STEM FTW!
In fairness, I received a perfectly legitimate high-end liberal arts degree and took a single math class (which wasn't even required) and a single "science for poets" type of class that contained very little science. In grad school, for a much more applied field, I had to take a one-semester stats class, but I ended up in the one with all the business school students who all openly cheated so it wasn't exactly rigorous.
I work in a STEM or STEM-adjacent field and currently earn a livable salary precisely because of those liberal arts skills, primarily reading, writing, and presenting, plus generally being comfortable working with people in collaborative settings. The "harder" science/math stuff has been easy to pick up along the way, much easier than the engineers and scientists I've watched struggle with learning to write coherently.
All that said, I don't fault any student who selects classes and a major based on their understanding of what will have the best ROI. Especially if you are paying for school with loans or parental contributions (versus financial aid or family wealth), you really have to consider this. However, I don't think people typically are working with the right information when they make those choices (focusing on what is valuable right now, rather than what might be valuable later), and I see that the article touches on that point also:
A funny thing about the market mentality, they note, is that it knows only what’s judged to have future value right now. Career studies have shown that humanities majors, with their communication and analytical skills, often end up in leadership jobs. To that extent, the value of the educated human touch is likely to hold in a storm of technological and cultural change.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
In fairness, I received a perfectly legitimate high-end liberal arts degree and took a single math class (which wasn't even required) and a single "science for poets" type of class that contained very little science. In grad school, for a much more applied field, I had to take a one-semester stats class, but I ended up in the one with all the business school students who all openly cheated so it wasn't exactly rigorous.
I work in a STEM or STEM-adjacent field and currently earn a livable salary precisely because of those liberal arts skills, primarily reading, writing, and presenting, plus generally being comfortable working with people in collaborative settings. The "harder" science/math stuff has been easy to pick up along the way, much easier than the engineers and scientists I've watched struggle with learning to write coherently.
All that said, I don't fault any student who selects classes and a major based on their understanding of what will have the best ROI. Especially if you are paying for school with loans or parental contributions (versus financial aid or family wealth), you really have to consider this. However, I don't think people typically are working with the right information when they make those choices (focusing on what is valuable right now, rather than what might be valuable later), and I see that the article touches on that point also:
A funny thing about the market mentality, they note, is that it knows only what’s judged to have future value right now. Career studies have shown that humanities majors, with their communication and analytical skills, often end up in leadership jobs. To that extent, the value of the educated human touch is likely to hold in a storm of technological and cultural change.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:38 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was speculating a few years ago that liberal arts /humanities majors might become a sort of ultimate Veblen good. The proles have to study things which lead to careers and employment- but to be able to drop six figures on a liberal arts education which leads to limited career prospects says "I'm above concerning myself with mere employability" in a big way.
The decline in humanities is a sad, but understandable trend. "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:45 PM on February 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
The decline in humanities is a sad, but understandable trend. "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:45 PM on February 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
It’s not like English literature has been taught at English universities from time immemorial, is it?
A conventional date for the beginning is Matthew Arnold in 1848, with questions about English literature on tests for a degree from 1859, but those were not for a degree in English lit., as I understand things. But I didn’t succeed in finding the date a degree in English Literature per se was first granted by an English university.
And even then, they weren’t studying contemporary literature. I seem to remember reading of controversy about that well into the middle of the 20th Century.
And in the US, there were hardly any courses specifically about SFF anywhere in the country until the late 60s, as I recall.
posted by jamjam at 4:46 PM on February 28, 2023
A conventional date for the beginning is Matthew Arnold in 1848, with questions about English literature on tests for a degree from 1859, but those were not for a degree in English lit., as I understand things. But I didn’t succeed in finding the date a degree in English Literature per se was first granted by an English university.
And even then, they weren’t studying contemporary literature. I seem to remember reading of controversy about that well into the middle of the 20th Century.
And in the US, there were hardly any courses specifically about SFF anywhere in the country until the late 60s, as I recall.
posted by jamjam at 4:46 PM on February 28, 2023
English majors aren't important because we need more people reading Paradise Lost.
1) I'm old enough that when I did it "Paradise Lost" was high school curriculum 2) "Paradise Lost" is weird as shit and fucking great, including and especially when paired with either a) its own writer's political history or b) its embrace by the Romantics 3) I am a Literature major with a Creative Writing emphasis, one credit shy of a History minor, and I regret a lot about college but 100% not what I studied there.
posted by thivaia at 4:46 PM on February 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
1) I'm old enough that when I did it "Paradise Lost" was high school curriculum 2) "Paradise Lost" is weird as shit and fucking great, including and especially when paired with either a) its own writer's political history or b) its embrace by the Romantics 3) I am a Literature major with a Creative Writing emphasis, one credit shy of a History minor, and I regret a lot about college but 100% not what I studied there.
posted by thivaia at 4:46 PM on February 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
When I read Paradise Lost in college, I was amazed at how lean, agile, and comprehensible his narrative verse is — much more so than the poetry of the Romantics, Tennyson, or even Yeats in my opinion.
And Milton's prose is not just a horse of another color, it's like a beast of another phylum altogether. Try his Of Education if you want a taste of how remarkably thick and turgid English prose was not that many hundreds of years ago. It’s as if his verse gave birth to our prose, but his own prose died without issue.
posted by jamjam at 5:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
And Milton's prose is not just a horse of another color, it's like a beast of another phylum altogether. Try his Of Education if you want a taste of how remarkably thick and turgid English prose was not that many hundreds of years ago. It’s as if his verse gave birth to our prose, but his own prose died without issue.
posted by jamjam at 5:14 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
An interesting article. This stuck out to me:
“I think the problem for the humanities is you can feel like you’re not really going anywhere, and that’s very scary,” he said. “You write one essay better than the other from one semester to the next. That’s not the same as, you know, being able to solve this economics problem, or code this thing, or do policy analysis.”
I have noticed a shift in my own undergrad classrooms from 2012 until now, which is that students demand much more persistent assessment - they monitor their grades in a way that I, an elder millennial, never did (nor could - you pretty much just got a midterm grad and a final grade). I imagine this has something to do with the increased standardized testing of K-12 students.
The student/article continues:
Last summer, Haimo worked at the HistoryMakers, an organization building an archive of African American oral history. He said, “When I was applying, I kept thinking, What qualifies me for this job? Sure, I can research, I can write things.” He leaned forward to check for passing traffic. “But those skills are very difficult to demonstrate, and it’s frankly not what the world at large seems in demand of.”
As someone with a PhD in history, who will most likely be unemployed soon, I've been looking through job ads pretty broadly to try and figure out what else I might qualify for, and I'm finding.....barely anything. In between undergrad and grad, I lived in Brooklyn for four years, and I applied to a lot of jobs back then (this would be the late aughts). With the caveat that human memory is fallible and all, I don't recall the typical job ad being so specific as they are today - sure, some where, but there were a number that basically translated to "Looking for a reasonable smart person with a B.A. who can write, communicate, is dependable, and can work independently." Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms, but I'm not finding these - even basic entry level jobs are specifying how many credit hours you need in different fields, etc. I spent at least a half hour today looking at every job I could find with "historian" in the title, and I don't qualify for a single one. It's pretty dismal.
posted by coffeecat at 6:15 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
“I think the problem for the humanities is you can feel like you’re not really going anywhere, and that’s very scary,” he said. “You write one essay better than the other from one semester to the next. That’s not the same as, you know, being able to solve this economics problem, or code this thing, or do policy analysis.”
I have noticed a shift in my own undergrad classrooms from 2012 until now, which is that students demand much more persistent assessment - they monitor their grades in a way that I, an elder millennial, never did (nor could - you pretty much just got a midterm grad and a final grade). I imagine this has something to do with the increased standardized testing of K-12 students.
The student/article continues:
Last summer, Haimo worked at the HistoryMakers, an organization building an archive of African American oral history. He said, “When I was applying, I kept thinking, What qualifies me for this job? Sure, I can research, I can write things.” He leaned forward to check for passing traffic. “But those skills are very difficult to demonstrate, and it’s frankly not what the world at large seems in demand of.”
As someone with a PhD in history, who will most likely be unemployed soon, I've been looking through job ads pretty broadly to try and figure out what else I might qualify for, and I'm finding.....barely anything. In between undergrad and grad, I lived in Brooklyn for four years, and I applied to a lot of jobs back then (this would be the late aughts). With the caveat that human memory is fallible and all, I don't recall the typical job ad being so specific as they are today - sure, some where, but there were a number that basically translated to "Looking for a reasonable smart person with a B.A. who can write, communicate, is dependable, and can work independently." Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms, but I'm not finding these - even basic entry level jobs are specifying how many credit hours you need in different fields, etc. I spent at least a half hour today looking at every job I could find with "historian" in the title, and I don't qualify for a single one. It's pretty dismal.
posted by coffeecat at 6:15 PM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Coffeecat, if you have any background in diversity related fields, various LGBTQ resource centers, women’s centers, disability offices, etc (both university related and community centered) are desperate to hire right now. Friend of mine is a recent history PhD grad who couldn’t find a job in academia and went straight from grad assistant to director of a university diversity center. These centers appreciate the perspective of historians particularly uniquely.
Also, the people writing the job ads are usually not the people actually hiring and they add all sorts of nonsense you don’t actually need. Apply if the job description seems like a good fit, ignore the requirements because the chance that the person interviewing even knows that the job posting says that that’s required is slim to none.
posted by brook horse at 7:00 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, the people writing the job ads are usually not the people actually hiring and they add all sorts of nonsense you don’t actually need. Apply if the job description seems like a good fit, ignore the requirements because the chance that the person interviewing even knows that the job posting says that that’s required is slim to none.
posted by brook horse at 7:00 PM on February 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was an English major. But it was a B.S. in English Lit, not a B.A., with a math minor and a computer programming track built into it.
This was not necessarily by design.
But writing was my strongest suit, while computers were my love and hobby and where the jobs were going to be going, so I hedged my bets. Math, well, I was ahead of my class in high school so I just rolled with it; I started as a chem major and switched over before Organic reared its ugly head.
The combo platter led to technical writing jobs, which led to instructional designer jobs. Because...
English majors are important because they have the tools to solve human problems.
The computer software development world (which we all pretty much live in, in one way or another) has two extremes. One is the developer, who may be a wizard at bringing a project plan or a database to life but struggles mightily at explaining what he's done to those without his skills and training. The other is the end user, who doesn't care _how_ the program works as long as it _does_ work and he can use it successfully to do something.
An English major can build a cozy home somewhere in the middle of that divide. This can be as an API writer turning raw code into something closer to English, it can be as a technical writer turning technonotes into release notes or user guides or procedural workbooks, and it can be as an instructional designer creating training modules that are more in-depth and visual. That depends on your particular skillset. But the key is that you are an interpreter, and for the most part, a content-agnostic interpreter for both sides; you can get the major points of how something works via subject matter experts or research or hands-on time, and distill it down into something that an average user can follow and understand.
THAT is a human problem that you can solve. And if you're lucky, you'll find companies that take that problem seriously.
posted by delfin at 7:42 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
This was not necessarily by design.
But writing was my strongest suit, while computers were my love and hobby and where the jobs were going to be going, so I hedged my bets. Math, well, I was ahead of my class in high school so I just rolled with it; I started as a chem major and switched over before Organic reared its ugly head.
The combo platter led to technical writing jobs, which led to instructional designer jobs. Because...
English majors are important because they have the tools to solve human problems.
The computer software development world (which we all pretty much live in, in one way or another) has two extremes. One is the developer, who may be a wizard at bringing a project plan or a database to life but struggles mightily at explaining what he's done to those without his skills and training. The other is the end user, who doesn't care _how_ the program works as long as it _does_ work and he can use it successfully to do something.
An English major can build a cozy home somewhere in the middle of that divide. This can be as an API writer turning raw code into something closer to English, it can be as a technical writer turning technonotes into release notes or user guides or procedural workbooks, and it can be as an instructional designer creating training modules that are more in-depth and visual. That depends on your particular skillset. But the key is that you are an interpreter, and for the most part, a content-agnostic interpreter for both sides; you can get the major points of how something works via subject matter experts or research or hands-on time, and distill it down into something that an average user can follow and understand.
THAT is a human problem that you can solve. And if you're lucky, you'll find companies that take that problem seriously.
posted by delfin at 7:42 PM on February 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
"if they didn't face monthly payments that absolutely require the kind of steady income that a STEM or business degree makes more likely."
The thing is, I think that from the same university, a given liberal arts degree is more likely to result in a steady income than a given business degree (excluding accounting). If you get a degree in marketing from UW-Madison, and someone else gets a degree in history from UW-Madison, the history degree is very likely to be perceived as more challenging and involving more intellectual skills. GOP nominees for president famously love to dunk on philosophy degrees as "useless," but they're regularly the highest-earning humanities degree, and out-earn ALL business degrees. (The things that earn more are highly-specialized engineering degrees, math, and physics.) During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, there were REPEATED debates where career politicians talked about how badly we need people with business degrees and how colleges shouldn't pay for the humanities because nobody with humanities degrees does anything but accrue debt and we needed REAL businesspeople ... while fucking Carly Fiorina, wealthiest and most successful businessperson in the race, stood there with her WHOLE ASS PHILOSOPHY AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY DEGREE. (Of course she didn't stan her philosophy degree because that is not what gets GOP votes, but Ted fuckin' Cruz and Marco fuckin' Rubio standing there talking about how business degrees make people rich and successful at business while standing next to a PERSON SUCCESSFUL AT BUSINESS was LAUGHABLE.)
If we are talking about top-25 or top-50 universities, or many flagship state universities, I think a lot of traditional liberal arts majors are seen as more challenging and intellectually rigorous than a lot of business degrees. (I think probably the more old-fashioned your liberal arts degree's name is, the better -- "philosophy" and "history" are probably more respected than "American media studies" regardless of how rigorous the latter is.)
"An English major can build a cozy home somewhere in the middle of that divide. ... But the key is that you are an interpreter, and for the most part, a content-agnostic interpreter for both sides; you can get the major points of how something works via subject matter experts or research or hands-on time, and distill it down into something that an average user can follow and understand."
This is literally my job now; when I talk to software developers, I tell them that my job is to translate software into lawyer, and then lawyer back into software if necessary, and to try to make it easy and painless. My job is to help lawyers and regulators understand what software is doing, and then to help software developers understand laws and regulations. They both want to understand each other! But it can be a really difficult divide to bridge, and my whole entire job is translating that. (And what makes me good at my job is that I make it seem straightforward instead of scary and software people feel like they can rely on me to hand-hold them through the process without drama.)
I majored in theology. I also have a master's (also theology) and a law degree. The theology was SO much more rigorous than the law, although conveniently the law has a Bar Exam to say "yes, you are marginally competent." I have an eclectic job history, but what unites all of my jobs is that I am REALLY GOOD at gaining competency in complicated topics REALLY FAST, and I'm really good at communicating to a lot of different audiences in a lot of different ways. I'm good at understanding what people are not understanding, and then finding a different way to bridge that gap.
I guess I have three larger points: 1) the reputation of the college matters way more than the course of study; 2) excellent grades matter more than the specific degree -- if Art History gets you a 4.0 and Marketing gets you a 2.5, do the friggin' Art History; and 3) critical thinking and communication skills are basically ALWAYS at a premium, and a liberal arts degree is an AMAZING way to acquire them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:26 PM on February 28, 2023 [10 favorites]
The thing is, I think that from the same university, a given liberal arts degree is more likely to result in a steady income than a given business degree (excluding accounting). If you get a degree in marketing from UW-Madison, and someone else gets a degree in history from UW-Madison, the history degree is very likely to be perceived as more challenging and involving more intellectual skills. GOP nominees for president famously love to dunk on philosophy degrees as "useless," but they're regularly the highest-earning humanities degree, and out-earn ALL business degrees. (The things that earn more are highly-specialized engineering degrees, math, and physics.) During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, there were REPEATED debates where career politicians talked about how badly we need people with business degrees and how colleges shouldn't pay for the humanities because nobody with humanities degrees does anything but accrue debt and we needed REAL businesspeople ... while fucking Carly Fiorina, wealthiest and most successful businessperson in the race, stood there with her WHOLE ASS PHILOSOPHY AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY DEGREE. (Of course she didn't stan her philosophy degree because that is not what gets GOP votes, but Ted fuckin' Cruz and Marco fuckin' Rubio standing there talking about how business degrees make people rich and successful at business while standing next to a PERSON SUCCESSFUL AT BUSINESS was LAUGHABLE.)
If we are talking about top-25 or top-50 universities, or many flagship state universities, I think a lot of traditional liberal arts majors are seen as more challenging and intellectually rigorous than a lot of business degrees. (I think probably the more old-fashioned your liberal arts degree's name is, the better -- "philosophy" and "history" are probably more respected than "American media studies" regardless of how rigorous the latter is.)
"An English major can build a cozy home somewhere in the middle of that divide. ... But the key is that you are an interpreter, and for the most part, a content-agnostic interpreter for both sides; you can get the major points of how something works via subject matter experts or research or hands-on time, and distill it down into something that an average user can follow and understand."
This is literally my job now; when I talk to software developers, I tell them that my job is to translate software into lawyer, and then lawyer back into software if necessary, and to try to make it easy and painless. My job is to help lawyers and regulators understand what software is doing, and then to help software developers understand laws and regulations. They both want to understand each other! But it can be a really difficult divide to bridge, and my whole entire job is translating that. (And what makes me good at my job is that I make it seem straightforward instead of scary and software people feel like they can rely on me to hand-hold them through the process without drama.)
I majored in theology. I also have a master's (also theology) and a law degree. The theology was SO much more rigorous than the law, although conveniently the law has a Bar Exam to say "yes, you are marginally competent." I have an eclectic job history, but what unites all of my jobs is that I am REALLY GOOD at gaining competency in complicated topics REALLY FAST, and I'm really good at communicating to a lot of different audiences in a lot of different ways. I'm good at understanding what people are not understanding, and then finding a different way to bridge that gap.
I guess I have three larger points: 1) the reputation of the college matters way more than the course of study; 2) excellent grades matter more than the specific degree -- if Art History gets you a 4.0 and Marketing gets you a 2.5, do the friggin' Art History; and 3) critical thinking and communication skills are basically ALWAYS at a premium, and a liberal arts degree is an AMAZING way to acquire them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:26 PM on February 28, 2023 [10 favorites]
Ben Schmidt tweets - criticizing the article’s trend data presentation
posted by brendano at 9:25 PM on February 28, 2023
posted by brendano at 9:25 PM on February 28, 2023
GOP nominees for president famously love to dunk on philosophy degrees as "useless," but they're regularly the highest-earning humanities degree, and out-earn ALL business degrees. (The things that earn more are highly-specialized engineering degrees, math, and physics.)A philosophy undergrad is effective at teaching you to do well on standardised tests (or is selected by students who already crush tests) but doesn't impress employers the way that STEM degrees do. A lot of philosophy graduates end up in law or med school.
Reading this article I felt so sorry for the students signing up for clueless humanities departments that have no idea how to market their graduates to employers beyond buzzwords and desperately pretending to be somehow associated with STEM.
A business degree at a generic state school isn't going to teach you much of anything and you're probably not going to make that many useful connections but if you can get a good GPA at least you're going to be able to get past the first round of resume screening once the recession hits and the labour market gets rough again.
posted by zymil at 12:09 AM on March 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was very much at a crossroads at the end of highschool: my english and history teachers were urging me to go journalism or humanities, and my STEM teachers were...well, largely silent other than calling me a lazy ass because I did no work and got high B's. But I went into STEM anyway because I figured it's where the money was.
But because I have continued to read widely and think a lot about how to convey information and thread what I know into discussions, I am a much better STEM practitioner overall and a lot of my job now involves tuning up proposals and reports. But my more stemmy stem colleagues get visibly annoyed with me when I say stuff like "This report has no narrative arc." or "We need to tell a story here." when to them it's just data and consequences and they seem to feel somehow that i am being fundamentally dishonest, whereas I know when all the client has for 20k is an environmental assessment report that goes "thump" when you drop it on the floor, you'd better make the executive summary punchy because it may be all they read to judge the value of their purchase.
When I was an undergraduate (engineering, ontario) I sat in a meeting once with the accreditation board to discuss the quality of the cirriculum and i said "there's no writing component and most of my classmates actively shy away from writing even single sentences clearly and surely this will make them less effective practitioners in future?" and everyone stared at me like I had two heads and went back to talking about the equipment in the Fluid Mechanics lab.
I occasionally wonder where my life would have been different if i had gone the humanities route. Based on this thread it feels like I would have struggled. On the third hand, I have two daughters at uni now and one is in stem (biochem) and one is in arts (film studies BFA) and the arts kid is WAY happier with her day to day learning experience than I think I ever was. i am frankly a bit jealous of this. She says "I don't know dad, I mean it's not like it's hard like engineering" and I say "all I know is I spent most of 4 years just making sure I was sitting in the right room to stare at equations i didn't really understand, and you're out MAKING STUFF that MAKES YOU HAPPY."
posted by hearthpig at 5:26 AM on March 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
But because I have continued to read widely and think a lot about how to convey information and thread what I know into discussions, I am a much better STEM practitioner overall and a lot of my job now involves tuning up proposals and reports. But my more stemmy stem colleagues get visibly annoyed with me when I say stuff like "This report has no narrative arc." or "We need to tell a story here." when to them it's just data and consequences and they seem to feel somehow that i am being fundamentally dishonest, whereas I know when all the client has for 20k is an environmental assessment report that goes "thump" when you drop it on the floor, you'd better make the executive summary punchy because it may be all they read to judge the value of their purchase.
When I was an undergraduate (engineering, ontario) I sat in a meeting once with the accreditation board to discuss the quality of the cirriculum and i said "there's no writing component and most of my classmates actively shy away from writing even single sentences clearly and surely this will make them less effective practitioners in future?" and everyone stared at me like I had two heads and went back to talking about the equipment in the Fluid Mechanics lab.
I occasionally wonder where my life would have been different if i had gone the humanities route. Based on this thread it feels like I would have struggled. On the third hand, I have two daughters at uni now and one is in stem (biochem) and one is in arts (film studies BFA) and the arts kid is WAY happier with her day to day learning experience than I think I ever was. i am frankly a bit jealous of this. She says "I don't know dad, I mean it's not like it's hard like engineering" and I say "all I know is I spent most of 4 years just making sure I was sitting in the right room to stare at equations i didn't really understand, and you're out MAKING STUFF that MAKES YOU HAPPY."
posted by hearthpig at 5:26 AM on March 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
Ted fuckin' Cruz and Marco fuckin' Rubio standing there talking about how business degrees make people rich and successful at business while standing next to a PERSON SUCCESSFUL AT BUSINESS was LAUGHABLE.
Bit of a derail, but although Carly Fiorina's career has enriched her personally, I'm not sure I would call her "successful at business" in the sense of actually providing value for businesses she's run. Wouldn't necessarily blame her college majors for that, though.
posted by jackbishop at 6:25 AM on March 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Bit of a derail, but although Carly Fiorina's career has enriched her personally, I'm not sure I would call her "successful at business" in the sense of actually providing value for businesses she's run. Wouldn't necessarily blame her college majors for that, though.
posted by jackbishop at 6:25 AM on March 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I guess I have three larger points: 1) the reputation of the college matters way more than the course of study; 2) excellent grades matter more than the specific degree -- if Art History gets you a 4.0 and Marketing gets you a 2.5, do the friggin' Art History; and 3) critical thinking and communication skills are basically ALWAYS at a premium, and a liberal arts degree is an AMAZING way to acquire them.
I agree with the first, with the caveat that a lot of what that is showing is that top-tier schools receive mostly students with incredible amounts of social capital, who are going to succeed regardless of where they go to school. Of the people with whom I went to school and am still in touch with in a loose way (like on Facebook or Linkedin), only one has visibly struggled with finding stable work, mostly due to mental health issues. All the others have (as far as one can tell from the outside) livable incomes ranging from modest (eg tenure-track prof at a low-tier institution; working artist) to extremely high (tech executive; business owner), with most being salaried professionals of one type or another. But, I went to a highly-ranked school, where almost all my classmates had highly educated parents and all kinds of other advantages in life, so it isn't any great surprise that most went on to grad school and then into stable careers.
I'm not so sure about the importance of grades; at a minimum, the reputation of the institution will trump grades every time. Mine were low in undergrad and it was never an issue. (My grad school grades were high, but that's because most grad schools operate on a highly inflated grading system, not because I suddenly got smarter.) Grades are a lot more critical if you are applying to the kinds of internships and entry level jobs where they use undergrad grades as a screening device, or if you are applying to grad school directly out of undergrad where all they have to look at are your grades, obviously. Once you have been working for a while, diplomas are just a thing you either have or don't have, no one is ever going to ask or know if you squeaked through with a C- average or aced every class.
Your third point I 100% agree with, and I think is exactly what some people miss when they focus on what degree might lead most immediately to an entry level job description, without considering potential benefits from liberal arts degrees.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:50 AM on March 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I agree with the first, with the caveat that a lot of what that is showing is that top-tier schools receive mostly students with incredible amounts of social capital, who are going to succeed regardless of where they go to school. Of the people with whom I went to school and am still in touch with in a loose way (like on Facebook or Linkedin), only one has visibly struggled with finding stable work, mostly due to mental health issues. All the others have (as far as one can tell from the outside) livable incomes ranging from modest (eg tenure-track prof at a low-tier institution; working artist) to extremely high (tech executive; business owner), with most being salaried professionals of one type or another. But, I went to a highly-ranked school, where almost all my classmates had highly educated parents and all kinds of other advantages in life, so it isn't any great surprise that most went on to grad school and then into stable careers.
I'm not so sure about the importance of grades; at a minimum, the reputation of the institution will trump grades every time. Mine were low in undergrad and it was never an issue. (My grad school grades were high, but that's because most grad schools operate on a highly inflated grading system, not because I suddenly got smarter.) Grades are a lot more critical if you are applying to the kinds of internships and entry level jobs where they use undergrad grades as a screening device, or if you are applying to grad school directly out of undergrad where all they have to look at are your grades, obviously. Once you have been working for a while, diplomas are just a thing you either have or don't have, no one is ever going to ask or know if you squeaked through with a C- average or aced every class.
Your third point I 100% agree with, and I think is exactly what some people miss when they focus on what degree might lead most immediately to an entry level job description, without considering potential benefits from liberal arts degrees.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:50 AM on March 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
It really, really irks me how the purpose and value of a capital-E Education has been misapprehended by the kind of people that are going to lead this world into a future not worth living in.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:55 AM on March 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 6:55 AM on March 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
A lot of philosophy graduates end up in law or med school.
So...their degree lays the foundation for them to go on to two professions which are still, even allowing for the way widening inequality is doing a number on the middle class, generally pretty well-paying and respected? Hm.
posted by praemunire at 7:57 AM on March 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
So...their degree lays the foundation for them to go on to two professions which are still, even allowing for the way widening inequality is doing a number on the middle class, generally pretty well-paying and respected? Hm.
posted by praemunire at 7:57 AM on March 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, you guys, this may be a total I Am Old Get Off My Law Situation, but I work in a nominally creative business (advertising) in a small-ish city and I look at resumes and hire all the time. And I gotta say: I cannot imagine anyone's undergraduate GPA having the slightest degree of bearing at all on whether they will be good at their job.
But then again, the vast majority of people I hire (even for tech-adjacent work) have humanities degrees.
posted by thivaia at 8:21 AM on March 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
But then again, the vast majority of people I hire (even for tech-adjacent work) have humanities degrees.
posted by thivaia at 8:21 AM on March 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
I appreciated that the article pointed out all the ways in which external support for humanities majors has evaporated, outside of the core educational experience itself. That includes things like state funding for universities, but also support for finding a career path after you graduate:
During the postwar swell of public funding for education, conveyances picked up humanities students right where their B.A. diplomas left them: they could go to graduate school, and on to a stable, rewarding career in teaching and writing; or they could leave the academy for arts-and-letters careers plainly valued by society and at least remunerative enough to sustain a modest middle-class life.
A business or engineering student can often rely on support from their school to find internships during their education, and these often lead to job offers after they graduate. Even students who didn't do internships may have a straightforward path through University career offices, as large companies work directly with schools they're familiar with (often because they already employ alumni of those schools).
I don't get the impression that those kinds of direct "pipelines" exist any more for humanities majors. My impression is that someone with an English or Philosophy degree generally has to blaze their own trail -- no one is actively waiting to employ them at the end of their degree. While they may statistically "catch up" with other majors in the end, I can see how that would add some relative risk to the major for a student considering their loan situation.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 8:53 AM on March 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
During the postwar swell of public funding for education, conveyances picked up humanities students right where their B.A. diplomas left them: they could go to graduate school, and on to a stable, rewarding career in teaching and writing; or they could leave the academy for arts-and-letters careers plainly valued by society and at least remunerative enough to sustain a modest middle-class life.
A business or engineering student can often rely on support from their school to find internships during their education, and these often lead to job offers after they graduate. Even students who didn't do internships may have a straightforward path through University career offices, as large companies work directly with schools they're familiar with (often because they already employ alumni of those schools).
I don't get the impression that those kinds of direct "pipelines" exist any more for humanities majors. My impression is that someone with an English or Philosophy degree generally has to blaze their own trail -- no one is actively waiting to employ them at the end of their degree. While they may statistically "catch up" with other majors in the end, I can see how that would add some relative risk to the major for a student considering their loan situation.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 8:53 AM on March 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
My impression is that someone with an English or Philosophy degree generally has to blaze their own trail -- no one is actively waiting to employ them at the end of their degree.
This is the biggest thing that I wish somebody had told me before I chose a major (linguistics, which is technically a social science but also fits the general rubric of "there is no direct obvious career path from your BA"). I was never going to be good at explaining to hiring managers how my linguistics degree prepared me for whatever. I was never going to be good at networking my way into a generic office job.
I feel like I'm the kind of person who should have majored in computer science not because I'm particularly good at computer science, but because I yearned for a career path where my next steps were obvious, and people would look at my degree and say "yes, she can do that thing."
I loved my classes and I do think that I benefited hugely from the skills that a humanities degree is supposed to teach you - I got big ideas and critical theory and I also wrote a pretty good paper on the phonology of Homer Simpson saying "tuba-ma-ba" and "saxo-ma-phone" - so, I don't know, fundamentally I want to be on the side of people saying "Hey, humanities degrees are actually very useful and practical and flexible!" - I just got stuck at the step of turning that into a job.
posted by Jeanne at 9:40 AM on March 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
This is the biggest thing that I wish somebody had told me before I chose a major (linguistics, which is technically a social science but also fits the general rubric of "there is no direct obvious career path from your BA"). I was never going to be good at explaining to hiring managers how my linguistics degree prepared me for whatever. I was never going to be good at networking my way into a generic office job.
I feel like I'm the kind of person who should have majored in computer science not because I'm particularly good at computer science, but because I yearned for a career path where my next steps were obvious, and people would look at my degree and say "yes, she can do that thing."
I loved my classes and I do think that I benefited hugely from the skills that a humanities degree is supposed to teach you - I got big ideas and critical theory and I also wrote a pretty good paper on the phonology of Homer Simpson saying "tuba-ma-ba" and "saxo-ma-phone" - so, I don't know, fundamentally I want to be on the side of people saying "Hey, humanities degrees are actually very useful and practical and flexible!" - I just got stuck at the step of turning that into a job.
posted by Jeanne at 9:40 AM on March 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
I feel like a lot of the career qualities that people ascribe to humanities degrees of fifty years ago have more to do with class than education. Like this:
During the postwar swell of public funding for education, conveyances picked up humanities students right where their B.A. diplomas left them: they could go to graduate school, and on to a stable, rewarding career in teaching and writing; or they could leave the academy for arts-and-letters careers plainly valued by society and at least remunerative enough to sustain a modest middle-class life.
Has a stable, rewarding career in writing ever existed for most people who haven't had some financial backstop? And to what extent is the social value of a 4-year arts-and-letters degree tied to the relative prestige of university education in general, as college enrollment has increased over decades?
Grad school, of course, continued to be a conveyance.
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:29 PM on March 1, 2023
During the postwar swell of public funding for education, conveyances picked up humanities students right where their B.A. diplomas left them: they could go to graduate school, and on to a stable, rewarding career in teaching and writing; or they could leave the academy for arts-and-letters careers plainly valued by society and at least remunerative enough to sustain a modest middle-class life.
Has a stable, rewarding career in writing ever existed for most people who haven't had some financial backstop? And to what extent is the social value of a 4-year arts-and-letters degree tied to the relative prestige of university education in general, as college enrollment has increased over decades?
Grad school, of course, continued to be a conveyance.
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:29 PM on March 1, 2023
Has a stable, rewarding career in writing ever existed for most people who haven't had some financial backstop?
Sorta? I took a non-fiction writing class with a professor who got his start in NYC in the 80s. He lived in a downright cheap apartment in alphabet city, and could recall the occasional sight of fires from landlords burning down their buildings as insurance fraud. Which is to say, there was a reason his rent was so affordable. He grew up working class, so he didn't have money to fall back on. He was able to pay his way through freelance writing, which did once pay more (at least when adjusted for inflation). Eventually, he managed to launch a very successful career as a writer.
posted by coffeecat at 10:23 AM on March 2, 2023
Sorta? I took a non-fiction writing class with a professor who got his start in NYC in the 80s. He lived in a downright cheap apartment in alphabet city, and could recall the occasional sight of fires from landlords burning down their buildings as insurance fraud. Which is to say, there was a reason his rent was so affordable. He grew up working class, so he didn't have money to fall back on. He was able to pay his way through freelance writing, which did once pay more (at least when adjusted for inflation). Eventually, he managed to launch a very successful career as a writer.
posted by coffeecat at 10:23 AM on March 2, 2023
« Older "Intent is far less important than impact when it... | Ron DeSantis's Vague Military Resume May Be... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
We have always been very clear with our kids about the long-term costs of a degree, and also about the lifetime importance of a degree.
I am someone who studied what he loved -- but found work in a totally different field. Despite me saying often, "Get an accounting degree because there's always work there, and do what you love on the side," they have chosen to study what interests them: elementary education, computer science, and biology. *shrug* Not exactly starving poets, but not obedient Accounting majors, either. :7)
Are the kids all right? Not the ones who face giant loan-servicing obligations, certainly -- which I believe distorts their selection, because the prospect of six-figure debt obligations that will span decades are freaking terrifying. I believe that many more students would choose a liberal arts degree if they didn't face monthly payments that absolutely require the kind of steady income that a STEM or business degree makes more likely.
(In other words, I think it sucks, but I get why they make that choice.)
posted by wenestvedt at 11:43 AM on February 28, 2023 [7 favorites]