Comment by Annatar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Annatar | Hacker News Reader

The analysis neglects one major point: a lot of people got degrees in the humanities and arts: dual majors in English literature and history, or sociology and psychology... what are you going to engineer with that? Engineering requires physics, mathematics, molecular biology, chemistry, material science, higher logic and cognitive capacity... English literature won't help too much with finding a new tensile strength alloy, and sociology can be only marginally used at best when trying to design a small form factor pump which must reliably pump inordinate amounts of gas or fluid, or when attempting to craft a VHDL or Verilog program to reprogram the FPGA, in order to test a new chip design, or when studying protein folding while trying to isolate the cause of cancer...

Just going to college and getting a degree in something like sociology or English literature, because it's the easy way out, isn't enough to end poverty; no wonder it does not work! Ironically, those very same history majors did not learn from history: most humanities and arts majors (poets, writers) were poor.

It has to be a university degree for the professions in demand, and the graduate must be ambitious, pay attention to detail, and want to deliver high quality work, not take shortcuts at every turn and opportunity "because math is hard".

I've always thought the smartest people study humanities, and this post just confirmed how dumb the engineering mindset can be.

Perhaps that is true. Humanities & arts majors have very high social intelligence, which often lands them into management positions, but then both they and the company start suffering from the Peter's principle, and the results have been devastating throughout history of mankind, as good networking and personal skills are woefully inadequate at solving hard problems which require lots of knowledge, creativity and logic.

Those who do not study history, and do not learn from it (as is ironically often the case with history majors) are doomed to repeat it, and re-invent it, poorly.

Still, engineering mindset aside, how do you explain that so many people with college degrees are poor, while the engineers don't feel that pain?

smart != saleable skills

The vast majority of challenges organisations face are wedded in how they interact with society. If a groups not working well together, is it knowledge and creativity that's the problem, or social and value clashes between members. The vast majority of day-to-day management challenges fall into the latter category, so no wonder management attracts people that are interested in "social intelligence" and we tend to be interested in what we're perceived to be good at.

Having studied both in arts and sciences I would say that both approaches have advantages when applied in the real-world, and limitations. I don't believe (or know of any evidence) that "Arts" people are more likely to suffer the Peter principle. It's a function of seniority that you lose information versus specialists in an area - so if anything it's connected with bombastically believing you're right rather than what degree you did.

The smartest people and the stupidest people study humanities.

If you're very intelligent, you can do very well with a social science or humanities degree. In fact, you will do better than with a STEM degree—the highest positions in society are dominated by people with non-STEM degrees.

On the other hand, it's very easy to end up un(der)employed if you're not particularly intelligent and got a humanities degree. Meanwhile, your equally intelligent peer who got an engineering degree is doing just fine as developer or technician.

there are far more jobs that require non-engineering skills than those that do. lawyer, manager, masseuse, interior decorator, barista, ceo, journalist, teacher, non-profit grant writer, truck driver, events planner, politician, secretary, banker, chef, farmer, firefighter, fashion designer, etc. etc. etc. the demand for service sector jobs is steadily rising, as well, as people get more disposable income and more production is off-shored.

So if every "social science" major (and why not add business and law students) instead studied engineering, they'd all find jobs? I'm not even asking about well-paid jobs. Is there a shortage of engineers on the market now? Would more engineers magically lead to more jobs (supply-side economics works so well... oh no!)?

What's the difference between "anyone can be rich" and "everyone can be rich"? Because this is similar. Yes, anyone can better themselves through more education in "the right field". What makes you think that "anyone" and "everyone" is the same problem?

Have a look at science and the problem of Ph.D.s to find jobs in their fields (chemistry, physics, biology - not "social science" Ph.D.s): http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-... (also has a Part #2 linked at the bottom)

Of course not; hardcore, laissez faire capitalism like there is in the United States would correct that, and the salaries would go down. However, as it stands, there is an overabundance of humanities & arts majors, and way too little engineers and scientists; meanwhile, the industry has been almost completely off-shored over the last 60 years. The only thing left for those people to do is work in the service industry, if they are lucky. But when too many compete for a limited resource, selection kicks in, and overabundance drops the wages. Education won't help with that, as we see, but it might help with organizing oneself, or "going at it on one's own" and opening a business.

A good lesson to learn from that would be that hard core, laissez faire capitalism is just as destructive as a totalitarian communist system. In order for the population to be able to live comfortably, capitalism must be enhanced with socialist safeguards and a system of checks and balances built in, like Sweden, Austria, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland did it. Switzerland for example has low taxes and respects private property, and especially protects and fosters enterpreneurship, making it very corporate friendly, but it also has a very strong welfare safety net. One would think that would make a lot of Swiss draw on unemployment and disability, but Swiss work 42 hours per week minimum (compare and contrast to France, where they work 35 to 37), and unemployment in Switzerland is among the lowest in the world.

"According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities majors account for about 12 percent of recent graduates, and art history majors are so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example for people bemoaning the state of higher education."

From http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-06/postrel-ho.... See also https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/stem-still-no-shortage-c6f6eed505....

(Yes, I get that you're not talking about art history majors, per se, but I still think the sentiment is such that these are apt discussions to link to)

>> So if every "social science" major (and why not add business and law students) instead studied engineering

You can study engineering and not be much more than a peon checking plans, measuring tolerances.

You can NOT study engineering and come up with a fantastic design for a new device.

It doesn't matter what you study, you can't teach creativity, inventiveness, drive (and need).

If you're good at software engineering you can create your own job.

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