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Comment by LesZedCB | Hacker News Reader

society needs liberal arts just as much as workers which are useful to capitalists.

Does society really need a large portion of its population to be subsidized in binge drinking and partying for 4 years, as much as it needs people trained in technical skills?

If you look at the study data on retained knowledge and hours studied in the liberal arts, they paint an unflattering view of what a 'liberal arts education' really is today. I am all in favor of people studying philosophy, history, and language, but I'm not sure how much it helps society, and students aren't learning anything anyway.

this is a non-argument and doesn't address the point made by the post you're responding to.

certainly engineering students are just as free to binge drink and party for 4 years and not learn anything. a fuck up who drops out of their engineering degree program and defaults on their student loans is just as much of a fuck up as someone who did the same while studying literary criticism.

I'm saying that the liberal arts majors who graduate are spending far more time drinking and partying than learning or thinking. If they are spending so much time partying, and don't retain any knowledge (as there are many studies which attest to that), I don't see the value in subsidizing this behavior.

I still don't understand your point. Do you mean to imply that there is something inherent to liberal arts majors that makes them inclined to be binge drinkers?

honestly, what are you actually trying to say? it sounds like you're making a blanket accusation, without evidence, against a group of millions of people.

There is tons of evidence that time studying has plummeted, especially in the liberal arts, while leisure time has increased dramatically.[1][2] Please note that these behavioural changes have taken place while subsidies to education have increased.

I challenge you to find evidence that learning or studying is on the rise.

[1]http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/11/study-college-students-s...

[2] https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/its-a...

yeah, but what is your actual point? do you even have one or do you just want to grumble about how bad the kids are these days?

what is your position? what do you think the purpose the university is? do you think the behavioral problems you're discussing are causal or correlative?

I'm really just asking you to present a coherent statement of your opinion, whatever it is, because besides your general sense of hostility and derision I can't tell what you really think.

As someone who graduated college in 2011, I am one of 'the kids these days'.

I really don't know why people aren't taking advantage of University as a venue to read, exchange new ideas, and learn. All I know is that we have been increasing subsidies to borrowing, and the outcomes have not been good, so we should probably stop.

> I really don't know why people aren't taking advantage of University as a venue to read, exchange new ideas, and learn

my opinion/supposition:

because they are children and behave as children. childhood lasts well into your 20s for a large class of people in the United States.

because our society in general doesn't value reading, exchanging new ideas, and learning so why should the university be an exception? our society is currently entering a period where political/tribal struggle is _trumping_ almost all other concerns. when the social fabric is as frayed and torn as it currently is the university suffers.

because our society has established a strict regime of "credentialism" which has driven home the message that a university degree is a necessary credential for employment that provides a middle class income.

because it is a rational response to this social/economic trend to acquire the credential for the minimum of effort, since many students are only participating because of the need for the credential and they have no inherent love of the subject they're studying.

because those who really do have a love of reading, exchanging new ideas, and learning discover quickly that the university is not a particularly good environment for those activities after all, with all the distractions of careerism, politics, and economic stress that accompanies an academic life. (sidenote: this is why I dropped out of my PhD track in philosophy, and only years later went back to school for computer science)

but that's just my opinion on things, based on my experience in the university. I do allow for the possibility that somewhere, someone is having a better time with it.

my question for you:

you linked a few articles that were advancing the position that the university system should 1) be optimized for job skills training, and 2) should be generally dismantled/defunded as a social institution. do you support that position yourself?

I think you're at least mostly if not entirely on the money with what is happening at universities right now, but that doesn't make it better. I subscribe to Bryan Caplan's theory of the 'signalling model of education'.

My personal position is that universities should be exclusively focused on academic and non-applied science activities. They should almost entirely be liberal arts, and un-subsidized, probably focusing more on part-time studies and 2-3 year programs than degrees. This would be a model of university education as a venue for personal growth, and I would have liked to attend a university like this.

I would be against subsidizing the technical institutes (which would teach engineering, computer science, etc.), but would understand the reasoning in favor of it.

To answer your question in one word, "yes".

Counting hours studied is a lot like counting lines of code IMO. I'd personally rather live in a world where people are free to seek any fulfilling end, whatever that is. Painting liberal arts majors as lazy alcoholics isn't constructive to anyone.

The world wouldn't be a very interesting place if we were all engineers.

I don't think 'retained knowledge' is the best metric for deciding if a liberal arts education is worth it. A degree, particularly a liberal arts degree, seems (in my admittedly limited experience) to be geared towards honing critical thought, and the ability to express ideas well. I think this is important. And even though a lot of students may take it to the extreme, I think partying/socializing in college may be important too.

Ultimately, I think the issue is with insane tuition prices, not with people who want a liberal arts degree.

I think the subsidies are actually helping the universities (by driving up tuition), not the students. Aside from that, I don't think the evidence supports the idea that liberal arts college degrees are honing critical thought skills, though that would be a worthwhile pursuit. Here is a piece which sums up some of my issues with the case for the liberal arts.[1]

[1] http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2016/04/is-liberal-arts...

The economics are telling us that we can't afford the students that are coming out of these majors. Either these fields are not preparing students to be productive liberal artists or we're turning out more students than we need (or both).

More importantly, I think there are a few departments which have a negative impact on our society, namely those which exist solely to perpetuate an ideology at public expense.

I think defining social need by linking it to supply and demand for labor is dangerous and dehumanizing, and is in fact exactly what I was trying to point out in my comment.

edit: similarly, we need more engineers to rebuild basic infrastructure which would benefit society in tangible ways (Flint, Michigan?), but those jobs don't exist either. why?

> I think defining social need by linking it to supply and demand for labor is dangerous and dehumanizing

This is a false dichotomy. There's no need to dignify people in proportion to their economic output (or any other measure of human worth). We can assign dignity equally without pretending everyone contributes equally to society. Further, I think it's materially dangerous to push a bunch of people toward majors they can't afford and which won't support them financially because of some notion of a "social need" that is divorced from any economic reality.

> similarly, we need more engineers to rebuild basic infrastructure which would benefit society in tangible ways (Flint, Michigan?), but those jobs don't exist either. why?

Let me head you off--capitalism isn't perfect, it's just the best economic model humans have discovered to date. More importantly, fixing student loans and social security is a tractable problem; changing our national economic model is not. So let's not waste time debating what won't happen in our lifetimes.

Did you change your comment? I can't respond to your point if you respond to mine and then edit your comment to make it look more innocuous.

Also, just making the statement that capitalism is the best economic model doesn't make it true. Democratic control of the means of production absolutely makes more sense ethically and socially. I think it is quite possible we will see another big socialist revolution in our lifetime.

I began to rephrase it for clarity within 30 seconds of posting it. I didn't change my point to make it "look more innocuous".

> Also, just making the statement that capitalism is the best economic model doesn't make it true.

Feel free to point me to one with a better track record.

> Democratic control of the means of production absolutely makes more sense ethically and socially.

And every time it's attempted, it ends in disaster.

> I think it is quite possible we will see another big socialist revolution in our lifetime.

I hope not. Many places in the world are still recovering from the last one.

Anyway, I'm not interested in debating philosophies here. We have a practical problem at hand; there's no need to make it philosophical.

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