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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

If somebody is passionate about art history, then they should get a degree in art history regardless of job prospects. You are limiting their ability to get the education they want.

Now I will agree that somebody getting an art history type degree shouldn't be taking loans to get it, they should be paying for it out of their pocket. However we should not limit somebody from pursuing their interests just because their interests are not valuable to society.

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I think the argument is to not prevent people from getting art history degrees - just to make all art history courses in the US artificially limit the number of students they take in to match the actual demand.

So if someone's super passionate about art history and is also able to meet the (presumably) more stringent entry criteria, they will still be able to get that degree.

Or maybe let people pay for Art History degrees if they want to.

And the free program should be based on Merit, and career demand.

Thats what they do for high demand degrees like Engg and Medicine in Pakistan. In Govt. colleges education is virtually free if you are admitted on merit, else you can go for self finance

And then what do you when most of the female medical students drop out and get married because the degree was just a tool in rishta negotiations? Why should working poor subsidize a status game?

Scholarships. That's the concept you're grasping for.

Sure, Federal Scholarships. Lots of them.

"And the free program should be based on Merit, and career demand."

Who chooses what defines "Merit"?

The accredited colleges.

If you get accepted to their program, it's free for you.

Accreditation means auditing to standards and performance.

just to make all art history courses in the US artificially limit the number of students they take in to match the actual demand.

Why? Surely part of the 'charm' of University is to get chance to study thing you know nothing about just to see if that happens to be your thing, plus studying things just because you enjoy it.

Sure we probably shouldn't encourage too many people to get art history degrees, but why not let people take some art history courses just because they find the topic fascinating?

It seems like lending institutions should be taking these statistics into account when rejecting applications. I suspects there are federal regulations in place that prevent this. Maybe the government would rather cover the risk and promote a more educated population than let the education economy stabilize freely.

Fair enough. And I'm just talking out of my ass about my own theories, here. I still welcome conversation to try to inform myself.

Roughly, I think we should think in terms of Trade Schools and Liberal Arts programs.

I'm a huge fan of Liberal Arts programs, but I don't think they should be a pre-requisite for a STEM career. They also shouldn't be a pre-requisite for many jobs that people have today.

We should all be much more in favor of Mentoring. Maybe Corporations should receive tax benefits for being good Mentors.

I think Liberal Arts programs absolutely should be a prereq for STEM careers. One of the reasons tech is in the state it is, is due to the lack of ethics courses taught.

Sure, make it a huge contributing factor in promotion, moving to project management, etc.

But not a pre-req for day one, earning a salary.

Hell, let's make some Continuing Education demands on STEM.

Again, I strongly disagree. Make it a requirement before writing a single line of code. The impact this industry has on the world is such that ethics training is a must.

Anyone should be able to write code.

Accepting a pull request (code reviews) should require training.

Launching code requires even more training.

I've posted this before, but a year or so ago I was at a major medical research conference for my field (infectious diseases). I was struck when I realized that in every single plenary talk, given by people at the peak of their careers and having a huge impact on science, there was something that betrayed an underlying liberal arts education.

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