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Comment by finaliteration | Hacker News Reader

I think the other advantage is that at most community colleges you are required to branch out from technical topics and take at least a few humanities and liberal arts courses. You end up coming out slightly more well-rounded which can be hugely beneficial both career and life wise.

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Is there actually good evidence on the value of a "well-rounded education"?

But in any case, I don't think shoe-horning general education into what is basically jobs training is the right approach. We put kids through 12 years of "general education", if we haven't succeeded at that point, why would a few more college credits help?

I’m not sure that knowing about Æthelred the Unready is particularly useful for most jobs, but if you think of these classes as (covertly) teaching critical thinking and writing skills, then perhaps they make some sense even if you don’t value knowing about the world beyond your particular specialization.

But are they actually teaching critical thinking successfully? And why would you need to wait until college for those effects to show up? The humanities classes are taught throughout regular schooling.

Not at that level its only when you get to A level and Uni you realy get to do much critical thinking.

The community college where I teach has English 001C: Critical Thinking/Composition -- “This course presents the elements of critical reasoning and logic. Students will learn to identify the basic structures of arguments and the ways people use language to fortify or to falsify arguments. Students will analyze and demonstrate these techniques by writing and critiquing essays and using research strategies.”

So, does this course actually work at instilling critical thinking in students, outside the narrow classroom setting? Does this effect persist over the long term? Is it better or worse to teach this in the context of composition, or something more domain-specific, e.g. economics/government policy?

I feel like people making claims that education that students don't ask for is useful have the burden of showing that it is does what they say it will, empirically, and not get to hand wave about "critical thinking" or "well-roundedness".

Helps you pass the "Airport Test" If you have spent your uni years rote learning you not going to do very well.

If say you had been in the foot lights (Cambridge) got a blue or been on university challenge.

Our in a very interesting case when I worked at BT, been a under 21 international and had his foot blown off in the Balkan wars and been medevac'd to the UK

you're not required to do humanities/liberal arts at US universities?

I was referring to the “boot camps” that have popped up and not so much universities (where you are required to do those things, yes).

Outside the USA and its cultural appendages, Canada, South Korea and the like, it is assumed that anyone who goes to university has studied the liberal arts at secondary/high school. Given the low quality of secondary education in the US in the formative period of its third level system this could not be assumed so what would in Europe be considered (grammar school) high school classes and subjects are taught at university.

You've somehow gotten strange ideas about the programs available at US high schools.

For instance, calculus is pretty widely available even if it isn't a diploma requirement.

The big differences in Universities between the US and Europe developed over a century ago and were the result of philosophical disagreements about what qualifies as a liberal education. It had nothing to do with poor quality secondary education.

Parts of the US have world class secondary education and parts don't--just like Europe. Even taken as a whole the US education system ranks higher than many countries in Europe.

>South Korea

The South Korean education system is nothing like the US education system. It's hard to think of a large country more different from the US in this regard.

The US doesn't have "low standards", it has broader access to liberal arts education than Europe. It ends universal secondary education at grade 12, so the grade 13 (at college) completes the "liberal arts" foundation. European countries simply do grades 12 and 13 in a separate school between secondary school and university, for students that weren't forced out after grade 11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form_college

It varies, but students are typically required to do anything from half a year to one year of breadth courses outside their major, which would mean arts and humanities courses for those headed into technical disciplines. But many students take what are called AP courses in high school which count as college credits, and quite a few students are able to satisfy breadth requirements that way. And some narrow programs, such as engineering degrees, require next to no work outside the main field of study.

On the other hand, at some institutions one can satisfy the major minimally without a whole lot of courses, leaving plenty of time for non-technical courses.

So to summarize, there is a lot of variability. A US graduate in a technical discipline may have taken anywhere from zero to two years of arts and humanities courses.

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