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Comment by supahfly_remix | Hacker News Reader

> The college, Ms. Nobles said, offers the possibility of a renewal for humanities studies at M.I.T., where students flock to computer science and engineering.

Do MIT students major in humanities subjects, or is the department's purpose to make engineering students well-rounded through taking electives in their department?

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Last year, 90 degrees in the Humanities were awarded by MIT out of a total of 3,490. This presumably includes double majors.

The largest subcategory was Economics, which is considered a humanity subject at MIT.

https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-awarded

There are also a fair number of other majors that aren't in the School of Humanities but also aren't what most people would consider STEM like the fairly large School of Architecture, which includes things like Urban Studies and Planning.

The overall number also includes a fairly large number of degrees, mostly masters, from the Sloan School of Management.

Both. Undergrads have certain humanities requirements to fulfill - obviously some are natural fans, others treat it like an "eat your broccoli" requirement. Independent of requirements, MIT also has a fairly good reputation for philosophy, political science, linguistics, media studies, and a few other areas.

Ya, also Noam Chomsky, who has a bit of infamy, is an MIT professor of linguistics.

Interesting that you choose to remark on Chomsky's political views rather than the fact that he is one of the most influential (and highly cited) academics in modern history.

He's also notorious in linguistics for heckling anyone who proposes an approach other than universal generative grammar.

I’m pretty neutral on Chomsky’s politics. I’m only pointing out that he is controversial as any good liberal arts professor should be.

That being said, his LAD and UG theories have mostly not been useful, as we’ve seen to have done better with....ML (ironically enough).

Last year he took a position at Arizona.

He is still an emeritus professor at MIT.

It is possible to major in humanities subjects at MIT but it's rather rare. See the statistics at https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count .

Both. Students are required to take humanities classes as well as declare a concentration. Many often choose to minor or major in humanities alongside a science or engineering degree. A handful end up graduating with only a humanities degree. My high school physics professor actually graduated MIT with a writing degree before returning for a PhD in physics.

I myself double majored in Music Composition and Computer Science and have spent my career so far working at their intersection. The strength of their music department was a big part of the reason I applied to and attended MIT.

MIT has also been combining majors like Econ and CS--I'm not sure how these things can be counted.

https://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-creates-new-major-computer-sci...

You can major in humanities at MIT, albeit it's somewhat uncommon.

I'm an MIT alumnus ('92). A friend of mine specifically went to MIT to study political science, because of the high-quality faculty and the very small number of students majoring in it. He was one of four majors our year, and got to know the professors very well. He had a blast.

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