Gutting humanities in favor of “practical” degrees is short-sighted in the extreme. The problem with humanities is not that it doesn’t provide value to the community, the problem is that it is difficult to monetize skills in the humanities.
There is a pathology that larger organizations often develop where they start investing only in ideas that where they can measure the impact on the time scale of a performance review cycle. For example, any project where the results can’t be measured in one or two quarters might be dead on arrival, depending on what company you work for.
The same kind of short-term, narrow-minded thinking is what makes people dismiss humanities.
We would be just as well served if we went back to learning classics, for example. I was disappointed to go through college having touched nothing older than Shakespeare officially.
But I got plenty of feminist and minority-focused literature that was irrelevant to my particular (non-white) echnicity. Why should these modern authors take such a heavy precedence? Isn't it hubris to presume that your ideas are superior simply because they are new? Students are a captive audience when the entire institution is leaning in the same direction.
People don't have to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to paint or sculpt or whatever - it may not be proficient and lifelike but it'll still be art.
Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I don't think it's important to the overall argument of your comment, but this is incredibly reductive. If one has little appreciation for a particular form of art maybe this is true, but if, for example, all orchestras or other classical music ensembles were comprised of less proficient musicians I'd sooner stop listening to classical music altogether.
> Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I'm not sure if it was your intention, but quoting the word culture comes off as disparaging, but given the tone of your comment it certainly seems so.
I think I would've agreed with you if you'd simply said "engineers shouldn't be forced to take humanities in higher education; doing so is largely ineffective, at least in terms of imparting cultural appreciation and other related soft skills." Instead, I can't help but read it and think that it's single-minded and tone-deaf.
Value judgements merely reflect the person that created them.
We don’t actually live in a world governed only by the hard sciences. There are people here too, and I’d argue that understanding people is just as difficult as understanding the laws of physics.
Some of the biggest challenges in society today are not questions of hard science, but rather about people and groups and institutions. I think our current situation exemplifies this.
It's only because of the harsh economic reality of America's university system that such a prospect is even thinkable.
They're also far easier to manage, less noisy, you aren't on your feet for hours.