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Comment by rwyinuse | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion the main problem is that there are too many graduates from certain social sciences and humanities compared to the actual need of employers / academia. It would be better to have fewer scientists with adequate and consistent funding, than lots of underemployed scientists fighting for funding and living under constant uncertainty.

Scrapping all support for any particular branch of science is an overreaction, but cutting number of graduates in these fields and focusing funding only on the studies with most practical benefits could make sense. As an example, social scientist studying poverty, unemployment or crime could produce useful information for policymakers to reduce these phenomena, and cutting all funding from such research is probably a bad idea.

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> too many graduates from certain social sciences and humanities compared to the actual need of employers / academia.

The real problem is that college was never designed to be job preparation and (with limited exceptions) it does rather poorly at that. The idea was never that you'd go to college to research a subject at the bachelor level and then go into a career that directly uses what you learned—it wasn't always a white collar trade school.

Back when college was the privilege of the elite, it was about learning for learning's sake and about making connections and meeting people. It didn't especially matter what subject you chose to learn about—you're a member of the elite after all, and you either have money already or have the family connections to get it whatever you studied.

It seems to have only been once college started to democratize that we started expecting every subject to be job prep for something specific. On one level this makes sense—you can't actually democratize the experience of learning for learning's sake alone until you democratize being guaranteed sufficient money to live on. But only a few departments in most universities are even capable of reshaping themselves into job training programs, leaving the rest to now frantically justify their existence.

This is a huge problem because the knowledge produced by those departments—even while they were only the privilege of the elite—has been invaluable. But they don't meet the modern economics of the university.

The early universities outside of Europe where mostly vocational training for the clergy. And the first big expansion of US based public universities was with the land grant system, which explicitly focused on ag an engineering type programs - still often a strong suit of these universities today.

That's why those programs are some of the exceptions in being good at job prep, but rates of college attendance remained very low for another 80+ years until after WW2, so the elite who could afford to study whatever still made up a big chunk of most schools' income. As college attendance rates went higher and higher the job preparation need became the primary one the school is serving, which changed the economics in a way that simply having a few job preparation programs didn't.

Colleges started out as vocational schools for priests. For much of American history colleges were places for farmers or engineers to learn their crafts. For my entire lifetime colleges were places you went to prepare you for a career.

Colleges being mainly a place for elites to fraternize, if it ever really existed, was a short lived phenomenon and certainly not how they were founded or the role they serve now. No one is giving out hundred thousand dollar plus loans so that you can learn for the sake of learning.

Your history isn't really right here:

> Colleges started out as vocational schools for priests

There were three advanced schools (~graduate departments) at the typical medieval university: medicine, law, and theology.

> For much of American history colleges were places for farmers or engineers to learn their crafts.

I'm guessing you are basing this claim on the Morrill Act, which was to "provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the Mechanic arts."[0] It certainly doesn't describe the earlier American colleges like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, King's College (later Columbia), etc.

But even the state colleges that were founded with the help of the Morrill Act typically had loftier ambitions than acting as craft schools. e.g. from the inaugural speech of the founding of the University of California:

"The University is the most comprehensive term which can be employed to indicate a foundation for the promotion at diffusion of knowledge--a group of agencies organized to advance the arts and sciences of every sort, and to train young men as scholars for all the intellectual callings of life." [1]

But surely schools like Texas Agricultural and Mechanical were founded from the beginning with a focus on those practical skills? Nope: "Despite its name, the college taught no classes in agriculture, instead concentrating on classical studies, languages, literature, and applied mathematics." [2]

[0]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/morrill-act

[1]: https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb267nb0qk&brand=oac4&doc.v...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Texas_A%26M_Univers...

You say I am wrong but none of what you said actually contradicts what I claimed.

You mentioned there were 3 advanced schools at the typical medieval university. While this is true, what I said was what the first ones were founded as which was the divinity school.

Then your claims about what a founder said in his speech about what he hoped the school would one day become is pretty irrelevant to what I said and no way makes me wrong. Overall a pretty bizarre response.

> Colleges started out as vocational schools for priests

Not really. Higher education started with Ancient Egypt's "School of Life" (surveying, mathematics, architecture, medicine etc - physical sciences) and "School of Death" (religion, philosophy etc - social sciences). Both were intended to produce graduates who would do actual jobs rather than being places of elite making connections or priests reciting religious texts.

> Colleges started out as vocational schools for priests.

“Colleges” aren’t a particular well-defined class. “Universities” in the usual sense are specifically defined as distinguished from ecclesiastical schools, though the first were founded by religious communities, they had secular as well as religious degree programs.

The US state college system was pretty much never for elites, it was always about increasing the capacity of the country.

The US is a young country for this discussion. Other than maybe the likes of Harvard college was already democratizing around the world when US colleges started.

But how was "increasing the capacity of the country" conceptualized? I can believe that it was put together with the intention of strengthening the new country and building up institutions that it felt it needed, but that's not at all the same thing as being not for the elite (at the time of the founding of the first state schools we still had property requirements to vote!), much less that they conceived of it as job training.

For a primary source on how they conceptualized the role of the university, see the charter for the University of Georgia (1785) [0]. It essentially says that universities are really important and it would be unacceptable to have to send youths to foreign countries, so we're starting one here. They weren't reconceptualizing the university, they were funding the rapid development of institutions that would otherwise take centuries to develop if at all.

[0] https://sclfind.libs.uga.edu/sclfind/view?docId=ead%2FUA22-0...

I think another important issue is how the societal and cultural evaluation of university degrees compared to alternatives like apprenticeships in crafts has shifted.

The former is held in much higher regard as far as social standing goes even if we probably need many more of the latter, it requires lots of training as well, and you can even earn pretty good money.

> and you can even earn pretty good money.

This has not been true in my experience, I can't say I did it on purpose but I'm very thankful my primary profession is as a knowledge worker and I took on a trade as a side-hustle after the fact. A professional carpenter around here makes about $18-25/hr for what is a fairly time and labor intensive job with tight margins since customers are usually really price sensitive.

I think right on calling me out on that statement as it was likely a bit to broad. One differentiation that probably has to be made is whether you work as an employee or go self-employed/own your own small business, where you can earn significantly more.

Also my first thought was more towards craftsmen like electricians, plumbers or basically anyone working within the field of renewable energies/heating (espeically heat pumps)/insulating older houses. And at least those are in such high demand where i am at that they can demand high prices.

University started to learn law and medicine. Two things that were and still are very remunerative.

There's a reason why those have different degree abbreviations—they're a different kind of thing than the degrees universities later arrived at and spent centuries developing. And they and a few others (like engineering fields) are still the only ones that really work as job training.

It's a good point insofar as it shows the institution has never been static.

Theology was the main subject in first universities.

Can you share a source for this?

The oldest known university in europe wasn't about technology. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit%C3%A0_di_Bologna

You are reading too fast:)

I’m really not sure how many more Literature papers we need on Proust, Shakespeare, Beowulf, and on and on. They have to continue to pump out papers and books, exclusively read by other people in the same subjects. “Invaluable” this is not

How much money do you think the Lord of the Rings, as the modern multimedia francise it is, makes? Do you think Tolkien, the first time he cracked open an Old English tome of Beowulf thought to himself, "someday, being a Beowulf scholar will lead to me creating a vast amount of money for Warner Bros."?

Academic outcomes are nonlinear. Outside of the job-training-ified fields like engineering, there is seldom a direct "I studied X and then made a ton of money doing exactly that". The success stories, like Tolkien, are more like, "I studied X, then I lost a finger in the great war, then I typed up a manuscript of a children's fairy tale, fast forward 100 years and it's worth untold millions." It is a winding road. All that is gold does not glitter, not all who wander are lost.

I would transfer these people into making podcasts, self-published books, social media feeds, and other forms of content that are actually consumed. Trying to read one of these papers in an academic journal is mind numbing. The college model is way too expensive and has very little societal value vs. its cost

Academic papers aren't for mass consumption. You can't replace the depth of consideration and knowledge needed to write an academic paper with hosting a podcast or self-publishing a book. Writing for an audience of leading experts is inherently different from writing for consumption by non-experts.

And you can't just equate societal value with "how many people consume it". An academic paper is often as valuable as a tool for crystalizing thoughts in the mind of the author as it is a tool for communicating to the reader.

I kind of feel like you are missing the point of academia.

Can you link to a single high-impact Proust journal paper published in the last 50 years?

Have you read Proust? I haven’t. But, like, there is a dyed-in-wool anti-intellectual signal in people who argue vociferously against it.

You haven't actually measured the societal value because you can't. You might mean economic value, but you haven't measured that either.

Regardless, what makes money and what's good for society are orthogonal, and sometimes outright at odds with each other. Certainly, it's easier to make money via evil than make money via good. And, certainly, economy is flexible - it can be anything. We can have a strong economy making trains, if we want. "Free market" capitalism is not the sole economic system nor is it the most efficient. It seems China has a much more efficient economic system.

I argue higher education is good for society, even if it doesn't make money. Critical thinking is vital in decision making, and the humanities have a bigger emphasis on critical thinking (yes, really). Software engineering is "hard", but not really. Literary analysis is a different beast which requires a different kind of intelligence, one that is lacking in STEM.

The “the value of Proust papers is unquantifiable!” argument doesn’t move me. Nor a lot of my fellow citizens

You seem completely unable to examine production in a more abstract or higher-level sense.

You cannot go to point Z without first going through A-Y. You cannot write legislation, make movies, make music, or do just about anything outside of engineering without first understanding literary analysis. Context, themes, critical thinking, taking an idea and making it into a thing that conveys that idea - that is what the humanities is.

It easy for me to say "learning about Shakespeare is useless!" But if we did not, would those highschool kids be able to read legislation? Would they even be interested in doing so?

The same principal applies. Much of schooling is "useless", as in on it's own it does not produce value. But it is a stepping stone to things that DO produce value.

You learned your times tables so you can pass Calculus 2, which you never use, so now you can be a software engineer. And you got there by problem solving, not by learning to code. You remove a piece from the Jenga tower and it crumbles.

People often misunderstand what they do or what things are for. Literary analysis is not for understanding what Proust is saying. No. Literary analysis is for understanding what EVERYONE is saying. Higher education is not for a job, for a degree, or for graduation. It is for learning to learn. If you don't know how to learn you are no better than a tree or a dog.

My point is we have the major corpus of research for these topics already. The societal value - rich discussion, learning, critical thinking - can be accomplished solo or in a group setting with a solid teacher. We don’t need to fund 6 figure salaries for an army of tenured faculty to produce more journal articles on these subjects

...you think tenured professors are bringing home six figures? Maybe at Harvard.

> not sure how many more Literature papers we need on Proust, Shakespeare, Beowulf, and on and on

You generally want a few scholars on low burn keeping the knowledge alive and contemporary. The idea that something can be studied in totality and then put away safely across generations is farce.

But, as you mentioned, you only need a few. The problem is that universities have been expanded from something only for the elite to something for half the population, but they have replicated the structure they had back when they were for the elite. So now we end up with 20x the number of these scholars that we actually need.

You mean, like alchemy, sorcery, or perhaps homeopathy?

I sure was hoping for a response to this. Ah well.

really? As an outsider, your post came off to me as combative and generally bad faith.

I was trying to show how studies that were once revered are now considered useless.

so I think there are two things going on.

First, you seem to be addressing the weakest form of their argument, not the strongest. It's reasonable to understand that some disciplines become obsolete or outdated.

Second, you framed your point as a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. At best, it waste people's time on a low latency communication platform, at worst, it is condescending and a common from of trolling.

In my experience, effective communication means addressing the strongest interpretation of what they're saying, and cutting to the chase by bringing your strongest most relevant points.

I think we are at the point where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded and working on these niche subjects full time, creating content that is actually consumed rather than stored as dense, esoteric, unintelligible nonsense locked into pay-for academic journals. The college model is wildly expensive and devoid of societal value

> where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded and working on these niche subjects full time

This is how you turn your society’s intellectual storehouses into propaganda. Lost to the West, about how Byzantine scholars preserved Roman knowledge through to the Enlightenment, is worth picking up.

> I think we are at the point where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded...

What I believe you are saying is that the "popular" researchers will get ad-spend to fund their "research" that won't be peer reviewed. Why even bother publishing research, if no one reads anymore? It would just devolve into a popularity contest and following trends. Those trends will just be co-opted by monied interests.

The esoterism is due to the fact that there is a body of research that you need to know to understand the new research. Just because you can't understand the topic in a short sound bite does not mean it is not worth researching. Not all of the research is intended to be consumed by a lay public either.

Many podcasts and Patreon exclusives are behind paywalls and there is no expectation of peer-review.

In regards to calling this a "college model", not all research is done at college there is also thinktanks (institutions) and industry research which are funded by governments as well.

I think governments should be accountable for making sure the research is rigorous, has a social benefit, and is publicly available.

You are quite correct that Substack will favor the popular, not the best. But universities will favor what is popular too. Just popular with the different audience who controls university budgets instead of the general public. And how can governments do any better? The way they are held accountable is an election, or in other words a popularity contest.

I don't see why my tax dollars need to fund Proust studies, nor Elvis and Hip Hop researchers for that matter. It's all for elites to feel like they are doing something useful, "research", that no one would ever voluntarily fund otherwise. Or if they would, they should find a way to get paid voluntarily.

> It's all for elites to feel like they are doing something useful

Forgive me, but I do not think that is a considered position. I think it comes from bigotry

Proust, Elvis, Snoop Dog, and Satoshi Nakamoto are all important to our culture as it is.

It is important to understand culture and society to be able to have meaningful social policy. Social policy that makes good use of our tax dollars

I think that is a pretty wild take. I get that people question the social value of esoteric academic research, but do you really think it is fungible with entertainment research?

They are producing something that no one reads with zero impact. It is funded by undergraduate lectures and subsidies from other parts of the university and taxpayers at large.

They could instead produce lectures for society - "podcasts" - and continue their mind-numbing paper writing, if that's truly what they want to do all day (hint: no they don't).

That all may be true, but that still doesn't mean the outputs are the same in depth, complexity, or understanding

A few papers are interesting to read. However I don't have time to read all the papers on even on of the above, much less all. Thus the original point that these things are valuable to society in small numbers but not in larger numbers - except as job training of some sort.

That's an argument against requiring all lecturers to also be active researchers, not against the value of the field itself.

Who cares about "the actual need of employers"? If they have needs, they can see to it that they are met. Create their own schools or educate people on the job or whatever, it's not a purpose of educational institutions like universities and so on.

And yet, every college and University in the US advertises the job placement rate of graduates.

I myself considered a track that would lead to law school, and one of the things that stopped me was there were a growing number of lawsuits against schools for falsely inflating their numbers.

Perhaps, but I'll advise my kids to avoid failed and harshly authoritarian states.

> Who cares about "the actual need of employers"?

99% of college students and 100% of college administrators whose schools will all cease to exist if they can't convince those students to enroll and pay tuition.

Educational institutions aren't commercial. If it's run in a commercial manner, it's not an educational institution, it's a business.

They most certainly are. Their continued survival requires keeping revenue at or above expenses just like any other business. They have employees. They have customers. They sell merch. They have professional sports teams (which don't pay their players). They even own hedge funds (which don't have to pay taxes).

No, that's not an educational institution, it's something else. You're probably thinking about the USA or some other developing country.

They had issues before this NZ thing.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-a...

> too many graduates from certain social sciences and humanities compared to the actual need of employers / academia.

The natural employer of the social sciences grad is the government- social workers, city planners, etc. This type of government funding has been under attack at all levels of government since the 80's. We don't see any benefit to, say, sociology, because we've bought the idea that those benefits only go to those that don't 'deserve' them, and are paid for by taking what I've 'earned'.

Right level of funding in many cases is non-zero. Still balancing for employability and general funding say every 5 years would be reasonable approach for most social sciences. As many of the fields under that moniker produce very useful specialist when run at right scale. And these people might not even need PhDs always.

Re: PhDs... the "the system's purpose is what it does" explanation of a PhD program is to get cheap labor, without the employment conditions of standard employees, in exchange for the long-term promise of the letters after your name, sadly. There's a reason that, in the US, graduate student researchers often have union/bargaining units separate from postdoctoral academics, and it's not to benefit the graduate students.

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