They're Killing the Humanities on Purpose
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
But I also see how so many of the upvoted and discussed articles and papers on this site are about history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, language, etc. It has always struck me as contradictory, though of course a lot of the people who are into the latter are not those writing the former.
How do we continue to push the bounds of human knowledge and thought in those disciplines, if not through higher education? In my opinion the world would be a whole lot better if, for instance, people learned more history and learned how to more critically approach sources. But I'm biased of course, I have PhD in history.
One of my undergraduate chemistry professors went to Cal Tech and he told us that his professors encouraged him to ask people outside of his discipline about problems if he got stuck.
I do not understand why people are unwilling to do more interdisciplinary studies. When I took courses on crop botany and plant genetics we also read books and had seminar to discuss the topics of the books - that is a humanities skill, to discuss in a group what meaning you can derive from texts.
As for the people saying you should get a degree that pays well...look at all the folks who got Comp. Sci. degrees who are now being thrown in the wood chipper. Was that worth it? Time will tell.
If someone says they are "interdisciplinary" it provides little information about what they actually study and are good at. If someone says they have a Masters in Philosophy with a focus on Metaphysics I have enough information about their background to ask questions they might provide insightful comments on.
Interdisciplinary study is great but there can be some friction in the labor market, at least for new graduates seeking entry level positions. When corporate recruiters see a college transcript that doesn't fit neatly into one of the usual slots they don't know what to do with it.
Computer Science also has its own friction with the labor market. It's really a branch of abstract mathematics and only tangentially related to commercial software product development. I think colleges ought to offer something like a "Bachelor of Fine Arts in Software Development" for students more interested in practical craftsmanship. There will always be demand for people who can build working software, even if most of them move up to higher levels of abstraction leveraging AI tools instead of directly writing code themselves.
Worked out pretty well in my case. There's plenty I don't know about the Java Enterprise Edition standard libraries, but I can still walk through computing in decent depth from transistors to algorithms.
(And to the article's point, have probably gotten more CS jobs from my interdisciplinary skills than my CS-only skills)
I clearly applied my CS knowledge in breadth and depth in my last job. And to a lesser degree, I did the same in my first job. It's the jobs in the middle that veered me off the original path. It's like navigating a maze...
Humanities came late to the game and try to claim the honor without actually having done anything. Except whine and complain about the demise of X because of this new fangled internet thingy. For X you may insert "reading", "writing", "critical thinking", "books", "education", "manners", "discussions" and another 50 things at least. I'd say the humanities hindered the progress of humanity more than they promoted it over the last 50 years.
Chomsky hierarchy is an important concept in programming languages and could be considered as originating from linguistics
Philosophy (which is counted in humanities) has had massive contributions to Logic and formal methods in computer science.
There's even more examples of humanities contribution in HCI and AI safety.
If humanities taught logic, and actually rigorous analytic capabilities that were on par with STEM, I don't think we'd be in the situation we're in now.
Instead it's the opposite. The departments have made humanities increasingly easier, thereby devaluing them even more.
Further I ended up taking a class that actually read original Greek texts, which isn't all that common even within the department I was at.
My point still stands.
Chomsky is one I grant you, he was influential in both computer science as well as linguistics. But his success in linguistics was even more revolutionary than his influence on CS, exactly because he introduced abstraction, rigor and various ideas from computer science and mathematics into linguistics.
Also, the "p exists because of q" form of argument puts philosophy causally "before" these other disciplines.
Yes, if you go back to antiquity, there were only philosophy and religion. Science and mathematics were once sub-branches of philosophy. But that's a few thousand years before the internet, and the renaissance at the latest was where philosophy was fully separate from sciences and mathematics.
Maybe, only maybe, getting to know the history of the internet (oh, and of mathematics, too), of the people that designed and built it, would inform a little more your stance.
Separating so bluntly maths, physics, biology, from humanities (and reciprocally) is precisely a trait that is telling of an unbalanced understanding of the world humanity built around itself with all these languages and abstractions to describe it.
But where are your arguments, and where is your evidence? Or should I derive from this that all arguments in the humanities boil down to name-calling?
No. You should derive from that that human life, and humanities being part of that, are a matter of experience, more than of argument/convincing. I could spend some time to argue with you about that, but you're showing you are not open to such a discussion, and my time is more valuable (and yours) than that.
It's like sex, intimacy, sight, smell, touch: you can't argue about it or explain it to someone who never experienced it.
It's definitely hard to argue or demonstrate how sometimes a book, a painting, a music can turn around your whole perspective on things.
Which means that humanities cannot be important to mankind as a whole, because most won't appreciate them, as they are a matter of taste. And they are as arbitrary as other matters of taste, lacking the universality that is necessary for usefulness. Good riddance!
I don’t know if you lack anything there. What you say is indicative of such a lack of it.
And your conclusion is obviously negated by history and experience itself.
And your final envoy is indicative of a kind of comptent that is itself a tell. Farewell indeed.
So it's not just a matter of taste, humanities are a cult.
Not sorry, doesn't work that way.
IIRC some early programming languages were even tailored to the humanities, like Snobol.
I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
At the minimum Calculus/Stats + a CS class + some kind of science should be the absolute bare minimum.
I think even the English majors should be required to take all 3 calculus courses to graduate.
Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.
If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.
Ironically, with chronic obesity and the related metabolic disorders becoming absolutely epidemic, people might do well to eat less. I can manage 48 hours at a stretch, it's only psychologically discomforting, I wish I could go 72 hours. It's like we have some sort of racial memory of the famines our ancestors suffered tens of thousands of years ago, and now we can't stop gorging ourselves.
>At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities.
Everyone thinks that the thing that they learned to do is what everyone should learn to do. Car mechanics think that people should be able to do repairs, at least know a little more about what goes wrong. And guess what? Our economy relies on them, and they're right... we do need people who can repair them. Janitors think that people should be able to clean things up. And guess what? We do need people who can clean things up. Shipbuilders, steelworkers, construction workers, farmers... we need people who can do those things.
No one was ever in danger and needed to be able to know Titian's third most famous painting. No one was ever rescued by liberal arts graduate's knowledge of third rate classical composers.
>I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so.
I would agree. People need gainful employment opportunities, and the training to be able to take advantage of those. They need to enter adulthood debt free, and not just student debt, but to also know that the government isn't mortgaging their future paying for a bloated secondary education system today that is wasting years of their lives and hundreds of billions in fortune setting them up to fail. If academia doesn't want to be the vocational schools that it dreads to be associated with, then it should shut up and quit pretending that it has much to offer the vast majority of people. Maybe it didn't claim that these degrees would set everyone up for life, but it certainly didn't protest when others made that claim for it.
>despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history.
We're all actually poor. As a country. (Other countries too, come to that.) We remember having once been rich, and we're in denial about it no longer being true. We can't even afford social security, old people will need to start dying sooner. Even the so-called billionaires for the most part just have a pile of stock certificates in the vault. Even on this very website, we see constant links about making people live in pods because it's no longer possible to build housing anyone can afford. You now rent the things your grandparents used to buy outright, and to buy seconds and thirds when they got bored with the first. You tell yourself it's because it's more convenient, but you couldn't afford to pay for it up front if you wanted.
We're that married couple swimming in credit card debt. They deny that it's a big deal, look here we can juggle this one and use that one to pay the minimum payment on the third card. And don't you think we can't keep doing that, we'll be able to do it next month too! But I'm not even allowed to talk about it, because a full 8 or 9 years ago the people on the left told everyone that credit card analogies don't work for a country as big and rich as the United States.
Fewer than 7% of all high school graduates should even go on to higher education. High school should become more strict, willing to flunk everyone who fails to meet rigorous standards. We need our government to make a true effort to reindustrialize.
At least that's my assumption from experience.
I am quite confident that not only is philosophy a waste when it comes to finding gainful employment, going to law school to put that philosophy to good use is just doubling down on the same bad gamble. Large fraction? What about the remainder?
You believe this to be the case, because you're relying on the statistics provided by the office I described.
>But going to a "third tier toilet" law school seldom pays off, at least not financially.
This is a solid T2 school. But if you were working at Subway whatever hours they'd give you, they marked you down as employed for the purposes of saying their graduates get jobs.
In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate.
People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real.
Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this.
I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department.
Edit:
Forgot to add my second point: AI is going to let people outside the mainstream produce genuinely credible, professional-level work without a massive budget.
That means further devaluing of establishment institutions like humanities departments. It strips away the gatekeeping power, deciding who gets to count as legit. AI blows that up.
I vaguely recall even creative art degrees as being looked down upon by artists as teaching you to conform to certain styles, essentially mimicry rather than creativity (though it has been some years since anyone in my network attended one).
In any case, despite the waxing philosophical of the personal growth value of a humanities degree, there's still the fact that every college and university also advertises job placement rates of their majors. Individual courses may focus on specific topics, but the people taking your money are promising job opportunities to parents and school councilors to convince them that the over inflated price tags are worth it.
Yes, they are.
> There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degree
Yes, there are dedicated trade schools for graphic design just like there are coding bootcamps.
There are also university degree programs designed for creative artists. (And yes, there are universities that specialize exclusively, or nearly so, in those degrees and are highly regarded within them, just as is the case in STEM.)
There are some art-adjacent degrees that aren't primarily focussed on doing art (Art History being the most common and well-known one) and some of the creative-focussed programs may have options to focus on more critical/analytical vs. practical concentrations available, as well.
But creative degrees focussed on actual creative output whether writing or film or theater or dance or music or photography or other visual art are a very big slice of the humanities.
But the result doesn't seem to be very creative, so what is the point?
If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole.
I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities.
Ever watch Netflix these days? Woof.
The fact is, the entire college/university system is outsized and wrong-fit for what most people actually need. And while I don't think humanities programs should be cut from universities, I also don't think that taxpayer backed student loans or payouts should be made for programs that have vastly more people enrolled in than the general economy has a demand/need for.
I'd like to see more accredited options for trade schools beyond what people currently think of as trades. From accounting, to software development. I know there are some schools that focus on these things, I just think they should be more at the forefront and higher profile options.
We don't need to have different institutions to grant different degrees with different levels of marketability. A college that only taught lucrative subjects and a college that taught non-lucrative subjects would both offer less educational value than a single college that offered the full range.
I'm fine with people choosing whatever they want... but then the question comes down to how/who pays for it... and I'm emphatically not in favor of public (taxpayer) funding for programs that don't have a direct need/demand in society or the economy in general.
You want to be a fine arts major.. go for it. It may be harder if you need student loans to pay for it, when there's a few thousand people working on that degree and a few hundred jobs in the world of demand.
A bachelor's degree is required to be a K-12 teacher, so if it's impossible for teachers to pay undergraduate student loans, the problem is not with the teacher or the degree they chose to get.
I am sure there are programs that are a mix between a typical BFA program and a teaching degree, but that is not the norm.
Really? Hollywood operates on the efforts of screenwriters and digital rendering masters, both areas very informed by poetry and painting. Graphic design and quick language are the basis of online ads, which in turn are what supports the likes of Facebook and Google. If not for the wordsmiths and visual artists, the modern internet would be a very different place.
And without the DRM, lockdown and prosecution demands of Hollywood, the internet would indeed be a better, freer place.
I'm surprised so many folks defend the university system for fine arts. It's a relatively modern notion, as in only a few decades! Historically, arts education is provided in museum, academy, apprentice, and/or community settings. Academic (as in the modern university system) art is still in its early stages and deserves criticism. I assume much of our cohort are in a worse position for their commitment to an art degree.
https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-educati...
As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.
I'd be a lot more OK with student loan jubilees if universities had to pay the remaining principal on any forgiven loans. They'd immediately get their costs under control and be a lot more careful about degree programs which don't have any earning potential.
It’s a common way to scam today’s young and future taxpayers. See also underfunded pensions and other post employment benefits for government employees and taxpayer guaranteed 30 year fixed rate mortgages with no prepayment penalty.
Instead of helping someone, society lends them money and lets future taxpayers deal with the mess. That is how you win elections in aging societies.
Kind of makes the whole thing sound like a scam from that perspective.
The world made college into a checkpoint to get a good salaried position, it's not the same as the old geezers experienced it, where college was thought of as a bonus education, but not solely needed to get a decent paying job.
Or "society" encouraging people to study the humanities?
The latest chapter of America’s cultural revolution has been driven largely by radical currents in the humanities and by students eager to impose them beyond campus.
It is finally time for universities to reconsider what they truly want to teach. They need to stop producing ideological foot soldiers and focus instead on real learning,including the humanities, when they are done honestly and not just used to push one narrow worldview.
With so much changing in the world right now, we urgently need the humanities to recover their integrity and purpose.
aka. being a dick gets you kicked out of social groups.
That's right, MAGAs can do that for themselves, and none of them are educated!
> and focus instead on real learning
Yep, whatever the Eternal Leader says is real is real. Climate change is a hoax, thus spake the Eternal Leader.
"you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"
The attack on the universities is fueled by this divergence, now that the right is firmly in power. This will just hurt the country in the long run. There was so much group think and silencing happening on the left over the last decade. It seems now to have been self-destructive.
And, to pre-empt the usual objection, they aren't being crowded out by ideology. They aren't there in the first place. They're not in the STEM majors outside of engineering, and they're not in the humanities except for law. Otherwise you'll find them in sales, marketing, business, and management.
These people complain about academia but have little invested in it in the first place.
You don't get tenure if your fellow professors don't like you, and they've created their own echo chamber long ago.
In contradiction to your point, the conservative professors and teachers that I knew were not in arts humanities at all (with one exception in law) but in crunchier fields like economics. The STEM and maths professors didn't talk social topics at all, so it is impossible to know what their feelings were.
This decline of rigor in the humanities means that they no longer really teach logic, critical thinking, or any kind of reality-related ideas. What they do is arbitrary and therefore objectively pointless, except maybe to further some political or social goal. That those goals are mostly left-wing is imho just an accident, they could as well be promoting right-wing politics.
(In a similar manner, arts now reject their original goals of beauty, aesthetics, depictions of reality, mastery and entertainment. But that's less of a problem, because arts have always been even less important than humanities.)
Really, it's quite a stance to not have a background in arts and history of the arts, and perhaps epistemology as well, and writing this.
Then you mistake what could be a rather evasive appeal to authority with an ad hominem.
Perhaps engaging more deeply with the actual methodologies and scholarship within these fields might reveal the rigor you claim is absent.
You're masquerading your assertion as an argument.
"For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies."
There's nothing wrong with encouraging scholarship in a particular field but when they intentionally exclude other fields it tends to limit public support. Taxpayers will naturally question why they're being asked to subsidize student loans, and wonder whether universities are being used to promote ideologies rather than educate.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/16/university-ch...