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Comment by ashton314 | Hacker News Reader

> "You can't complain about being require to take a 100-level history course because our job is to turn out renaissance scholars who can debate philosophy at cocktail parties before going to work doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with that."

> All the while, those additional credit hours cost students a shitload of money and debt and take focus away from their actual fields of study.

This is a straw-man. The purpose is not to turn people into renaissance scholars. It's to inculcate appreciation for what makes life worth living. An educated populace is also a requirement for a healthy democracy. Everyone ought to know some history at a minimum.

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And that indulgence has been cloaked in specious, ivory-tower claims about producing well-rounded students

I suspect your comment is exactly what they’re talking about. I actually agree with your claim, but with limits! And yet the proponents of your position always seem to want a blank check.

How much exactly should the taxpayers pay to ensure that little Timmy goes to college and gets “an appreciation for what makes life worth living”, and why that amount? And how do we know if it’s working or not?

This is also a straw-man. You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost. But why stop at 16 years? Why not 20 or 30 years? Clearly there are diminishing marginal returns. At some point you should trust students who are motivated to learn to continue their studies independently, rather than tacking it on as a massively expensive additional requirement to a vocational degree.

> You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost.

Actually, I didn't get 12 years of most of the liberal arts courses I took at university. A number of them were completely new to me - no exposure in K-12 at all.

And you're being creative with numbers. No - for an engineering degree, you don't need to take 4 more years of humanities courses. Just a few credits that extend your education by (likely) less than a year.

No, we're not talking about defunding engineering degrees. We're talking about defunding (mostly) liberal arts degrees whose economic value, at least, does not justify their cost.

If those few liberal arts degrees you took in college were so valuable, why can't they be integrated into the k-12 curriculum? Or why couldn't you study them independently using free online resources, or at a community college? I'm not against people learning this stuff, and I enjoy reading about it in my spare time as much as the next guy. I'm just not clear why taxpayers should cover this when it's such an inefficient option.

Today we have the highest percentage of people with an university degree compared to any other time in the history. Do you think democracy today is healthier than it was 30 years ago?

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