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Comment by slurry | Hacker News Reader

A better question may be is it worth it for the government to subsidize research for humanities professors?

Where is all of this filthy lucre that the government is throwing at humanities professors? I would like to get some. The only federal body that funds pure humanities research is the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has a grand total of $150 million by way of annual budget. I.e. essentially zero.

Or should humanities teachers have regular 9 to 5 teacher jobs?

Perhaps HN commenters should have regular 9 to 5 jobs.

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That comment is very misleading. The subsidy being talked about is not research subsidies, which pay lab costs and grad student stipends, not professors. Instead it's about tuition assistance in the form of student loans and grants. That's the subsidy that actually pays humanities profs.

That comment is very misleading.

No it's not. I was responding directly to this:

A better question may be is it worth it for the government to subsidize research for humanities professors?

The article itself didn't have anything directly to say about the humanities as a field of study.

The govt loans are subsidizing them via tuition.

If loans were given out on a ability to repay standard, instead of govt guaranteed, humanities would get fewer loans, therefore, govt loans are subsidizing humanities faculty

There was a contention that the government subsidizes humanities research. I demonstrated that, barring the rounding error that is the NEH, it does not. You reply that yes in fact the government does subsidize humanities teaching. I don't even know what to do with that.

Anyway, if loans were given out on an ability to repay standard then the biggest losses would be to health professions, criminal justice, early childhood education and other non-prestige career degrees toward which low income students tend to gravitate.

The following are three forms of subsidies:

1) Schools are non-profits everything they do is subsidized.

2) Student loans subsidize schools.

3) State schools have in state subsidies.

If a professor is writing and researching, that is time and focus not spent teaching. If tenure is granted primarily on research, teaching suffers.

To those who think the status quo is fine, I ask: Are we in the correct balance of teaching and research in the humanities? If yes, how did we get there? And if there are strong cases for humanities research, why not more?

My opinion is much of what appears to be advancement of knowledge is really a system of misplaced incentives. You see this in teaching loads and overproduction of qualified humanities faculty relative to high school teachers.

Perhaps HN commenters should have regular 9 to 5 jobs.

Are you suggesting that most HN readers have easy jobs financed by government largesse?

That strikes me as an absurd suggestion.

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