
Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life - ycombonator
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190401-why-worthless-humanities-degrees-may-set-you-up-for-life
======
softwaredoug
I have History and CS degrees. The CS experience (at a top engineering school)
felt fairly vocational. But being rigorously taught how to research, construct
arguments, and communicate ideas in my Liberal Arts degree has been what made
me successful past my first hire. I definitely recommend double majoring in a
Liberal Arts degree.

Also perhaps there’s a lesson here about the CS curriculum being too
vocational at most colleges? Or not needing a 4 year college if it aims to be
vocational?

~~~
pgeorgi
> Also perhaps there’s a lesson here about the CS curriculum being too
> vocational at most colleges? Or not needing a 4 year college if it aims to
> be vocational?

I heard a claim that sounded plausible to me: CS in the US originated from
electrical engineering, and so is based on a degree that is based on the
ability to directly influence things and make stuff happen - pretty
vocational. In Germany CS is derived from maths and places a greater emphasis
on the theoretical underpinnings, and yes, the ability to do scientific work
and research.

I guess the optimum lies somewhere in the middle: It's mildly shocking to me
to hear of US CS bachelors who never heard of complexity (Big-O and all that),
while it's also a bit mad that it's possible to obtain a CS bachelor degree in
Germany with the only experience in making computers do stuff being 100 lines
of Pascal (although that would require a rather arcane set of elective
courses, so it probably won't happen all too often)

~~~
newen
This actually depends on the university, with CS in some colleges in the US
splitting off from the Math department and others from EE or CE.

------
chrisseaton
I have friends from university with degrees in history, classics, theology,
that make 3x what I do as a software engineer with a PhD. They work in things
like corporate intelligence, risk analysis, planning and operations. Really
high-powered serious stuff that makes what I do look rather trivial. They get
hired as their companies want diversity of thought and the main job
requirement is just being smart, switched-on, and understanding the bigger
world (hence the history and theology). It's not about knowing technical
details. They wouldn't want a grey man who studied 'business operations' \-
that's not their style.

~~~
matwood
A couple interesting anecdotes. My first boss had multiple degrees in music,
and was a professional touring classical musician. He self taught himself
programming because he needed to actually make some money. Now he's a CTO at a
large company.

My next boss had a degree in English. His thought was that no matter what he
did with his life, communication was always at the center. He had founded 2
different tech companies before I met him, and he's now the CTO of a large
company.

One of the smartest people I've ever personally worked with went to seminary
(I'm not sure if he was an atheist before or after, but talk about fun
conversations over a beer). He was preoccupied with finding meaning in life,
and did things like math and CS with what seemed like his spare cycles.

The point is that a persons degree really only matters for their first job,
and often even then only if they want to work at a FAANG for that first job.
Where people end up 5-10-15-20 years later in their career has little to do
with their degree.

~~~
cowsandmilk
> often even then only if they want to work at a FAANG for that first job.
> Where people end up 5-10-15-20 years later in their career has little to do
> with their degree.

As someone who doesn't have a CS degree, I found that FAANG companies were
much more willing to take a risk on someone without a degree getting their
first job than many smaller companies.

~~~
matwood
Great point. The only caveat I would point out is that a candidate has to pass
what is effectively a test of what a typical undergrad in CS learns. A 20 year
old could certainly study and do that on their own, but the typical self-
taught person is not necessarily learning those quiz type questions.

------
jeffdavis
The main problem with the humanities is that they have been consumed by the
political far left.

That's sad, because English, history, and philosphy could be great programs.

I remember I was struggling to get decent grades on my history papers. I was
running out of patience and decided I just wanted to pass. So I just wrote
what I thought the professor wanted to hear (far left BS) and started getting
B's and even an A-, with little effort.

~~~
paublyrne
That's very strange to hear. I'm not sure where you studied but when I studied
history at university papers were assessed in terms of argument construction,
and how you assessed other historians work, and all you said had to be
referenced in some way. Whether the lecturer agreed with your conclusion or
not was not the basis of your mark.

~~~
jeffdavis
UCSD. If it was about argument construction, then why would my rushed papers
get better grades than the ones I put thought into?

To be fair, not all classes were quite so bad. I took a small class in ancient
ME history and it was much more detached and apolitical, while still being
interesting and surprisingly relevant.

------
traviswingo
I think it’s worth mentioning all degrees are worthless if you don’t know how
to leverage them.

If you get a CS degree from a top school just because you see what salaries
are, not because that’s what you’re interested in, your career will be
mediocre at best.

School shouldn’t be looked at as mandatory and burdensome, it should be a tool
that helps you achieve a level of understanding about something that you’re
head over heels excited about.

Passion for something will organically lead to a successful career doing what
you love.

~~~
acconrad
> that you’re head over heels excited about.

How are you supposed to know passion at 18? I do alumni interviewing for my
college and most kids have no singular passion they want to pursue (and more
often than not, they are hoping college will help them find that passion).

And I don't blame them. Finding a singular passion to center a degree around
at a young age is not the norm. And yet we put a lot of pressure on our kids
to be specialists before they're even able to vote. It's a very difficult
situation to put children through.

~~~
52-6F-62
Do you think it’s that uncommon?

I’ve immersed myself in literature, music, and technology since a young
age—initially went to school for English and left my coursework to work. I’ve
spent my entire career working in fields that interested me when I was young.
My favourite part has been working to blend my interests.

Though you’re probably onto something about the pressure put on kids to fit an
existing need rather than exploring possibilities. My personal experience
would have me think so at least.

------
overgard
I think the real problem is that corporations and HR departments have
outsourced filtering candidates to universities. Universities were never
designed for job training, and obviously we're seeing the consequences of
that. I got a 4 year CS degree from a good university, and it was good, but I
have to admit I came out of it with a lot of knowledge that I'm really
unlikely to use in the real world (how to write a hash map, for instance),
while being completely clueless on things that are extremely useful for actual
real world work (how to use distributed version control, or how to write shell
scripts).

I also have to say, I've been on the end where we interview people and look
through stacks of resumes, and I can't say I've ever actually ever cared about
the "education" part unless it's really unusual (IE, very advanced degree, or
a degree in a field that isn't CS but might be highly relevant to what my
company is doing)

I think it's weird that vocational training is so looked down upon. Not
everyone is really built to be a knowledge worker or a professor -- we still
need plumbers!

Also whatever happened to apprenticeships? It seems like all we have anymore
are internships, but, at least from what I've seen interns are rarely given
that much mentoring; it tends to be a lot more about toy-projects or "build a
thing that would be nice to have but that we're not going to dedicate a full
salaried engineers time to".

------
lordnacho
IMHO most people should take a STEM degree if they're going to uni. Not
because of the labour market, which is a fickle thing.

The main reason is that you will be able to pick up a humanities/social
science course with the skills you already have at the end of high school.
What do people do in those degrees? Read text, think critically, express
ideas. And you've not only practised that a fair bit in school, but also after
education, where you're reading the newspaper, looking at art, and so on.
Importantly you aren't going to lose the text reading skill because you'll be
using it a little each day.

So you have plenty of practice in the humanities, at least to get you started
doing it seriously if you need it later in life. And you have enough that
you're not gonna be surprised when someone mentions there was a civil war in
the US.

Math stuff seems to be use it or lose it. You can easily avoid linear algebra
and big-o thinking, and you will if you aren't forced to think about it. If
you do a STEM degree at least you will have heard of stuff and practiced a
load of otherwise obscure topics, giving you a starting point that isn't years
behind on prerequisites, and leaving you where you won't know what's
interesting.

I've met plenty of STEM people who knew a thing or two about history,
economics, and the arts. It's relatively rare the other way round, though you
do get the occasional renaissance man from that side.

~~~
overgard
I also think that STEM degrees teach you to break down problems mechanically
and "think like a machine". It also can teach you to be able to project an
idea to a logical conclusion even if that end point is uncomfortable or
surprising. That might not sound like a skill to a lot of people, but I've
noticed people without STEM educations or who aren't self-taught in some sort
of similar way aren't always great at doing that. I noticed that the people
that dropped out in the first year of CS, for instance, really struggled with
seeing the machine as having intentions, or at least anthropomorphizing it
more than was useful.

That being said, I also notice that a lot of my STEM colleagues look down on
creatives and humanities, which is really unfortunate. It's not about one
being better than the other, they both have very useful things to teach.

~~~
mter
> It's not about one being better than the other, they both have very useful
> things to teach.

Did you do a humanities degree and a cs degree? I did a psychology degree then
went back to school later to get my cs degree.

The intellectual rigor just isn't there in any humanities classes because most
of the students shouldn't be in college at all. Yes, there was a small handful
of really smart people in psychology but most of the students were there to
party for 4-5 years while their parents paid for it.

~~~
dianeb
Generalizations are such fun; when you say, "The intellectual rigor just isn't
there in any humanities classes because most of the students shouldn't be in
college at all" I think you are conflating rigor with substance. Computer
Science is easy but tedious if you're a Math major as I was. On the other
hand, Native American literature was anything but easy because it required the
clarity of a different world view as well as being able to write about it
within the reality of the "inside-outside" nature where much of the literature
originates. That understanding and the ability to write well is a rigor of its
own.

------
presidente20
The article contains a number of flaws IMO. Its argument seems to be:

1\. Graduates with any degree earn more money and have less unemployment. No
doubt true, but how do you discount selection bias here? Given that it's on
average the smarter / more diligent part of the population that goes to
university a better question would be what's the value add of university (and
then break down by faculty / degree)? Maybe their employment rate is higher
due to the necessity of having to pay off their tuition fees :)

2\. Some humanities people are successful. No doubt. Plenty of smart motivated
folks take humanities subjects so it's not surprising that some of them are
successful but I'd like to see some data on expected return across the board
rather than cherry picked examples. Wildly successful people might be outliers
anyway. Also if you're from a wealthy background you could probably do
anything and still have a shot at being a CEO.

3\. Most examples of jobs for humanities graduates given in the article are
not really graduate jobs, e.g. after sales support for Uber (do you really
need a degree for that?). Management roles perhaps, but the article doesn't
delve into those jobs, presumably there was some sort of vocational experience
involved before they were managers?

4\. Critical thinking skills. I'm not convinced that humanities degrees do
lead to better critical thinking skills. I am biased but it seems to me Maths
and hard science subjects would hone your critical thinking much more
(isolating variables, logic, understanding complex material) and it's not like
Science grads don't read books on other subjects. The author demonstrates a
complete lack of critical thinking skills IMO.

5\. Understanding of statistics seems like a pretty valuable tool to bring to
most occupations and it would be nice if journalists had that and I doubt you
get that from Humanities.

6\. Empathy? Seriously? You need a degree to develop empathy?

------
travisoneill1
In my experience the liberal arts classes I was required to take were all big
100+ person lecture -> memorize -> test classes. I tend to think a lot of the
praise heaped on liberal arts is the fallacy that since these skills are not
learned in STEM classes, they must be learned in liberal arts classes. It also
seems like those classes are taught at a much lower level. Plenty of people
fail out of STEM and go on to be liberal arts majors but not the reverse. I
think that bumping up the difficulty to the point that people are actually
failing out would go a long way to these majors regaining credibility, and I
hope they do because I am not anti-liberal arts in principle, only in
practice.

~~~
cowsandmilk
> In my experience the liberal arts classes I was required to take were all
> big 100+ person lecture -> memorize -> test classes

The classes you were "required to take" likely were intro classes with large
enrollments. What you describe is how many intro science classes are taught at
many universities as well. And even many second year science classes. It is
generally only in the 300-400 level classes that are within your major that
you start to have small sections with more intimate interaction with the
professor.

~~~
travisoneill1
Right. My point is that the liberal arts classes are not different and
special.

------
lordleft
So many people decry taking any career path that isn't STEM-based, but surely
one of the things the proliferation of technology and automation should one
day enable is a world where someone could be a poet, or an artist, or an
engineer, and not worry much about providing the material conditions of their
life? I want to live in a world where anyone can be anything.

I still think it's pragmatic advice to avoid (or at least consider carefully)
spending 150k on an english degree from a private school, but that's not due
to any bias against english as an academic discipline - it's more about how
much college costs and how debt constrains future choices.

~~~
js2
“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other
sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to
take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study
politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography,
natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture
in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music,
architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

\-- John Adams (in a letter to Abigail)

~~~
jessaustin
...and they all lived happily ever after!

It isn't surprising that a generation who successfully fought a war of
revolution against a royalty of "divine" right would have a millenarian bent,
but that doesn't mean that we should believe them. In fact, it might be
telling that this pithy narrative is found in a private letter to his wife
rather than in his more intentionally public works. In every generation, there
will be those who find poetry boring and politics exciting. The rest of us
must maintain constant vigilance against those scourges on humanity.

------
tigershark
It kind of “smells” like when you see articles saying that there aren’t enough
people for the “x” job, even when they are paid 2x the average salary. Most of
the time I realised that in those cases it was just a semi-covert
advertisement for the industry in question, and digging in the real numbers
you can see _huge_ differences with the numbers reported in the article. I’m
not saying that this is absolutely the case, but certainly the narrative seems
quite similar to what I experienced in the past...

------
gryson
At the large public university where I am employed, there has been a recent
sharp drop in enrollment in humanities departments, which has sparked a lot of
concern about what the future holds for these departments. The business
school, on the other hand, is overwhelmed with applicants and growing rapidly.

From personal observations, it seems that students are becoming more and more
focused on practical skills development. I would also say this seems to be the
prevalent viewpoint on HN. But it is hard to deny the enormous benefits that a
liberal arts education can have.

I have a background in the hard sciences, but I would say I owe the heart of
my education to the many humanities electives that I took as an undergrad. I
can only hope that the pendulum swings back at some point.

------
mathattack
With soft degrees, where you go to school matters a lot. At the large state
school I went to, many of my friends had soft liberal arts undergrads. The
only successful ones wound up as faculty members in mid-tier schools. The
liberal arts classes I took were among the worst, with the most closed minded
professors.

When people quote Silicon Valley stars like Reid Hoffman (philosophy, Stanford
and Oxford) and Benedict Evans (history, Cambridge) look at the school too.

Communicating clearly, and thinking systemically are very important. I’m just
not convinced that most colleges and universities teach those anymore. The
people who have it get it elsewhere.

------
jaabe
I’ve seen philosophy, English and history majors work in tech, I’ve never seen
the reversal.

Personally I’m a little worried about ageism, something that doesn’t even
enter the mind space of any of my friends with degrees in the humanities.

So maybe there is something to it. I mean, they had much harder times finding
jobs than me, and aren’t rigoursly headhunted, but every one of them found
jobs.

~~~
cowsandmilk
> I’ve seen philosophy, English and history majors work in tech, I’ve never
> seen the reversal.

I'm not sure how you define the reverse, but Amazon's head of HR majored in
electrical engineering. I would say that's a traditionally liberal arts job
with someone who majored in tech.

~~~
jaabe
That is exactly how I would define the reverse.

------
scarface74
Well,

I see a lot of posts showing anecdotes. There’s enough real data out there
that we don’t have to depend on anecdotes.

[https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/college-
de...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/college-degrees-
highest-salary-potential)

------
aitchnyu
This is tangential, but what kind of education is sure to boost critical
thinking, creativity and collaboration in their students? Is there a
creativity path which pays off more than proficiency path?

~~~
repolfx
There probably isn't one. Universities love to claim they teach critical
thinking but this is a claim they can get away with only because most people
don't have critical thinking skills: obvious followup questions may include
"how" and "what's your definition of critical thinking".

One problem is that your three requests are somewhat at odds. Collaboration
works against creativity and critical thinking in my experience because of
pressure to conform to the group, or find ideas acceptable to the group. Being
truly creative requires exploring ideas that might not pan out, or which are a
bit off the beaten path. Group work also increases the cost of the work which
can change the cost/benefit analysis.

When I look at my own life, arguing with people on the internet has been far
better for my own critical thinking skills than the humanities lectures I
attended at university were. The latter were entirely useless.

------
matwood
I think I ended up with the best of both worlds. I received my BSCS from a
traditional humanities college. It means I ended up with a lot of CS and math
courses, but also things like philosophy and literature. I also sprinkled in
courses on accounting, economics, and general business since I found them
interesting.

Close to 20 years later, the foundation from those business courses and
learning how to write/communicate has done more for my career than any of the
CS and math.

------
HNLurker2
This doesn't apply to Romanian education. Off topic: I also feel doubt to move
from my highschool because it is no longer a Technical College but just normal
highschool. Anyone has expertise in this?

------
exelius
I have a philosophy degree, and I believe it’s a big part of why I’ve been
successful in technology. It taught me to think in patterns and layers upon
layers of abstraction; while giving me general-purpose tools that can be
applied to problem solving in complex, interrelated systems.

I thought I was making a mistake choosing that degree path over CS; but CS was
making me miserable with the crazy workload — which ended up being a bunch of
busy work that got abstracted away by new languages / frameworks by the time
we all graduated (we started in a world of esoteric mainframe architectures,
C++ and perl and ended in a world of java, php and python so to be fair a LOT
changed). But I don’t regret the philosophy degree at all.

~~~
lordnacho
> but CS was making me miserable with the crazy workload

Didn't you have to do a load of reading/essays in the philosophy course?

~~~
exelius
Yes; however many of the early philosophers are incredibly verbose in their
arguments and you can learn a lot from a 2-page summary of a 50-page essay.

Once you get to Nietzsche, the readings actually started to get interesting
and I found myself wanting to read and discuss them.

------
throwaway284721
An honest article would say that a humanity degree signals that you're
conformist and happy to tolerate boredem just as well as a STEM degree, and a
STEM degree doesn't teach anything relevant either. This article says that
with a humanity degree you can be just as smug as people with STEM degrees
are.

~~~
leetcrew
I honestly feel sorry for people who have this opinion. I'm not implying that
your analysis is wrong for the school you went to or even CS programs in
general, but I feel that I learned a lot of relevant things in my
undergraduate study and I'm sad that other people didn't have the same
experience.

just a quick sampling of some stuff I did in my CS major:

* wrote a Pascal compiler from scratch

* implemented a variation of FAT32 in the linux kernel

* implemented a simple pipelined MIPS arch in vhdl

* benchmarked different versions of a parallel algorithm on a HPC cluster to see how it scaled on core count

* implemented lots of data structures in c++

some of that stuff applies directly to the work I do now. I landed a good c++
gig straight out of college, and I really appreciate all the tough c++
projects we had to do in school. amusingly the Pascal compiler also turned out
to be relevant, as I now help maintain a compiler for a proprietary dialect of
Pascal at work. the cpu arch, HPC, and linux stuff isn't directly applicable
to my work, but the linux project was a good exposure to working in a large
codebase.

not _everything_ in a CS major is going to be directly applicable to your
career, but a good program will give you strong foundations for any specialty
you branch into later.

------
veryworried
I am not convinced it is wise to abandon an opportunity for a STEM degree in
favor of humanities when it seems like it’d be far easier to DIY a humanities
education than it would be to DIY a STEM education.

~~~
fwip
Much of STEM is self-teachable. It is easy to self-evaluate "yes, I understand
this math, and I get the right answers / produce working tools."

It is not easy to learn the humanities without direct feedback from an expert,
or robust experience with your peers.

~~~
0x445442
Meh, the feedback you speak of is often subjective. The beauty of STEM is that
you can objectively take stock of where you stand.

~~~
fwip
Exactly. It's easier to be good at something objective than subjective.

To be good at something subjective, you need help from others.

------
chongli
_Go into Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) – that way, you can
become an engineer or IT specialist. And no matter what you do, forget the
liberal arts – non-vocational degrees that include natural and social
sciences, mathematics and the humanities, such as history, philosophy and
languages._

What? Mathematics is both a STEM major and a liberal arts major now? I
digress.

 _But few courses of study are quite as heavy on reading, writing, speaking
and critical thinking as the liberal arts_

There is no evidence that any particular university major produces more gains
in critical thinking skills over any other. Additionally, there is no evidence
that critical thinking skills gained in university persist after graduation
[1].

 _And while there’s often an assumption that the careers humanities graduates
pursue just aren’t as good as the jobs snapped up by, say, engineers or
medics, that isn’t the case. In Australia, for example, three of the 10
fastest-growing occupations are sales assistants, clerks, and advertising,
public relations and sales managers – all of which might look familiar as
fields that humanities graduates tend to pursue._

What? A sales assistant is someone who works the floor at a retail store. Is
the author really trying to say that a retail job is as good as an engineering
job? Wow.

 _We also know that as more women move into a field, the field’s overall
earnings go down. Given that, is it any wonder that English majors, seven in
10 of whom are women, tend to make less than engineers, eight in 10 of whom
are men?_

It took a while to get here, but we've finally arrived. There's a correlation
between men leaving a field and average earnings in that field declining. Has
she not considered reverse causation? Research indicates that men prioritize
earnings growth more than women [2]. It seems entirely more convincing to me
that men depart a field due to the decline in earnings, not that greedy
employers see women and think "cheap labour."

 _This speaks to a broader point: the whole question of whether a student
should choose Stem versus the humanities, or a vocational course versus a
liberal arts degree, might be misguided to begin with. It’s not as if most of
us have an equal amount of passion and aptitude for, say, accounting and art
history. Plenty of people know what they love most. They just don’t know if
they should pursue it. And the headlines most of us see don’t help._

A somewhat ambivalent conclusion to a troubled piece. The reality is that
people really do agonize over the decision between pursuing their passion and
looking for the best economic opportunity. Not everyone who completes a
liberal arts degree can get a nice job blogging for the BBC. Tons and tons of
them end up severely underemployed, usually in retail or low-level office
positions. It's irresponsible to tell people anything other than the reality
of this situation. Trying to convince them to just go for the "worthless"
degree, despite these economic realities, is unfair and unhelpful.

[1]
[http://www.johnnietfeld.com/uploads/2/2/6/0/22606800/huber_k...](http://www.johnnietfeld.com/uploads/2/2/6/0/22606800/huber_kuncel_2016.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w22173.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22173.pdf)

------
b_tterc_p
This paragraph amused me:

> And while there’s often an assumption that the careers humanities graduates
> pursue just aren’t as good as the jobs snapped up by, say, engineers or
> medics, that isn’t the case. In Australia, for example, three of the 10
> fastest-growing occupations are sales assistants, clerks, and advertising,
> public relations and sales managers – all of which might look familiar as
> fields that humanities graduates tend to pursue.

Sales assistants and clerks are pretty dull sounding jobs. the fact that
humanities people pursue them and that they're available does not mean this is
good for humanities people.

This paragraph was similarly dumb

> We also know that as more women move into a field, the field’s overall
> earnings go down. Given that, is it any wonder that English majors, seven in
> 10 of whom are women, tend to make less than engineers, eight in 10 of whom
> are men?

Female engineers make more than male humanities on average, according to the
charts they linked to. It's definitely not a gender problem.

I've never bought the arguments for liberal arts. STEM degrees require plenty
of critical thinking, argument formation, and learning to work with others.
That's not to say you won't learn these things in humanities, but they're not
special. They're a basic part of learning almost any subject that isn't rote
memorization.

The article points out that you can make a humanities degree work, but I'm not
convinced this is a meaningful way to look at it. What fraction of successful
humanities majors should attribute their success to the fact that their degree
was in humanities? Maybe just being a reasonably intelligent person with a
college degree in anything is enough to be a successful person.

The article talks about salaries too. Overall humanities majors make less, but
for some jobs they make more. That's probably not a good way to think about it
either. Of course people who study pre-law are, on average, going to make less
doing law. The law firms fill out their lowest positions from the masses of
pre-law students. Taking an alternate path into something means you're more
likely to be doing something special or having connections to a good gig.

For the most part, I don't see your undergrad major driving a significant
portion of your capabilities, regardless of what it is. Humanities doesn't
have an obvious job market they signal baseline competence towards. That
doesn't make them bad, but it also doesn't mean we need to create stories
about why they compensate for this.

~~~
b_tterc_p
A little annoyed at the downvotes, but perhaps I can rephrase.

1) On average humanities majors do worse

2) Some proportion of humanities majors do great

Ergo, it seems unlikely that the humanities majors that do great do so
_because_ they studied humanities. There is little evidence that these
assumptions of attribution make sense.

That doesn't mean they're _bad_ , but people are typically terrible at
explaining why they were successful in life and we don't need to justify these
areas of study to existing market forces. It would be _pragmatic_ to be
realistic and communicate to the average person that, normalized to network
effects, pre-existing wealth, and baseline prestige of the institution,
humanities leads to worse economic outcomes. People studying humanities tend
to be richer to begin with[1], the fact that they do economically worse on
average should be _surprising_. They're also more likely to be
underemployed[2].

[1]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-
major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/)

[2][https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-r...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-
rate-of-us-college-graduates-by-major/)

