
New data on college majors confirms old trend: technocracy is crushing humanism - faizshah
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/oh-the-humanities.html
======
fallingfrog
Makes sense- it used to be that college was a place where the ruling class
sent their children to be educated in how to be gentlemen/managers. The
humanities were considered what such a person needed to know; an understanding
of people and society, but not specific work skills since it would be the
underclass doing the work.

Now, college is increasingly a form of trade school where members of every
class go to learn a marketable skill, in order to sell their labor. Not
everybody can be a member of the ruling class, and people are realizing that.
Getting a degree in the humanities is only advantageous if you have a
reasonable expectation that you'll never have to know a specific trade but
will simply be in the management.

~~~
frockington
I'd rather have management that knows its business/technology over a
humanities major any day

~~~
derefr
Maybe you're picturing "management" on the wrong level. Think "Limited
Partners in VC firms", not CEOs. Being in management—even being a CEO!—is
still a trade-skill (it is, in fact, the quintessential haute-bourgeoisie
trade-skill) and not the sort of thing you'd historically learn in college.
Most historical "captains of industry"—think e.g. Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie,
John D. Rockefeller—never went to college.

College, really, was for the people who boss CEOs around: the patrons
(modernly, "angel investors") of the founders who started the company; the
capitalists who sit on the boards of the the mutual funds who invest in IPOed
companies; etc. People who got taught how to "manage wealth" and the
essentials of an MBA on their daddy's knee (with said father possibly being
one of the wealthy middle-class "captains of industry"), and are now, in their
teenage years, being sent off for "polishing" at college, such that they can
be a _good_ person, not just a _brutally efficient_ one. (And, also, to
enculturate them into the upper-class by immersion among upper-class children,
so that a merely-wealthy family can be thus transmuted into an upper-class
_dynasty_ , with descendants worthy of noble status in countries that grant
such.)

Or, to put that another way: the humanities were created to turn people like
Jeff Bezos into people like Elon Musk. (Or to turn people like during-
Microsoft Bill Gates into people like post-Microsoft Bill Gates.) To take
people who already have a knack for "making money", but are still
fundamentally human with human drives like greed and pride; and inculcate into
them a perspective on wealth as being a means to a greater, humanitarian end.

------
CompelTechnic
Committing 4 years of your life to study various artistic works and social
studies is a luxury, and it does have value. Good career prospects are not
part of this value proposition.

I wonder how much better-informed current rising freshmen are about career
prospects after seeing the fallout of the great recession. I wonder where they
get their research for choosing their college majors.

~~~
wvenable
> Good career prospects are not part of this value proposition

This is a relatively new situation. It wasn't long ago that having a degree
humanities was sufficient to get an entry level position for a good middle-
class job. Now college/university is seen as a necessity, that is no longer
sufficient to stand-out career-wise.

~~~
treespace8
It’s the slow disaster that seems to be ignored.

People want a roadmap to secure job. Or at least a secure field.

Without proper guidance on how to achieve this modest goal young adults lose
valuable productive years of their life.

------
defnotadog
I was lucky enough to go an engineering school that required us to take a lot
of humanities. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more than the minimum.

I think schools need to do a better job requiring humanities majors to take
STEM classes in the same way I was required to take humanities. I have plenty
of friends in humanities who took the bare minimum which was only one class
(physics for poets or something similar) and a lab (which could be psych or
some other soft science).

~~~
joanofarf
>I think schools need to do a better job requiring humanities majors to take
STEM classes in the same way I was required to take humanities.

This. And incorporating more technology/computing into the humanities
themselves.

~~~
dorchadas
Exactly. Both fields have so much they can learn from each other. I'm really
glad that I ended up doing a STEM major with a humanities minor (almost double
major, but class fell through final semester). It taught me a lot and I'd say
I definitely learned more useful skills in my humanities courses, working as a
teacher now (of a STEM subject). There's just so much STEM fields _can 't_
teach, like how to interact with and understand other people; it's just not
something that can be boiled down to a science.

------
Alex3917
> But a hopeful road map to humanism’s recovery might include variations on
> those older themes. First, a return of serious academic interest in the
> possible (I would say likely) truth of religious claims. Second, a regained
> sense of history as a repository of wisdom and example rather than just a
> litany of crimes and wrongthink. Finally, a cultural recoil from the tyranny
> of the digital and the virtual and the Very Online, today’s version of the
> technocratic, technological, potentially totalitarian Machine that Jacobs’s
> Christian humanists opposed.

This is actually pretty insightful for an NYT piece.

~~~
CompelTechnic
I'll withhold comment about the religious aspects, but I think I would like to
see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a
developing era of high technology, with an anxiety-inducing attention economy,
lower-cost material needs but increasingly tempting highly marketed material
wants and positional goods (an economy in the style of Tyler Cowen's "Average
is Over"). Teach people enough to critically understand whether progress is a
treadmill, and whether the treadmill is worth getting off.

There is evidence (higher suicide rates, and depression rates, although
depression rates may be influenced by underlying trends in clinical technique)
that all this progress doesn't make us any happier. Keeping up with the
Joneses to compete for status results in a pretty shitty nash equilibrium when
there are a billion people in the world.

It feels like any and all effort that the humanities put into making an actual
impact on modern day life is just lashing out at power structures. This can
help achieve equality in the long run, but for student's who are studying
these topics, it does not provide anything actionable to their own lives.
Academic Philosophy is applicable to a student's current and future life, but
the way that it is studied only rarely provides a grounding foundation for a
personal lifestyle philosophy.

~~~
jerf
"I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live
the good life" in a developing era of high technology,"

That would be very good. I've seen more work on that topic here on HN, indeed,
I've _contributed_ more work on that topic here in HN than I personally have
seen come out of academia. This is not a statement of pride in HN or myself,
it is a condemnation of academia. I see a lot of judgmental discussions about
whether things are good or bad or pathological or qualifying for DSM
diagnoses, but very little on how to navigate the morass.

This used to be a core topic for philosophy; it's certainly a huge component
of Stoicism, if not the main focus, for instance.

I will however give academia one bit of the benefit of the doubt, which is
that it's been awfully hard to keep up lately. Writing about how to have the
good life in 1990 would have only marginal utility in dealing with the
civilizational neurotic hysteria that social media is creating, for instance.

But it would still be nice to see some more effort put in this direction. I
can only imagine going to my advisor and telling them I want to focus on this.
They may individually and intellectually support me, but the system will
utterly reject it.

------
DubiousPusher
Is it a little early to begin the lament when the average University requires
2 years of humanities before technical classes and not the other way round?

------
andy-x
I think many colleges like to attract a lot of international students these
days (who are paying with hard cash). I doubt that many international students
would ever go into humanities/social studies. Could that be a reason for
relative shrinking of those majors? In general more hard statistics would be
useful here.

------
skadamou
I think that a populace educated in the humanities is an immense societal
good. Of course, this view is informed by my own personal interest in these
subjects and has little to do with the economic incentives college students
must consider. I was able to balance these interests by attending a school
with a “liberal arts” slant and choosing to major in a science. I think I got
some quality exposure to the humanities in my gen ed courses but was still
able to obtain an (economically) valuable degree.

~~~
dorchadas
I completely agree. I'm a teacher in a STEM field who graduated with a STEM
degree and a humanities minor. I've honestly found my humanities minor to be
_much_ more beneficial when dealing with students, and I wish we could
convince them to interact with the humanities more in secondary school, as I
think it would do them a load of good. Just like I think it would do
_everyone_ good.

Though, of course, that's not to say we can't incorporate STEM aspects into
humanities courses as well. I'm certain there's new ways to analyze things
that opens up with computers, and everyone should be scientifically literate
(and mathematically literate, but that might be the math teacher coming out in
me)

------
rayiner
Yay, we're winning!

------
vlunkr
A decline in students majoring in humanist subjects doesn't necessarily
correlate with a decline in humanism itself. The real issue is that if you're
going to go into crazy debt for an education you better pick something that
will get you out of debt. You can still study these things in an unofficial
way.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Assimilating a meaningful part of the canon requires a considerable time
investment. For many people, university is the only time in their lives they
will have that time for reading. Sadly, you just cannot expect the average
working person (especially after they become parents to child) to maintain
time and motivation for such a program of study.

------
minikites
The humanities (and liberal arts in general) are important for a functioning
society because they endeavor to teach people what it means to be a person in
a world full of people.

[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/february/nussbaum-
democr...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/february/nussbaum-democracy-
humanities-020912.html)

>Increasingly viewed as "useless" by politicians, humanities and arts
programming is being replaced by technical training courses in sciences,
engineering and technology in the name of economic gain. While technical
skills are important for the future health of nations, Nussbaum said that they
alone do not make for a fully educated student. Without people with a liberal
arts background, she said, the world would be filled with "narrow, technically
trained workers, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves,
criticize tradition and authority, and understand the significance of another
person's sufferings and achievements."

>These so-called soft-skills are essential for developing a "decent world
culture" and maintaining healthy democracies, she said. Study of history and
culture imparts the ability to approach global issues as a citizen of the
world. Study of philosophy teaches the critical thinking skills that help us
reason about our choices. Participation in the creative arts fosters an
empathetic capacity and, Nussbaum said, "allows us to imagine the challenges
facing someone unlike ourselves."

>In closing, Nussbaum reiterated that the arts and humanities not only "shape
people who are able to see other human beings as full people with thoughts and
feelings" but also build "nations that are able to overcome fear and suspicion
in favor of sympathetic and well-reasoned debate."

~~~
Nasrudith
I keep on seeing this unsupported assertion everywhere when the humanities are
called upon to justify themselves or feel envious - that humanities are the
best for critical thinking.

Why does it mean that they can think for themselves when in many cases the
humanities slavishly follow what came before even in face of evidence that
says no it really doesn't work that way (people who look at Marx for economics
for instance)? Why are social skills assumed to stem from them only? Why is
the ability to divine objective truths about reality and literally prove
something indisputably impossible or true not count as critical thinking?
There is nothing more critical than seeing and stating "and yet it moves"
despite what everybody thinks. The utility of humanities is done a great
disservice by these arguments

The author's very thesis is incoherent- complaining both about death of
tradition and people not thinking for themselves. Complaining about
advertisers while praising soft skills is a similar contradiction.

------
jseliger
I've been to grad school in English and taught humanities classes for ten
years. In many respects, humanists have their own habits and beliefs to blame:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/08/oh-the-
humanities](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/08/oh-the-humanities).

I'm surprised the reckoning has taken this long to arrive, or be noticed.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Your objection to the humanities as it is taught today is that it has veered
toward what is useful. That is true, but that is not what is shifting people
from the humanities. What is useful to society is not necessarily useful to
the individual, so people veer to engineering to get their paycheck. Sticking
to what is beautiful without regard to any application to society would not
have saved the humanities either.

------
leroy_masochist
I really disagree with the thesis of this article, namely, that the decreasing
number of humanities majors at elite schools is reflective of overall cultural
decline.

It's not because of cultural decline, it's because there's been a leveling of
the playing field wherein competition has gotten a lot fiercer on two fronts:
it's generally harder to get into elite colleges, and top-tier employers look
at a broader range of schools than they used to. Put another way, being born
into a wealthy family, attending Suburb Country Day and then spending a few
years at boarding school is less of a tailwind for getting into Harvard than
it used to be; and also, going to Harvard is less of a tailwind for getting a
top-tier job than it used to be. So, the applicant pool to Harvard is less
wealthy and more scrappy and pragmatic; and also, students once at Harvard
make more practical decisions with regard to what they choose to study.

To give an example of an industry I know firsthand, as a (relatively) recent
Goldman IBD alum I can tell you that there's been a profound shift in analyst
recruiting over the last couple decades. 20 years ago, NESCAC alumni with
humanities degrees were like half the analyst class and state school grads
(other than Wharton) were an endangered species. Today the senior partner in
your group might have a history degree from Williams, but few if any of the
analysts do.

This is reflective of increased competition, not disenlightenment. And it's a
good thing. The state school finance majors are better investment bankers and
deserve the opportunity more.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
Your reply is symptomatic. In what forsaken world is a society's cultural
vitality to be measured by the quality of its investment bankers? That is
decadence itself.

~~~
rayiner
Finance is one of the pillars of modern society. You need finance to bankroll
everything from scientific research to wars to infrastructure development. The
dominance of the British Empire, for example, was intertwined with that of its
banks: [https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-place-built-on-
gl...](https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-place-built-on-global-
banking-survive-britain-s-retreat-from-europe). The quality of a country's
investment bankers is incredibly important, and America has benefited
tremendously from having a very strong banking sector. (You should watch
Hamilton.)

------
mattnewton
While reading, I just kept thinking the old Clinton campaign quote “It’s the
economy, stupid!”. In other words, we sold a generation on college being the
way to middle class or better jobs, and there aren’t many middle class or
better jobs that require humanities degrees. There are no apollonites leading
the charge, it’s each person individually looking at what it will take to pay
down their debt everyone told them to take on, and realizing poetry and French
literature won’t help the majority of the time.

The post briefly adresses this but then goes off on how we need more inquiry
into religious truths and less of the “Very Online”. Maybe I am possessed by
Apollo and that has left me unable to understand how that would ever work. Any
change that doesn’t directly adress the economic incentives will work only on
those who have hereditary wealth and don’t need to care about those incentives
at 18.

~~~
raverbashing
This really seems to be one of the important problems (not the only one and I
certainly wouldn't want to write a thesis here)

Humanities in the 70s/80s meant your degree wouldn't cost 6 digits and you
could probably find a good enough job as a teacher or in the editorial market
(press/publishers/etc) or in several other places.

Today those degrees costs one zero more and pays half of what it used to, and
your knowledge of Latin won't be only useful for fancy coffee names, if you're
lucky.

~~~
curun1r
It's really the result of a shift in mindset about education from primarily
being about the benefit to society to one where the primary benefit is to the
educated individual. I unfortunately can't find it anywhere, but I remember
reading an interesting Rolling Stone article that traced the shift in thinking
to Ronald Reagan, first during his governorship of California and eventually
during his presidency. What happens when you start viewing education that way
is that you start subjecting it to the laws of supply and demand. If you view
an education as having hundreds of thousands of dollars of value for a
graduate, you start to be able to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for
the privilege of getting that education. When it was viewed primarily as a
public service that people did to become better citizens, there was more
emphasis on cost controls since the state was shouldering more of the burden
cost.

Once that shift in mindset happened, or so posited the article, the increase
in the cost of education that we've seen over the past 3 decades becomes an
inevitable conclusion of schools closing the gap between what they charge and
what people are willing to pay. And once education becomes this expensive, the
move towards STEM and away from humanities also becomes inevitable so long as
both degrees are roughly the same cost. If the humanities want to survive and
thrive in today's educational environment, they need to figure out how to
charge significantly less for that degree. If a humanities grad can emerge
into the job market with $20k in debt compared to a STEM major that comes out
with 10x that, you might see more people choosing the humanities route.

------
ng12
I would have loved to major in a "humanist" major -- probably history or
anthropology. Unfortunately education and living are expensive and life in an
ivory tower doesn't pay.

------
chapium
If humanist degrees don’t pay, perhaps the supply exceeds the demand for this
knowledge.

~~~
jacquesm
Not everything can be readily explained by trotting out free market dogma.

~~~
jerf
If we don't "free market dogma" applying to college major decisions, then
we've got to figure out how to make it so choosing humanities is not signing
up for a near-lifetime of debt with no practical way of discharging it.

If there is _any_ discipline for which it make absolutely, utterly no sense
that college today is so many multiples more expensive than it was 50 years
ago, it's the humanities. Have books gotten more expensive? No. A huge chunk
of the material is public domain, so it's not licensing problems. We shouldn't
need more administrators, we should need massively fewer what with computers
taking care of all the tedious paperwork. The teachers involved are making
maybe a couple of times more than what they would have 50 years ago, inflation
adjusted, and a great deal of them are making less than they did back then, as
associate professors. Where is all the money going?

~~~
gammarator
> Where is all the money going?

It's complicated? And depends on if you're talking about elite private
universities, middle-tier state schools, for-profit schools, etc.

Most classes of schools have larger administrations: some are just bloat, of
course, but others are managing demand for increased student services, greater
requirements on compliance for federal grants, increased desire to woo wealthy
private donors, etc.

Virtually all classes of universities are trying to expand their facilities
and update or maintain their physical plants; this becomes an arms race when
students are paying full freight--who will pay in the high five figures yearly
to attend some place with run-down buildings?

Elite universities have sharply expanded financial aid as they have broadened
their student bodies beyond the already wealthy.

For-profit schools charge what they can and direct the extra to shareholders,
propped up by federal student loans; this has led to a wide range of abuses.

Finally, we must not forget that there has been a major effort to defund
public higher education. Rather than casting a university degree as something
that other citizens benefit from, it's depicted as purely a private good that
students themselves should pay for. See "Unmaking the Public University" by
Newfield. In this case the "higher tuition" is not new money to the
university, but shifting the burden of paying for the education from society
to the individual.

------
JoeAltmaier
Some (lots of?) of 'humanism' means 'superstition and myth'. I'm glad those
things are on the way out.

~~~
lucas_membrane
So 'humanism' means the opposite of 'Humanism'? How can we debate on a level
playing field if one set of goalposts sounds just like the other?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not debating anything. Anyway, the OP defined the issue as the decline in
history, philosophy, religion. Thus my comment.

