

The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind' - rglovejoy
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

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philk
These articles are awesome.

I'm always fascinated by why people seem to think that studying the humanities
is living the 'life of the mind', as opposed to hard sciences or engineering;
fields which provide more robust means of testing the conclusions one has
arrived at through mental effort.

~~~
jsomers
The author's objection to graduate school in the humanities has less to do
with a lack of intellectual rigor than with the structure of the job market in
that part of the academy.

So I think your comment is somewhat misleading in connecting this article (or
"these articles") to your own criticism. (Which criticism may of course be
valid on its own terms.)

~~~
CWuestefeld
I didn't read philk's comment as a criticism. I think it was a sidebar comment
triggered by the OP's almost offhand reference to "life of mind"

I don't see where philk "connected" his own comment with any of the arguments
made in the OP. It's just something he added.

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waldrews
Compare Adam Smith's analysis in Wealth of Nations:

"The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to
qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is
necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual
reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or
physician; because the trade of the one is crowded with indigent people who
have been brought up to it at the public expence; whereas those of the other
two are incumbered with very few who have not been educated at their own." -
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN4.html#I.10.94>

~~~
herdrick
It's somewhat the opposite here. In fields like Computer Science there's
_more_ money available to pay for your education - it's typical to leave grad
school without any debt, I think - than in the Humanities, where as the author
pointed out it's typical to leave with huge student loan debt (which is
undischargeable by bankruptcy, btw). I guess you could say that there are some
fields like CS that can act as professional degrees even though they aren't
officially so.

And maybe it wasn't like this is Adam Smith's time, but today a large majority
of working law school grads aren't working as lawyers.

I think you're right - high tuition bills do make people think long and hard
about going back to school. It's just that 22 year olds aren't so easily
deterred from disastrous choices.

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scispaz
Have people not yet figured out that most degrees in the humanities are often
not all that marketable? I thought the writing was on the wall 10 years ago.
Even then far more people were entering these studies then there would ever be
positions. It seems to have only gotten worse.

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jseliger
If you want to know more about the problems with the structure of academia (as
well as how it came to be), see Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas:
[http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-
louis...](http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-
menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-
university) , which I write about at the link.

------
niels_olson
Here's some useful overview stats from Department of Education, but we need a
breakdown of science and non-science. My gut wonders if these might not be
borrowed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Edit: here's the link:
<http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables_1.asp>

Oh, and here's some more granular data on the science enrollment side of
things: <http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08306/>

anybody know how some open source datasets to start pulling the information
apart?

