Is it low brow to criticize humanities majors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a luxury to be able to study whatever you are passionate about for learnings sake without having to care about employment outcomes.

My daughter is in NYC with thousands of kids studying dance, acting, musical theatre at places like NYU, Juilliard, Fordham with Alvin Ailey, all the schools at the top ballet companies. That’s just a few of the schools.

It’s not that unusual for these kids to study something without knowing what kind on income they might have.

Cool, those are performing artists, not humanities majors.

Even worse with people criticizing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

or from other non-western countries...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

I mean, those people are just projecting their insecurities. The joke’s on them because humanities majors are best positioned to thrive in an AI-disrupted economy. Human creativity is going to command a premium in the workplace. It is already true.

Humanities majors aren't human creativity. They are spectators to human creativity.

But enjoy coping. While English majors get replaced by ChatGPT writing marketing copy.

Humanities majors learn to think. That's what reading, analyzing, and presenting and defending your analyses in discussions, presentations and in writing does. You get a broad based education and learn to think deeply and communicate.

English majors don't just write. They think. That's why their skills are so valuable in so many fields.

Do you think CS/eng majors don't "think"? LOL

NP. This is a genuine question bc I’ve never taken a CS class in my life, but does CS allow for multiple-things-true-at-once thinking? Or is it inherently binary?

Yes, I know what binary code is, and that this is by definition binary. I am not talking about coding. I am wondering more about the kind of broader, big-picture thinking that wades through the messiness of conflicting ideas, shifts in and out of different lenses and perspectives, and considers the “no right answers” questions.

Not judging, just trying to better understand the kind of thought processes involved, and if/how it is different from other kinds of thinking one encounters at university — from the hypothesis formation/testing of the scientific method, to logical reasoning, to convergent/divergent thinking, etc)

Think about the software you use on a day to day basis, or social media, AI, etc... Some of it can do very complex things.

So, yes, software can be quite complex, which requires some creative, outside the box thinking at times. Sometimes it also does require big picture thinking but that's more on the architecture/design part of the software.

Even low level programmers have to think critically and logically to be able to write a piece of code that is efficient and scalable. Are there some programmers who are terrible at this? Of course, but even mediocre SWE do "think" about how to write the software that does what it needs to do, works efficiently and is scalable.

Sometimes it requires new ideas or designs to address the business needs; other times, they just come up with something off the top of their heads and start creating something brand new.

Software programming is all about logic and algorithms, but it also requires some creative thinking.

Except a large and growing proportion of code is being written by AI. All bets are off in many disciplines.

[Anonymous]

As someone who works in a major tech company, wake up people.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-liberal-arts-is-the-future-2017-2#:~:text=Cuban's%20forecast%20of%20the%20skills,is%20changing%2C%22%20Cuban%20said.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40440952/why-this-tech-ceo-keeps-hiring-humanities-majors

https://medium.com/@amwinte2/stop-calling-them-soft-skills-why-your-humanities-major-is-more-valuable-than-you-might-think-4d67f7ef2cac

https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-ceos-of-youtube-slack-and-whole-foods-all-have-liberal/362550

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who works in a major tech company, wake up people.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-liberal-arts-is-the-future-2017-2#:~:text=Cuban's%20forecast%20of%20the%20skills,is%20changing%2C%22%20Cuban%20said.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40440952/why-this-tech-ceo-keeps-hiring-humanities-majors

https://medium.com/@amwinte2/stop-calling-them-soft-skills-why-your-humanities-major-is-more-valuable-than-you-might-think-4d67f7ef2cac

https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-ceos-of-youtube-slack-and-whole-foods-all-have-liberal/362550

Not to beat a dead horse…but these are all humanities/liberal arts degrees from top universities. Only the Chipotle example is UC Boulder but he also founded the company (vs the others that were hired…though the YouTube CEO also joined Google when it was just like 5 people and knew Sergei and Larry personally when it was just them).

In some respects it’s irrelevant what you studied at these schools and more that you have already been “vetted” as a very intelligent person.

My kid’s friend from Princeton was just hired at an AI company at $300k with a philosophy degree (but started in engineering and has a fairly strong engineering background). This person is fairly blunt that it was the Princeton degree that explained 75% of getting hired. The outcome would have been the same if this person had stuck with engineering and had been interested in this company…because they hire kids with all different backgrounds from top schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who works in a major tech company, wake up people.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-liberal-arts-is-the-future-2017-2#:~:text=Cuban's%20forecast%20of%20the%20skills,is%20changing%2C%22%20Cuban%20said.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40440952/why-this-tech-ceo-keeps-hiring-humanities-majors

https://medium.com/@amwinte2/stop-calling-them-soft-skills-why-your-humanities-major-is-more-valuable-than-you-might-think-4d67f7ef2cac

https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-ceos-of-youtube-slack-and-whole-foods-all-have-liberal/362550

Not to beat a dead horse…but these are all humanities/liberal arts degrees from top universities. Only the Chipotle example is UC Boulder but he also founded the company (vs the others that were hired…though the YouTube CEO also joined Google when it was just like 5 people and knew Sergei and Larry personally when it was just them).

In some respects it’s irrelevant what you studied at these schools and more that you have already been “vetted” as a very intelligent person.

My kid’s friend from Princeton was just hired at an AI company at $300k with a philosophy degree (but started in engineering and has a fairly strong engineering background). This person is fairly blunt that it was the Princeton degree that explained 75% of getting hired. The outcome would have been the same if this person had stuck with engineering and had been interested in this company…because they hire kids with all different backgrounds from top schools.

My non-STEM kid at Ivy said interviews are much easier there than for their friends at large state flagships.
Had a paid internship following freshman year that was very very easy to get this past summer.....