Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

I dunno but I think a lot of people in foreign policy positions have a liberal arts background. Some even in, yikes, history.

And the track record of American foreign policy success really shows the value of that liberal arts training, lmao.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2023/10/08/miami-university-to-reinvent-18-majors-with-low-enrollment/70984039007/

More humanities major cutting.
It says Miami U
I think its Miami U of Ohio

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

I dunno but I think a lot of people in foreign policy positions have a liberal arts background. Some even in, yikes, history.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

Who do you think is going to teach them if you lay off the professors? The vast, vast majority of students ANY humanities professor at a non-elite, undergraduate college teaches are not majors. They are students who are going to need to be able to write and speak and do research in their careers. Yeah, STEM students too.

So true. My Chemistry/Chinese double major kid found out the Asian history class involves a whole different level of reading and writing (much more extensive) than his Chemistry classes.
I truly believe it will serve him well later in life.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

Who do you think is going to teach them if you lay off the professors? The vast, vast majority of students ANY humanities professor at a non-elite, undergraduate college teaches are not majors. They are students who are going to need to be able to write and speak and do research in their careers. Yeah, STEM students too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

This is short-sighted thinking, and also written by someone who doesn't understand how college finances work. At many universities, the number of majors per department is not as useful a number as the number of students taught per professor. So, you'll have lots of people who need to take classes in math, statistics, foreign languages, history, literature, world religions, philosophy, etc., but they won't necessarily major in them. Universities need these faculty.
The market is not always a good indicator--it's a short term indicator. It can take years of education to fully train people who become experts in the Middle East or East Asia. If you want to save historically important art or literature, you also need to train students for a long time.
Humans are not just robots, there are a lot of factors that lead to a full and meaningful life. Maybe you and your family personally don't appreciate the arts, design, history, religion, or foreign cultures, but a lot of people do, and investing in people who can create and preserve these aspects of humanity is worthwhile for those who can appreciate their importance.

I love history, studying foreign cultures, religion, philosophy and nearly 20% of my book collection is biographies. They are all important and make life interesting and meaningful.

The flaw in your thinking is that we need a huge portion of our students to be majoring in them. As I mentioned, more than 60% of course work even for a STEM degree is in these fields. We dont need 25% of the population majoring in these to "who can create and preserve these aspects of humanity". The numbers a fraction of what is currently being output in universities.

You are dead wrong about the market. It might be wrong in the short term, but it is always right in the long term. Market gets somethings wrong in the short term, we see this again and again. But 100% right in long term. No exception. None. Show me one case where something has been wrong say 30 years in market price. Name one single thing.

The market is saying history and other such majors are not worth the money being spent. If you major in these, you are just hoping something clicks or the Government is going to wipe out your debt.

Please read carefully. That is not the argument I made.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have long believed that the college market was in a bubble that would burst. This is why I haven't funded our 529s at the level suggested-- I hear 120k per kid, and I don't believe the market will hold at prices that high into the next decade. I'm in a position to pay cash for basically any college without much angst, so the only reason to fund a 529 is the tax advantages. I don't believe the tax advantages outweigh the risk of the market popping and college prices coming back down to earth.

Sounds like you need to talk with a tax advisor and a wealth management professional because there are a lot of things you can do with a 529 now even if your kid doesn't go to college or tuition prices drop, but you can't go in the other direction and recapture the lost tax savings from cashing out investments outside of the 529 to pay for college if your prediction doesn't come true.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is Lesley U?

I don't know but a number of schools, Goucher and West Virginia U, are doing this because they can't afford to keep so many profs around. Covid hit a lot of these colleges hard. Note in the article this was union-arranged.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the hate against liberal arts is not a bug but a feature of a system that more and more seems to be capitalizing on people’s fears so the status quo isn’t challenged. And I say this as someone who works in a science based/“practical” field.

Side note: Why is this phrase so popular now? Within the past year or two, everything is said to be "not a bug but a feature."

The status quo would be to keep the liberal arts departments, wouldn't it? They're eliminating departments that fewer students are majoring in bc they don't need as many profs to teach those classes, since not as many students are taking the classes.

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

Anonymous wrote:I majored in a liberal arts. That was fine when I could pay with summer jobs and babysitting for state school. But these prices demand real ROI.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional

I dunno but I think a lot of people in foreign policy positions have a liberal arts background. Some even in, yikes, history.

Anonymous wrote:The world does not need more history, philosophy, literature, religious studies students. Students who are going into these fields have not been advised properly.

Everyone is learning humanities. Including STEM students. Look at their course work, more than 60% in humanities.

You dont need a major in history. Who would need history majors? History teachers/professors, yes. That is a tiny portion of the population. The numbers graduating in that major are multiples of those actually needed.

How do we know? The market is a good mechanism for what skills are valuable. If you paid attention in humanities courses, you would have learned about it.

- STEM professional