I'll preface it once again, i've got nothing against arts per se. I believe they are necessary. I've defended arts degrees in many other threads and pointed out the benefits and jobs you can get out of them in many more thread. I'm sure most of you will remember at least a few of these.
My problem was more with a lot of the things this particular author, in this particular article, implied or said. Before we go any further, do you guys agree its not that great of an article or that there certainly are better ones?
Yep, because all vocational people are sheep. Do I have to study the humanities so that I don't live in some illusionary world? Please. I have nothing against the humanities (I took roman history and philosophy in an IT degree this year, and found each subject thoroughly interesting) but this is outrageous.
Are you honestly telling me that someone studying a degree like law, IT, medicine or engineering who HASN'T got "making a career" at the forefront of their mind?
He specifically mentioned "the humanities" though and the fact that you haven't done a full arts degree doesn't make you a sheep. I think the point was kind of missed here.
I believe his point is that education has been reduced to a matter of money, and that is disappointing and sad.
What about UoM's cutting of philosophy staff? What was their justification? Reduced government funding. And what was the first faculty to bear the brunt? Arts.
I agree. However, like i pointed out earlier, we live in no utopia. Even with the most pro-education, big government socialist party in power, we would still have limited resources to allocate to satisfy infinite wants.
A lot of this is the disturbing rise of neo-liberalism and the disturbing slash and burn policies carried out on government expenditure or public services in the name of the free market. There are some things that just shouldn't have to turn a profit or be justified in purely monetary terms, like public healthcare and education. Making a loss on these things isn't a bad thing at all.
A lot of the states and even the federal government aren't in a utopian financial situation either though.
In the end, we will still have limited resources to distribute on education. This is why *
how* we distribute them becomes important.
Just for the record, many faculties have suffered funding cuts. This isn't some organised international conspiracy against the humanities. In the recent and fairly well publicised planned redundancies at the university of sydney, about 30% of the accounting faculty was targeted.
As many of the people in the sciences outside biomedicine will testify, they're not too kind to them either.
If you can show arts faculties suffer huge redundancies compared to other faculties, without good reason, then i will buy a lot of his points. Otherwise, i'm not convinced.
You yourself argue all the time that our forms of government wouldn't exist without philosophy, so I really don't know why you are against this statement. Surely a society without democracy is, in fact, backwards. No?
I still stand by the point i was trying to make and you failed to quote, we are definitely moving forwards. He's being
hyperbolic. Like i pointed out, i'm the first in my family, even extended family, to finish highschool, let alone go to university. I have regular working class parents. In their time, university was not even really an option. Obviously, things have changed between then and now to make it a reality for me. From having 3% of people university educated in their time, to around 25% now and a government target for 40% in the next few decades, we are hardly moving backwards.
You don't need an arts degree to understand democracy or which policies are good policies. If this is indeed true, this would make the vast majority of our voting base incompetent to vote by that logic. A society without democracy is backwards but to suggest 10% cuts in the arts faculty is the end of democracy as we know it, even in first glance, is bullshit.
My main problem with the article is he is running around like the sky is falling.
Also, I have no idea what the status of my parents' careers has to do with any of this. I did law because I was pushed into a career path that would net me money because my parents didn't want me to live like they had to, but I still understand the utility of humanities.
This was part of my other statement, about how society was not moving backwards and how we have increasing amounts of people in university. The point i was trying to make is the rich and privileged do a very good job of staying like that. Their children tend to much better as well. Monash, despite their best efforts (scholarships, SEAS, etc), failed last year to match their target for intake of disadvantaged students. It's still a problem today.
I was pointing out, how in times gone by, especially in my parents day, university was largely the domain of the rich and privileged. We have made so much progress in the fact that someone like you or I were able to go to a university and not only go but to be bankrolled by the government for a decent chunk of the cost and receive a government interest free loan for the rest.
My point once again was against his hyperbolic assumption that we have somehow gone backwards in the past few decades.
If the cutting of humanities continues, there will ostensibly be a point in the future where it will become almost impossible to study it. I personally have no desire to live in a world where only sciences and maths are valued, where practicality is prioritised over beauty, and in my view such a society would, indeed, be backwards. The progress of a society is not only measured by its technological progress, you know.
I don't think it'll ever
totally disappear, what a dark dystopian day that would be indeed.
As long as it is in demand, there'll be universities willing to teach it.
Not to mention a fair few people take it out of interest as part of other degrees anyway and many majors are useful to the public service or society as a whole (Languages, Economics, Asian/European/Whatever studies, etc).
How many VCE students actively look up the salary data for their prospective careers?
Perhaps they can't name you all 6 digits of it but i'm sure they have at least a general perception. It's your own prudent duty to know what the hell you're getting into before you get into it. There is some element of responsibility we must accept here.
My point isn't that VCE students should know the salary of every career by heart. However, you certainly at least pick these things up during the course of a degree. My point was this, if you know the money is low getting into it or during the course of the degree but continue anyway, then go onto complain that the salary is low or the jobs are scarce, it's partially your fault for continuing in it. If you cared so much about a salary, you had plenty of chances to jump ship. My problem is with those people.
If you know this and carry on but you're realistic about your chances, there's no problem there. This particular paragraph, again which you have taken in isolation, links into something else that was part of my post. If you're somehow shocked at the end of your degree because you failed to do your due diligence and didn't at all look into the endgame, then, that's at least partially your own fault.
By your logic, someone who is good at humanities and terrible at maths would deserve to have a shitty life just because 1) their strengths are not in the "money-makers" and 2) they chose a degree that they would enjoy (isn't that the advice you and everyone else on this forum gives?)
Never said they deserve a shitty life or should be paid less, i think you are mistaken here.
Again, my problem isn't with the idea of humanities or arts in theory, its with his shitty article.
The quantity of young people who don't even understand how to vote or who they're voting for tells us something about how our highschool level civics education is working.
See what I said above about typical STEM arrogance.
It's not arrogance. Just because you can't go to an elite university doesn't mean an understanding of philosophy or history is out of reach to our bus driver in this example. If you believe it is, then i'd retort with a charge of elitism and almost disdain for the working class and common people.
You can gain an appreciable knowledge of it on your own, i don't know why you're denying it (thats what i percieve anyway but i could be wrong, these are just words on a forum afterall, its all interpretation). You might not be able to lecture it to undergrads or write a full interpretative essay on it or something but to deny a bus driver or cleaner can't gain some measure of knowledge of philosophy, politics or international relations on their own, if they have such a will, is totally wrong.
if its paid for with tax, by society, it should provide some measurable benefit. If its totally self-funded, i'm more than happy for them to study arts all they want but if they do it for the sole reason, as this guy suggests, i dont think we should have to bankroll them for the sole purpose of their own private self-enrichment.
So why are you taking philosophy subjects then? What measurable benefit are you conferring upon society? Are you planning on paying full fee for them?
Again, you're taking it in isolation, try to read it along with the rest of what i've said. My main attack was on the author claiming that if your only reason to study arts is self indulgence, that is an acceptable reason and an acceptable use of public funds. I don't think it is.
I can't pay full fee even if i wanted to, so, a bit of a moot challenge there. Again, my criticism was against the article and the idea that self indulgence and that alone is a sole good reason for studying an entire arts degree in xxxx major.
If you think the arts subjects i take confer no measurable benefit, you must concede the arts subjects others study also provide no measurable benefit unless you have some interest in attacking me personally. Since it seems you DO indeed believe the arts subjects other people study provide a measurable benefit, i don't see why your attack against me (even though personal attacks never are) is valid.
Notwithstanding the logical invalidity of your charge, I could publicly stroke my ego (i have no desire to do so) and say what measurable benefit my actual degree (eg. Science majoring in pharmacology) does have in response to your other challenge but i think its better for all of us if things like this are unsaid.
And scientific advancements are, of course, the only advancements that matter, right?
Never said that, now did i ?
I dont see why you feel the need to almost personally attack me or be aggressive. You know i'm in favour of arts, you know i love philosophy, i'm sure your eyes regularly glaze over when i go on one of my extended philosophy or politics discussion sessions. I'm quite clearly a fan of them and i value their advances of them very much.
Scientific advancements are certainly bang for buck though. Without penicillin, many of us wouldn't even have the luxury of sitting here. Ideas like socialism and the influence have provided enormous influence as a force for good and marshaling people towards a good cause and a more equal society. Because of the corresponding changes in politics, philosophy, etc we're able to go to university. Science has gotten a fair bit more funding than several hundred years ago.
I still stand by my point humanities is a luxury for society. Likewise, a world totally devoid of some of the things humanities bring might not be a pleasant place to live in either. I think the average person is more concerned with getting food on their plate, getting well or curing their disease rather than getting that new book on peruvian politics. The point i was trying to make is that it is a luxury. No matter how many fancy degrees you might have, you're still reliant on the plumber or the electrician. The article is tinged with what i almost perceive to be a kind of elitism. That is the point i was responding to, especially in some of the parts of my post that you chose not to quote (perhaps because you agree with them but im unsure).
Again, i have nothing against the humanities or arts in theory, you know that too nina, my point was this article has a shitload of problems and i take issue with a lot of the things he put forward and the way he put them.
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