This? "The book How College Affects Students surveys the American higher education research literature, and struggles to find consistent differences between student majors in development of generic skills, except that quantitative courses tend to increase quantitative competencies (as one would hope). But the book says that the ‘evidence is less clear-cut for the acquisition of verbal skills’, with one study finding that social science courses improved them, but five others not replicating the finding (p.91). Similarly, the evidence on acquiring critical thinking skills is also inconsistent (p.175). It’s not that there aren’t usually improvements in these skills during the university years; it’s just that there aren’t reliable differences between disciplines." It is not clear whether the research reviewed was from surveys or from direct observation.
No, this:
When asked at the end of their course about their acquisition of generic skills, with questions about analytic, problem-solving and written communication skills, ’society and culture’ graduates don’t stand out as having acquired unusually high confidence in their abilities. As reported in Graduate Course Experience 2005, 67.2% of bachelor degree graduates agreed that their generic skills had been improved (that is, on average they picked one of the top two points on a five-point scale).As for the research which you've referenced, I don't think its admissible here. We are unable to see the complete statistics, nor how the research was conducted (and if indeed it was done through interviews, we should also be able to view the actual questions asked). Otherwise, the research could quite frankly be biased. This "evidence" is highly selective.
Where is the evidence for your claim that" along with teaching valuable communication skills, Arts (with all its humanities subjects) enables students to better understand (and thus empathise with) their fellow humans."
Figures 6.2 and 6.7 of the report that I linked to before (the GSA, which was initially referenced in Andrew Norton's article) are a starting point for that -- only Med and Law do better than Arts students in interpersonal understanding. Other than that, simply look at the subjects offered in an Arts degree compared to those in a BCom, BSci, etc. Compared to those in other degrees, there's a lot of subjects that emphasize the understanding of others -- thus all the gender, race, etc subjects.
you're pretty much calling *all* history completely useless.
No, I didn't, where did I say that?
You're right, you didn't -- but you sure are obsessed with the literal meaning of things. By mocking the witch hunt history course, you've dismissed quite a significant part of early modern history. If the witch hunt subject is such a joke, then what redeems the rest of the history subjects? Doesn't matter I guess, you're probably just going to now ask me to state "where did I say that subject was a joke?", when in reality, its quite obvious that by listing that group of subjects a few pages ago you were only trying to highlight the supposed ridiculousness of the course.
That's nothing different, really. All throughout this topic you've been subtly implying things and then, when called upon it asking people to quote you on it. Of course, they can't, since you didn't actually say anything (except hide behind a plethora of links) -- but the intentions of those links are patently clear. It's not an admirable thing, nor does it make you look smart. It's quite simply just patronising.
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