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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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^ That is seriously insane.
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway apart from growing a beard and riding a bicycle around Brunswick?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I dunno. Like, critical thought? Arts? History?
The idea that higher education should be purely functional and aimed at getting people into technical fields is really narrow. For even one university to ditch its humanities school seems crazy; for it to happen nationwide seems like nothing less than a form of cultural seppuku.
I think Pies4Shaw wrote a great critique of that mentality here once - worth digging up if I can find it
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Lazza
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
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| David wrote: | I dunno. Like, critical thought? Arts? History?
The idea that higher education should be purely functional and aimed at getting people into technical fields is really narrow. For even one university to ditch its humanities school seems crazy; for it to happen nationwide seems like nothing less than a form of cultural seppuku.
I think Pies4Shaw wrote a great critique of that mentality here once - worth digging up if I can find it |
Well I started out doing humanities and ended up as a fully qualified Social Worker after switching two years in. I fully recommend humanities if you are a caring, intelligent person who loves life, people and being a strong advocate for social justice. Fabulously fulfilling work. 
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Don't confuse your current path with your final destination. Just because it's dark and stormy now doesn't meant that you aren't headed for glorious sunshine! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| And another? |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Here it is, I think. This was more about funding, but has some points worth considering in the context of this discussion:
| Pies4shaw wrote: | | Jezza wrote: | | In regards to University fees, I'm quite indifferent on the issue. Sure it's pleasing in one aspect that you don't need to pay your full fees but on the other hand I spare a thought for those who are subsidising my tertiary education so I can study Arts/Law. It's an issue where I can see the argument of both sides. On the one hand, tertiary education is expensive and it will most likely have an effect on those who aren't 'rich' so to speak. But on the one hand, does deregulating the fees of tertiary education allow for a much greater and improved system of education in general? |
IMO, Jezza, one of the basic problems with social debate in this country is that it seems to be unnecessarily preoccupied with the question of whether our system should be a "user pays" one or not.
Thus, using your observation about university funding as an example, it seems to me that the Thatcherite legacy/cancer has cornered the debate, if the "both sides" of the argument you refer to are the principal ground for debate about university funding (and they certainly do seem to be at the moment).
On the other hand, if one imagines universities as places where we pay people to think about (and, in some cases, practically work on) major issues of social concern and - as one of the myriad of tasks they perform to that general end - to educate (mostly young) people as well, the question of who should "pay for" the performance of that task begs a quite different answer.
Worse still, framing the question that way has very damaging consequences for intellectual debate and advancement: the more students "pay for" their "higher education", the more university administrations become focused upon requiring the academic staff to make "teaching" their priority. That, of course, leads to a paradox - because the accepted international reputations of universities (and faculties within universities) that attract people to attend particular universities are determined not by their "teaching" scores but by the quantity and to a lesser extent (thanks to the way bureaucrats measure such things) the quality and importance of their research output. It also leads to another more pervasive problem: students tend to focus on (and want their "teachers" to focus on) doing what they have to to get "good grades", rather than on learning and thinking about things because those more amorphous skills are intrinsically more important to the improvement of our world.
From where I view things, the question of how we fund universities should not be about who "pays for" you to get your degrees. It should be about what sort of society we value. I'm happy for my taxes to "pay for" your degrees as part of the cost of me paying for universities to be properly funded and think that, to the extent that there should be any fiscal levy on a person's education, recovering some contribution for the "benefit" you get can be adequately achieved through the tax system.
What principally drives the debate, though, seems to be two things: first, it is easier to count things than evaluate them in other ways and easiest of all to count the relevant financial "cost" and "benefit" of things, whether or not it is even useful to measure things in that way; secondly, there seems to be a premium being placed by many people upon making sure that "other people" don't get things/benefits they don't get. These ways of debating any issue more or less inevitably lead to political priority being given to the desires of near-sighted bigots.
I think the change over the course of my lifetime can be summed up in the following way: once, accountancy was something done by people who couldn't aspire to anything more challenging - no-one went to school wanting to grow up to be an accountant (that was just something that was done to them because they weren't really good for anything much else); now those same people rule the world. And that hasn't been a change for the better. |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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God help us all if we have to rely on humanties students for intellectual debate.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| stui magpie wrote: | | God help us all if we have to rely on humanties students for intellectual debate. |
Helpfu as a sleep aide!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | | What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway.....? |
Apart from the baiting question, who needs mathematics, art, research, music, languages, history & philosophy anyway? I'm with you.
Howard Jacobson in the UK independent wrote an article saying basically that Jihadists study sciences rather than humanities. I can't link the article dated about 12 December 15 as I'm using my iPhone 5. But they are considered useful by some😜
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Last edited by watt price tully on Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| watt price tully wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway.....? |
Apart from the baiting question, who needs mathematics, art, research, music, languages, history & philosophy anyway? I'm with you. |
Awww cmon, its like fishing with c4, it's so easy I should feel ashamed. 
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway.....? |
Apart from the baiting question, who needs mathematics, art, research, music, languages, history & philosophy anyway? I'm with you. |
Awww cmon, its like fishing with c4, it's so easy I should feel ashamed. |
Howard Jacobson in the UK independent about 12/12/15 basically stated that jihadis study sciences rather than the humanities. I can't link it currently as I'm using my iPhone 5😜
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Pi
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| stui magpie wrote: | | What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway apart from growing a beard and riding a bicycle around Brunswick? |
It used to qualify you to write well, to clearly separate facts from the value that is to be placed on them, and to value your culture and its choices within the framework of common meaning it confers. In some cases, such as analytic philosophy, it occasionally helped you to reason clearly and sequentially. Today, however, a degree in humanities seems more likely to disqualify you from each of the above.
This is very unfortunate. If abolishing the humanities is an act of cultural seppuku, as David said, then retaining them in their present form is a little like an act of slow cultural poisoning.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^good article, Pi, which explains the problem well.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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