"It's time to prioritize what students want and need over what we want to teach"

[marshwiggle]

Actually I know several people who did pretty well for themselves going to no-name schools and then finding a bill-paying job in small towns.  The small towns do need SOME educated professionals.  They're "bill-paying" rather than "high-paying" jobs, but that's okay for some of us.

That said, I do generally agree with you that stronger K-12 schools are what this country most urgently needs in terms of education right now.  But improvement in that area depends more on cultural changes than on putting in more resources, useful though that would be.  And culture in general just seems to be moving very much in the wrong direction.

If resources went to (1) Paying teachers a living wage so the profession was attractive, (2) Making classes small enough to be manageable, (3) Getting rid of the testing drill-and-kill...

... I can assure you nobody would have any complaints about "the culture."

You'd still have the problem of "requiring" that all students finish high school, and even more so, that they should be able to do so in the same time period. There are big differences in abilities across the population, even if no-one wants to admit it. The lowering of standards cannot be fixed as long as universal "success" is mandated.

[Caracal]

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

If someone came to you and said, "you can go to either a burger place or a ramen place for dinner, but there's a 2.9 percent chance the Ramen place will be closed and you won't get to eat, the burger place has a 3.4 percent chance of being closed" it would be pretty silly to go eat at the Ramen place if you felt more like a burger that night. So, no, humanities majors make up a roughly proportional number of graduates who are unemployed. The salary gap is real, but that's a bit different. Some people are in fields that make more money. This isn't a new development.

[ciao_yall]

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

If someone came to you and said, "you can go to either a burger place or a ramen place for dinner, but there's a 2.9 percent chance the Ramen place will be closed and you won't get to eat, the burger place has a 3.4 percent chance of being closed" it would be pretty silly to go eat at the Ramen place if you felt more like a burger that night. So, no, humanities majors make up a roughly proportional number of graduates who are unemployed. The salary gap is real, but that's a bit different. Some people are in fields that make more money. This isn't a new development.

Exactly.

I had a student freaking out over where to focus. Because, according to BLS stats, subspecialty (A) at which he excelled, paid $2,000 per year less than subspecialty (B) at which he wasn't all that great, nor interested.

[marshwiggle]

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

[spork]

[. . .]

people who get a B.A in the humanities

[. . .]

People who get B.A.s in the humanities generally choose those majors out of interest and capability. Forcing other students to take courses in which they have no interest and little capability generally serves no purpose other than collecting their tuition money and employing faculty in those fields (whether full- or part-time). Let's examine the converse: all undergraduates are required to successfully complete a single dental hygienist course, because, as we all know, dental hygiene is extremely important. Would this lead to a massive increase in the number of dental hygienist majors? No. Would it lead to new life-altering awareness of and ability to apply dental hygiene techniques? Generally, no. Would it be the direct cause of a huge increase in life satisfaction among college graduates? Probably not. Would the vast majority of students regard Dental Hygiene 101 as a meaningless hoop they had to jump through to get a bachelor's degree? Yes.

[Caracal]

[
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

Why does everyone always repeat that line about unemployment rates? Yes, of course that is what they measure, that is what they are supposed to measure. Sometimes that does mean they can hide certain kinds of long term unemployment, but do you think more humanities majors are stay at home parents, or are on disability, or choose not to work?

The assumption seems to be almost that everyone is equally suited to all fields, would do equally well in all fields, and would be equally happy in all fields. I guess it might have been nice if I'd majored in Electrical Engineering, since it seems to be at the top of most of these salary charts, except that I would have failed out of the electrical engineering program almost immediately. Are we doing students a favor by encouraging them to pursue fields of study they aren't interested in?  Just because, on average, business majors make more than history majors doesn't mean that if you take a student who likes history classes and get them to take business classes that they are less interested in, that you can expect them to make more money in the long run. I'd argue that pursuing a subject they enjoy might be more likely to get them skills that they could use in other ways and help them in their career over the long run.

[Caracal]

So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Good god, because
1. These are anecdotal stories and don't reflect the reality of most people.
2. Because humanities adjuncts are the ones most likely to write in the Atlantic about living in their car.
3. It has almost nothing to do with the overall rates of employment, because the vast majority of people who get a B.A in a humanities field do not end up as PHD candidates in that field and, thus, never enter the academic job market.

[marshwiggle]

The assumption seems to be almost that everyone is equally suited to all fields, would do equally well in all fields, and would be equally happy in all fields. I guess it might have been nice if I'd majored in Electrical Engineering, since it seems to be at the top of most of these salary charts, except that I would have failed out of the electrical engineering program almost immediately. Are we doing students a favor by encouraging them to pursue fields of study they aren't interested in? 

I agree with this entirely, but the irony is that humanities faculty seem to be the most interested in recruiting everyone to their disciplines. Nobody is trying to get students who don't know what they want to go into nuclear  physics or medicine, but lots of faculty try to get directionless students into the humanities. It's generally understood that unless you're really motivated you won't succeed in technical programs, but going in with no great passion is assumed to be OK in the humanities.

[Wahoo Redux]

positions attained with my lousy humanities bachelors.  That's right, my friend, I was making it just fine as a corporate monkey with a liberal arts degree in my back pocket

[. . .]

But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

People are assuming their own experiences are representative of the majority of undergraduates. They're not. As a college student, I changed my major from engineering to a social science in my junior year. But I had the characteristics of a person who was likely to succeed regardless of major. That's probably true for nearly everyone who reads a discussion board about academia.

Like it or not, the vast majority of undergraduate students are pursuing bachelor's degrees for very transactional reasons. If they can easily opt-out of being forced to pay large amounts of money for something they see as non-relevant to their short- or long-term objectives, they'll do so -- hence the growth of AP, dual enrollment, and community college transfer credit that wipes out a large portion of general education requirements of traditional bachelor's degree programs at far lower cost.

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

I am not even sure what you are saying.

Yes, I know what a humanities degree consists of.  Although I would beg to differ that "one-off courses" (such as geology 101) serve a distinct function, which I have already posted about.  Otherwise I am not sure what "those disciplines" refers to.

Sure, we have a "likely to succeed" bunch here.  But there are a great many "likely to succeed" people out there who have succeeded, and I think my experiences ARE representative of the majority of undergraduates----I think that particularly now that I am a teacher.  And again, I have to point out that all legit colleges include a required sampling of "one off courses" and have for some time, so someone thinks these are worthwhile.

And yeah, I think the dual enrollment business is a good idea.  One is still getting one's "one off" coursework completed but in a cheaper and more timely fashion.  I don't see why that is even a comment or, again, what your point is.

[little bongo]

Could people please strain out the hooks and bites before posting? This bitter sarcasm is hard to read.

It may feel good to type it, but maybe just save that text to some file you keep for forum stuff, and re-write or edit, aiming for a gentler tone?

For starters, the little "dearies" and "my friends" are neither endearing nor friendly....it would be nice not to have to wade through the zingers to get to the content...

Thanks.

M.

I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

[Wahoo Redux]

But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

This is a good chunk of my point.

Someone who had a good K-12 science education would not be gaining much of anything by taking Geology 101. 

Beg to differ.  I took biology in high school, including labs.  Learned a lot.  Learned even more in college.  I cannot imagine the Platonic realm you seem to think exists for K-12, either.  College is generally much harder and more intensive than H.S. education.  We expect more of young adults than we do of teenagers, by and large.  If you have some magic curriculum, please share.

ATaking non-math-focused science in college doesn't add much to anyone's education. 

Who says so?  You? Not convincing and I beg to differ.  In fact, Polly, that's a pretty dumb comment. Yeah, I don't think I will reply further to it.

Life-changing by taking one distribution class is then acquiring a major, a minor, or a few years working in the field doing something interesting.  Otherwise, it's much like bragging about how much one watches The History Channel and therefore loves history.

One can watch the History Channel and love history.  One might not be able to claim authority or expertise in history, but that is not the point of the History Channel or gen eds anyway.  I don't even know what you are on about here.  Geeze. 

Why do all those politicians think the humanities and certain other fields aren't valuable? 

1.  When have "politicians" ever been a litmus test for truth, justice, and the American way----or worth in education?  Particularly now?  You can have your "politicians," Polly.  I'll look for more knowledgeable, sincere thinkers myself.

2.  What "politicians" are you talking about?  Name them.  Let's see what they actually say.

3.  If they do say that, let's vote them out of office: they are obviously cretins. 

One reason is being force-marched through one-off classes that are clearly more about checking a box than learning something worth knowing. 

Beg to differ.  I've already explained why. 

What is "worth knowing," BTW?  Please elaborate.

80 adjuncts from who knows where teaching at a regional comprehensive to ensure students can check the box is not setting the stage for a fabulous experience.

Agree.

And this is why I think we as a society are at the point of seriously damaging our higher education system.

Let's whittle down those 80 adjuncts to 20 or 30 full-time jobs and make it worth our and their while.

Although a great many of these adjuncts do a fabulous job----not all, but many----and this is part of the problem.  Schools very often get dedicated, expert, exuberant teaching done by hopeful and idealistic and dedicated people for a fraction of the cost.  It's all the people that do a good job that make the system so dysfunctional.

Why did you even post that stuff, Polly?

[Wahoo Redux]

Could people please strain out the hooks and bites before posting? This bitter sarcasm is hard to read.

It may feel good to type it, but maybe just save that text to some file you keep for forum stuff, and re-write or edit, aiming for a gentler tone?

For starters, the little "dearies" and "my friends" are neither endearing nor friendly....it would be nice not to have to wade through the zingers to get to the content...

Thanks.

M.

I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

Sorry Mamselle, you are clearly a decorous, kindly, and mature individual----I perhaps am not always.  And while I kind of like Polly (at least she has opinions and seems to be a genuine person outside the Fora) I am not particularly friendly to her chain of ideas or her arrogant approach to higher ed.  In fact, I think they are very damaging.  I will probably let loose with a lot more slings and arrows until I am banned, at which point I would give up on the Fora altogether (which I sometimes do and am considering now).  Maybe just pretend you are reading a Rolling Stone interview with David Lee Roth or something?  (Although I claim no such genius wit as the madcap madman of Van Halen.)

I will probably swing the frying pan again soon enough.  Always meant to read When Cowgirls Get the Blues...Robbins kind of dropped off the radar.

[marshwiggle]

I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

The problem is that cognitive bias means that who one feels "deserves" the frying pan is heavily dependent on who one feels is right. "Those stupid people who don't get it deserve the frying pan from my insightful and patient colleague who is being eminently sensible." The reason free speech is important is that the only way for anyone to change their minds is to be exposed to ideas that one does not agree with. Over time, ideas that are most strongly supported by evidence should gradually win over others. (And yes, the process may be glacial, or at least seems so.)

[spork]

[. . .]

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

[. . .]

See my most recent post (or second most recent, counting this one) upthread.

[ciao_yall]

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Because the adjuncts who decide the only thing they want to do is be a professor and not apply their considerable transferable skills (research, writing, communications) anywhere else tend to be in the humanities.