Are the Humanities Doomed?

[ciao_yall]

Most provosts (84 percent) agree that a high-quality undergraduate education requires healthy departments in fields like English. But they also note that politicians and board members are prioritizing STEM and professional programs over general education (72 percent).

So, the professional educators have one opinion.
The politicians and board members have another.

Well, as above, if they can't explain to their own students, they probably can't explain to their own board members either.

Until local employers complain to the board members that students can't write, don't seem to have read any good books or know basic facts about American history.

Then of course everyone says they should have learned all this in high school. Or middle school. Oh wait, it's cultural competence that comes from being a middle-class white kid.

[mleok]

Most provosts (84 percent) agree that a high-quality undergraduate education requires healthy departments in fields like English. But they also note that politicians and board members are prioritizing STEM and professional programs over general education (72 percent).

So, the professional educators have one opinion.
The politicians and board members have another.

Well, as above, if they can't explain to their own students, they probably can't explain to their own board members either.

Until local employers complain to the board members that students can't write, don't seem to have read any good books or know basic facts about American history.

Then of course everyone says they should have learned all this in high school. Or middle school. Oh wait, it's cultural competence that comes from being a middle-class white kid.

Except for the first issue, about students not being able to write, I'm not sure why employers would care. In any case, are you suggesting that engineers can't write?

[mleok]

I was interested in the comment that liberal arts colleges offer a high ROI, and looked at the corresponding report,

https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/Liberal-Arts-ROI.pdf

To me, it seems like liberal arts colleges that offer a high ROI tend to be the small elite private liberal arts colleges, which do not have to content to significant numbers of low income students. The irony of course is that the "liberal arts" college with the highest ROI is Harvey Mudd, which is essentially the Clairemont Colleges' answer to Caltech.

How strong is the correlation between % engineering majors and post-graduation income among small colleges?  Engineers tend to have significantly higher income out the gate, so that alone seems to be a big contributor to institutional means and medians.

Well, the same report did state there was a strong correlation between ROI and percentage of STEM (in particular engineering) majors. Although I'm not sure how many liberal arts colleges there are with engineering majors (maybe Harvey Mudd), so that seemed a bit strange.

[Wahoo Redux]

Most provosts (84 percent) agree that a high-quality undergraduate education requires healthy departments in fields like English. But they also note that politicians and board members are prioritizing STEM and professional programs over general education (72 percent).

So, the professional educators have one opinion.
The politicians and board members have another.

Well, as above, if they can't explain to their own students, they probably can't explain to their own board members either.

Until local employers complain to the board members that students can't write, don't seem to have read any good books or know basic facts about American history.

Then of course everyone says they should have learned all this in high school. Or middle school. Oh wait, it's cultural competence that comes from being a middle-class white kid.

Except for the first issue, about students not being able to write, I'm not sure why employers would care. In any case, are you suggesting that engineers can't write?

Engineers have to be able to write.  Engineering students do not always know how to write.  That's where I come in.

[mleok]

Engineers have to be able to write.  Engineering students do not always know how to write.  That's where I come in.

Fair enough, but I still see that as a failing of K-12 education, if an engineering student does not possess the necessary level of language proficiency to function in an engineering setting.

[Wahoo Redux]

Engineers have to be able to write.  Engineering students do not always know how to write.  That's where I come in.

Fair enough, but I still see that as a failing of K-12 education, if an engineering student does not possess the necessary level of language proficiency to function in an engineering setting.

There was a study done some years ago for PMLA which looked at the beginnings of college composition----the first college comp class was at Harvard, and it was all the way back (I think late 19th century).  I do remember that Harvard initiated this class only until local high schools could be brought up to snuff.

A 100 years later we are still waiting for the high schools to get up to snuff. 

It amazes me that people who comprehend that you do not have a bona fide engineer without extensive training expect people to simply pick up something as difficult as writing, ptttthhh, pow-zoom! out of high school.

The author of the article came to the conclusion that 18 and 19 year olds generally do not write very well and never have.  And yet we have magical thinking on the subject of teenage writers.

I'll see if I can locate it one of these days.

In other words, mleok, no, the high schools produce literate people.  College fine-tunes them.  It's always worked this way and it is magical thinking to believe otherwise.

[ciao_yall]

It's also an iterative process. They learn the basics of writing, then continue writing as they learn about more complex subjects and how to express these concepts.

Hence, WAC - Writing Across the Curriculum. Is that still even a thing?

[mleok]

In other words, mleok, no, the high schools produce literate people.  College fine-tunes them.  It's always worked this way and it is magical thinking to believe otherwise.

Well, I guess the question is how well do engineers actually need to write. In my high school, based on the UK system of education, we had a subject called "General Paper," which I assure you is pitched at a higher level than most college writing courses in the US.

[ciao_yall]

Most provosts (84 percent) agree that a high-quality undergraduate education requires healthy departments in fields like English. But they also note that politicians and board members are prioritizing STEM and professional programs over general education (72 percent).

So, the professional educators have one opinion.
The politicians and board members have another.

Well, as above, if they can't explain to their own students, they probably can't explain to their own board members either.

Until local employers complain to the board members that students can't write, don't seem to have read any good books or know basic facts about American history.

Then of course everyone says they should have learned all this in high school. Or middle school. Oh wait, it's cultural competence that comes from being a middle-class white kid.

Except for the first issue, about students not being able to write, I'm not sure why employers would care. In any case, are you suggesting that engineers can't write?

Because you take a recent college grad out with an important client, and that client refers to Charles Dickens or James Baldwin or the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the kid says "huh?"

[mleok]

Because you take a recent college grad out with an important client, and that client refers to Charles Dickens or James Baldwin or the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the kid says "huh?"

That important client could also bring up the latest results from CERN that challenge the Standard Model of particle physics, what's your point again? And in any case, don't they cover Dickens and the Archduke Ferdinand in high school? Honestly, all I hear from this thread is evidence of how horrible K-12 education is, as opposed to need for humanities at the college level.

[Wahoo Redux]

It's also an iterative process. They learn the basics of writing, then continue writing as they learn about more complex subjects and how to express these concepts.

Hence, WAC - Writing Across the Curriculum. Is that still even a thing?

Yes.  It is still very much a thing, and for the very reason you articulate.

Well, I guess the question is how well do engineers actually need to write. In my high school, based on the UK system of education, we had a subject called "General Paper," which I assure you is pitched at a higher level than most college writing courses in the US.

I would assume, mleok, that you know that engineers have to be able to write very well and spend a fair amount of their professional time writing. 

It is not poetry, but engineering writing needs to be very precise and cogent and capable of relaying complex information in a restraining format.  I've taught a lot of engineers and worked with engineering professors on their students' writing. Engineers need to be a very particular kind of wordsmith.

I'm sure your "general paper" was aaaaammmmaaazing as these things always are in debates of this sort, but writing is like playing guitar.

I've played several instruments, and the guitar is by far the easiest, particularly if one strums the instrument (rather than classical or flamenco style) and particularly if one plays familiar pop-music which usually uses 3 to 5 chord progressions.  You literally can have someone take a month or so's worth of lessons and have them playing guitar. 

This is kind of like writing.  In short order you can have native speakers writing in basic formats and forming basic arguments, summaries, explanations, etc.  And most college kids are actually pretty good writers, all things considered, even at open-enrollment places like mine.

But if you want a good writer, like a good guitar player, it takes a great deal of work.  You want to strum out a simple pop-culture tune?  A couple of months will have you on your way.  You want a sonata?  You've got years, maybe decades, of steady work.

Professors want students who can play sonatas and deal with the really difficult material.  What some professors don't want are all these pesky classes in which students are expected to read, diagnose, summarize, analyze and apply concepts which maybe teach them how to play a sonata.  Some professors want a magical thing.

Our high schools are vast, complicated, expensive but underfunded things which incorporate all classes and socioeconomic groups in America.  We want them to solve all our problems.  We don't want to have to pay for them, of course, any more than we want to have to pay for our colleges.  We just want the magic. 

We want the sonata without the practice, and we don't want to pay for it or support each other as we work towards a common goal. 

And again, I am looking for definitive proof that European-style (yes, thank you, I know there are differences between countries) education is axiomatically better than American education.  Nor for that matter is there proof that Asian education models (yes, thank you, I know there are differences) are axiomatically better.  I've seen the testing results for math etc. where America ranks somewhere in the middle, but I've also taught Chinese students who resent the rafts of facts they are forced to memorize without being allowed any creativity on their own parts (yes, thank you, I know I've simplified here----this is simply what my Chinese students told me).

So I don't know where that leaves us.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'll settle for being able to identify an argument, its conclusion, and its premises. But that would require reading the text first. *old man grumble*

Or even just following instructions. *old man double grumble harrumph*

[mleok]

I would assume, mleok, that you know that engineers have to be able to write very well and spend a fair amount of their professional time writing. 

It is not poetry, but engineering writing needs to be very precise and cogent and capable of relaying complex information in a restraining format.  I've taught a lot of engineers and worked with engineering professors on their students' writing. Engineers need to be a very particular kind of wordsmith.

I'm sure your "general paper" was aaaaammmmaaazing as these things always are in debates of this sort, but writing is like playing guitar.

I've played several instruments, and the guitar is by far the easiest, particularly if one strums the instrument (rather than classical or flamenco style) and particularly if one plays familiar pop-music which usually uses 3 to 5 chord progressions.  You literally can have someone take a month or so's worth of lessons and have them playing guitar. 

This is kind of like writing.  In short order you can have native speakers writing in basic formats and forming basic arguments, summaries, explanations, etc.  And most college kids are actually pretty good writers, all things considered, even at open-enrollment places like mine.

But if you want a good writer, like a good guitar player, it takes a great deal of work.  You want to strum out a simple pop-culture tune?  A couple of months will have you on your way.  You want a sonata?  You've got years, maybe decades, of steady work.

Professors want students who can play sonatas and deal with the really difficult material.  What some professors don't want are all these pesky classes in which students are expected to read, diagnose, summarize, analyze and apply concepts which maybe teach them how to play a sonata.  Some professors want a magical thing.

Our high schools are vast, complicated, expensive but underfunded things which incorporate all classes and socioeconomic groups in America.  We want them to solve all our problems.  We don't want to have to pay for them, of course, any more than we want to have to pay for our colleges.  We just want the magic. 

We want the sonata without the practice, and we don't want to pay for it or support each other as we work towards a common goal. 

And again, I am looking for definitive proof that European-style (yes, thank you, I know there are differences between countries) education is axiomatically better than American education.  Nor for that matter is there proof that Asian education models (yes, thank you, I know there are differences) are axiomatically better.  I've seen the testing results for math etc. where America ranks somewhere in the middle, but I've also taught Chinese students who resent the rafts of facts they are forced to memorize without being allowed any creativity on their own parts (yes, thank you, I know I've simplified here----this is simply what my Chinese students told me).

So I don't know where that leaves us.

I agree that engineers need to write precisely, I just don't think that most general education humanities requires come anywhere close to addressing that required competency. A writing across the curriculum approach might do more to address this need. And, maybe you should go learn more about alternative systems of education before you continue to opine in an uninformed fashion on this topic.

[mleok]

Caltech, for example, has a scientific writing requirement as part of its core curriculum, and it offers the following classes to satisfy that requirement,

https://catalog.caltech.edu/current/courses/department/SEC

but there are also discipline specific classes, like MATH 11. But, it's a fairly minimal requirement, because a typical class at Caltech is 9 units (9 hours of work per week), and the scientific writing requirement only requires one quarter long 3 unit class.

Ma 11. Mathematical Writing. 3 units (0-0-3): third term. Prerequisites: Freshmen must have instructor's permission to enroll. Students will work with the instructor and a mentor to write and revise a self-contained paper dealing with a topic in mathematics. In the first week, an introduction to some matters of style and format will be given in a classroom setting. Some help with typesetting in TeX may be available. Students are encouraged to take advantage of the Hixon Writing Center's facilities. The mentor and the topic are to be selected in consultation with the instructor. It is expected that in most cases the paper will be in the style of a textbook or journal article, at the level of the student's peers (mathematics students at Caltech). Fulfills the Institute scientific writing requirement. Not offered on a pass/fail basis.

[marshwiggle]

Well, I guess the question is how well do engineers actually need to write. In my high school, based on the UK system of education, we had a subject called "General Paper," which I assure you is pitched at a higher level than most college writing courses in the US.

I would assume, mleok, that you know that engineers have to be able to write very well and spend a fair amount of their professional time writing. 

It is not poetry, but engineering writing needs to be very precise and cogent and capable of relaying complex information in a restraining format.  I've taught a lot of engineers and worked with engineering professors on their students' writing. Engineers need to be a very particular kind of wordsmith.

So are you arguing that engineering graduates in the US are significantly better writers than engineering graduates in *other countries, or that high school in the US is so much worse than high school in other countries that their students need more post-secondary remedial writing?


*i.e. other countries that don't have special writing courses that people have to take beyond the courses within their own discipline