Is It Time To Close All But The Top Humanities Ph.D. Programs?

[marshwiggle]

No, different countries support education differently, and the costs and requirements for raising them press out differently as a result.

The Top 10 Most-Educated Countries (OECD 2018)

Canada — 56.27%
Japan — 50.50%
Israel — 49.90%
South Korea — 46.86%
United Kingdom — 45.96%
United States — 45.67%
Australia — 43.74%
Finland — 43.60%
Norway — 43.02%
Luxembourg — 42.86%

In Canada, we have virtually no private universities, but we also don't have a bazillion tiny institutions producing almost exclusively liberal arts graduates. For those reasons, problems with student debt and adjunct labour are much less serious than in the US.

[dismalist]

The Top 10 Most-Educated Countries (OECD 2018)

Canada — 56.27%
Japan — 50.50%
Israel — 49.90%
South Korea — 46.86%
United Kingdom — 45.96%
United States — 45.67%
Australia — 43.74%
Finland — 43.60%
Norway — 43.02%
Luxembourg — 42.86%

In Canada, we have virtually no private universities, but we also don't have a bazillion tiny institutions producing almost exclusively liberal arts graduates. For those reasons, problems with student debt and adjunct labour are much less serious than in the US.

Ugh: Most educated is here defined as share of people aged [--] with completed tertiary ed of some kind. But upper secondary -- the useful stuff -- can get individuals and a country as a whole a good living, but doesn't make a country educated in the article.

From the same source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-educated-countries

Eyeballing the data and running a regression in my gut with my indelible impressions of countries' per capita income, one could equally think tertiary ed is some kind of consumption good. So, if you're Norway and sit on a gas bubble, you buy a lot, but so what? For the public spending, there's the votes and for the private spending, there's the signalling.

All reinforces my impression that too much money is spent on tertiary. Possibly upper secondary, too, surely some bits of it.

[marshwiggle]

From the same source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-educated-countries

Eyeballing the data and running a regression in my gut with my indelible impressions of countries' per capita income, one could equally think tertiary ed is some kind of consumption good. So, if you're Norway and sit on a gas bubble, you buy a lot, but so what? For the public spending, there's the votes and for the private spending, there's the signalling.

All reinforces my impression that too much money is spent on tertiary. Possibly upper secondary, too, surely some bits of it.

More granularity:
Country % Tertiary  % Upper Secondary % Below Upper Secondary 2022 Population

Canada   60.00%   32.50%   7.60%   38,454,327
Russia   56.70%   38.50%   4.80%   144,713,314
Japan   52.70%   no data   no data   123,951,692
Luxembourg   51.30%   22.80%   25.80%   647,599
South Korea   50.70%   38.60%   10.60%   51,815,810
United States   50.10%   41.70%   8.30%   338,289,857
Israel   50.10%   37.90%   12.00%   9,038,309
Ireland   49.90%   35.50%   14.50%   5,023,109
United Kingdom   49.40%   32.30%   18.30%

Canada and the US are similar for "below upper secondary"; 7.6% vs. 8.3%, but the bigger difference is about 10% greater completion of tertiary in Canada. (I'd bet the proportion of liberal arts degrees in Canada would be lower, due to the reasons above, but I stand to be corrected.)

[dismalist]

...

Canada and the US are similar for "below upper secondary"; 7.6% vs. 8.3%, but the bigger difference is about 10% greater completion of tertiary in Canada. (I'd bet the proportion of liberal arts degrees in Canada would be lower, due to the reasons above, but I stand to be corrected.)

It's actually true that the share of tertiary graduates in the humanities in both countries is low and declining. I sure as hell don't want to single out and disparage the humanities [well, except for their neo-marxism]. :-) But they are not the only guilty ones. Take the social sciences, too.

But an example of a practical point: As far as I can tell, the stuff in most B-schools could be taught in High School! Indeed, it once was.

And High School could be cut to 10 years. Indeed, it once was.

[marshwiggle]

...

Canada and the US are similar for "below upper secondary"; 7.6% vs. 8.3%, but the bigger difference is about 10% greater completion of tertiary in Canada. (I'd bet the proportion of liberal arts degrees in Canada would be lower, due to the reasons above, but I stand to be corrected.)

It's actually true that the share of tertiary graduates in the humanities in both countries is low and declining. I sure as hell don't want to single out and disparage the humanities [well, except for their neo-marxism]. :-) But they are not the only guilty ones. Take the social sciences, too.

But an example of a practical point: As far as I can tell, the stuff in most B-schools could be taught in High School! Indeed, it once was.

And High School could be cut to 10 years. Indeed, it once was.

I went to high school in Quebec, where it ends at Grade 11. I'm in favour of keeping the compulsory part of education short, so as much as possible is voluntary so that people have to choose to continue.

[Ruralguy]

i believe in US in most jurosdictions, school is only compulsory through grade 10? Or am I an oldster not really up on the details? Of course in many districts the social pressure, even amongst blue collar workers, is for kids to at least graduate.

[marshwiggle]

i believe in US in most jurosdictions, school is only compulsory through grade 10? Or am I an oldster not really up on the details? Of course in many districts the social pressure, even amongst blue collar workers, is for kids to at least graduate.

I think once a kid turns 16 they can quit school, at least in some places.

[dismalist]

i believe in US in most jurosdictions, school is only compulsory through grade 10? Or am I an oldster not really up on the details? Of course in many districts the social pressure, even amongst blue collar workers, is for kids to at least graduate.

I think once a kid turns 16 they can quit school, at least in some places.

It's not about compulsion, for there is virtually none. Instead,

--going the 12 years, instead of, say 10, costs no more out of pocket, and more importantly

--graduating from whatever is a signal to employers.

Graduation after 10 or 11 years makes the signal cheaper to the signaler.

[How are everybody's foreign language skills these day? The history? How's the trig? :-)]

[mamselle]

There's a saying in Maine:

If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail...

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

i believe in US in most jurosdictions, school is only compulsory through grade 10? Or am I an oldster not really up on the details? Of course in many districts the social pressure, even amongst blue collar workers, is for kids to at least graduate.

I think once a kid turns 16 they can quit school, at least in some places.

Yes, in Québec you can quit school at 16, although you have to finish the school year out (you can't just quit on your birthday).

It's worth noting, however, that kids turn sixteen in either their last or their second-last year of high school in Québec (I was sixteen when I finished, and that wasn't at all unusual). (Because, as you said--and which may not have been clear to our American friends--high school ends with grade 11.)

[kaysixteen]

The problem with this sort of thinking is that teenagers are not adults.   They cannot and should not be expected to analyse conditions of serious lifelong importance effectively, and society has an interest in not allowing such kids to handicap their own lives by making poor decisions as children.

[spork]

Administrators love humanities PhD programs because it is far cheaper to staff undergrad gen ed courses with doctoral students than tenured faculty.

Tenured humanities faculty love humanities PhD programs because their workload is decreased when doctoral students teach the gen ed courses.

The more courses taught by doctoral students, the more expensive tenured humanities faculty get in relative terms, incentivizing university administrators to increase the doctoral students to tenured humanities faculty ratio.

The fewer humanities tenure-track faculty positions, the less likely it is that humanities doctoral students will get full-time employment that requires a PhD in the humanities. 

The greater the pool of adjuncts with PhDs in humanities, the less the adjuncts and the doctoral students have to be compensated for teaching the gen ed courses, which further incentivizes university administrators to expand humanities PhD programs.

What makes all of the above possible is the arbitrary requirement that a bachelor's degree must include X number of humanities courses as a portion of Y total credit hours over Z semesters. Unbundle the curriculum and let people take the courses they want to take.

[marshwiggle]

The problem with this sort of thinking is that teenagers are not adults.   They cannot and should not be expected to analyse conditions of serious lifelong importance effectively, and society has an interest in not allowing such kids to handicap their own lives by making poor decisions as children.

As with many other things, it's a normal distribution. A mature 16 year old is more responsible than an immature 25 year old. When I went to university in another province, which accepted students right out of Grade 11, even though in that province students went to Grade 12, about 1/4 of the students were from Quebec. They got the good students that way. The party animals stayed in Quebec and went to junior college, which had the reputation of a place to drink away a couple of years.

[dismalist]

The problem with this sort of thinking is that teenagers are not adults.   They cannot and should not be expected to analyse conditions of serious lifelong importance effectively, and society has an interest in not allowing such kids to handicap their own lives by making poor decisions as children.

As with many other things, it's a normal distribution. A mature 16 year old is more responsible than an immature 25 year old. When I went to university in another province, which accepted students right out of Grade 11, even though in that province students went to Grade 12, about 1/4 of the students were from Quebec. They got the good students that way. The party animals stayed in Quebec and went to junior college, which had the reputation of a place to drink away a couple of years.

Distribution, schmetribution!

There are those who wish to lower the voting age to 16 in the United States. Then the kids can handicap my life as well as their own.

https://vote16usa.org/amendment-to-hr-1-seeks-to-lower-voting-age-to-16/

https://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/history-of-the-movement/

Hell, why stop there?

[Parasaurolophus]

The problem with this sort of thinking is that teenagers are not adults.   They cannot and should not be expected to analyse conditions of serious lifelong importance effectively, and society has an interest in not allowing such kids to handicap their own lives by making poor decisions as children.

As with many other things, it's a normal distribution. A mature 16 year old is more responsible than an immature 25 year old. When I went to university in another province, which accepted students right out of Grade 11, even though in that province students went to Grade 12, about 1/4 of the students were from Quebec. They got the good students that way. The party animals stayed in Quebec and went to junior college, which had the reputation of a place to drink away a couple of years.

The problem with this sort of thinking is that teenagers are not adults.   They cannot and should not be expected to analyse conditions of serious lifelong importance effectively, and society has an interest in not allowing such kids to handicap their own lives by making poor decisions as children.

As with many other things, it's a normal distribution. A mature 16 year old is more responsible than an immature 25 year old. When I went to university in another province, which accepted students right out of Grade 11, even though in that province students went to Grade 12, about 1/4 of the students were from Quebec. They got the good students that way. The party animals stayed in Quebec and went to junior college, which had the reputation of a place to drink away a couple of years.

Distribution, schmetribution!

There are those who wish to lower the voting age to 16 in the United States. Then the kids can handicap my life as well as their own.

https://vote16usa.org/amendment-to-hr-1-seeks-to-lower-voting-age-to-16/

https://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/history-of-the-movement/

Hell, why stop there?

I imagine it also depends on the subject. I'd be surprised if your average 16 year-old made worse political decisions than your average [insert adult age here], for example. But I'd bet they're likelier to, say, drink (or smoke up) and drive. They might also be worse, on average, with money (although I don't have clear intuitions about that). But if the teen is at all interested in whatever the subject is that's at hand, I'd trust them to be better on average than any old adult picked at random.

I mean, just look at the adults around them right now, especially where politics are concerned. They're as bad as can be. Adding 16 year-olds to the mix isn't going to make anything worse.

For my part, I think we should just select politicians by sortition. But that's just me.