"You'll Use This Everyday for the Rest of Your Life..."

[spork]

Seems like that's what general education requirements are supposed to do--make students aware of an array of different fields of knowledge, and of their importance.  When people are entirely ignorant of something, they tend to assume that it's useless.  If they can at least come away from gen ed with an understanding that discipline X has something worthwhile to offer--that expertise in it means something--that's an advance right there.  That it doesn't seem to be working in so many cases is troubling, but I'm not sure that's a reason to just stop trying.

Perhaps not; but it is a reason to make some changes to try and determine what does work.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing you've always done and expecting a different result.

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.

[Caracal]

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.
[/quote]

I'm confused, you teach the topic and got a PHD in it but it doesn't meet your interests and had no impact? Had you already taken it?

[Caracal]

I have a strong hunch that the majority of people who were forced into a course outside their "comfort zone" but who benefited from it were serious students who struggled with it and got something out of it. However, the apathetic students who make no effort beyond the minimum to pass who just want to get through probably don't get any appreciable benefit.

Well people who are generally apathetic about college probably don't get much benefit out of any of it. I do think gen ed requirement should give people enough options so that they can choose something they care about. The class I got the least out of in college was a intro to statistics course. I'd already taken statistics in high school, but didn't do well enough on the AP exam to get credit, but it was the same course. I paid little attention, did as little work as possible and didn't learn anything. If I could have taken something on sociological data or use of ARC GIS or whatever it would have been a lot more helpful. Heck, those might have been options and I was just too dumb to take them.

[spork]

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.

I'm confused, you teach the topic and got a PHD in it but it doesn't meet your interests and had no impact? Had you already taken it?

It was a terribly-taught course. An empty three credits on my undergraduate transcript.

I don't think this experience is that uncommon with required gen ed courses.

[ciao_yall]

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.

I'm confused, you teach the topic and got a PHD in it but it doesn't meet your interests and had no impact? Had you already taken it?

It was a terribly-taught course. An empty three credits on my undergraduate transcript.

I don't think this experience is that uncommon with required gen ed courses.

So do you think your PhD is in a completely useless field and you would never recommend anyone take a class in it?

Sounds like the issue is a terrible instructor. We have all had terrible instructors but can separate the content from the delivery.

[Wahoo Redux]

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.

I'm confused, you teach the topic and got a PHD in it but it doesn't meet your interests and had no impact? Had you already taken it?

It was a terribly-taught course. An empty three credits on my undergraduate transcript.

I don't think this experience is that uncommon with required gen ed courses.

We can use anecdotal evidence, of course, but my anecdotal evidence (which I've posted) is virtually antithetical to yours, including interactions with my own students.

[spork]

Is there anyone out there who actually took a gen ed and decided there was nothing at all to be gained? Not even to decide that yeah, they really didn't like Shakespeare or Geology...

Yes. This was a course that fulfilled a gen ed distribution requirement. In the discipline that I eventually got a PhD in. On a topic that I now teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It made absolutely zero contribution to my eventual career or met any of my past or current interests.

I'm confused, you teach the topic and got a PHD in it but it doesn't meet your interests and had no impact? Had you already taken it?

It was a terribly-taught course. An empty three credits on my undergraduate transcript.

I don't think this experience is that uncommon with required gen ed courses.

So do you think your PhD is in a completely useless field

No.

and you would never recommend anyone take a class in it?

I would never force a student to take a course in it if the student didn't want to.

Sounds like the issue is a terrible instructor. We have all had terrible instructors but can separate the content from the delivery.

I can separate content from the delivery too. I can get the content from books that I can check out from the library, from research in foreign archives, and from conducting interviews in other languages. But this says nothing about what happens when gen ed requirements are delivered primarily by grad students and adjuncts to classrooms full of uninterested students because the tenured faculty staff the upper-level courses required for the major.

[polly_mer]

I want to return to the question of resource allocation that looks at the big picture of needing much more in society than just education.  The discussion keeps turning back to which types of education instead of the trade-offs involved in having a functioning society in which education is just one piece of what we need to collectively fund and have people doing.

There's a big problem if we insist that everyone stay in school long past the point at which they are investing in their own broad education so they are just going through the motions.  That's wasted resources all around and is not resulting in the social goods of having more people with education upon which they are drawing either for the content knowledge or just the experience that more exposure to more areas brings.


Every dollar we spend on one thing is a dollar we don't have to spend elsewhere.  Every person who is working in education as a student, teacher, or support for students and teachers is a person who isn't doing something else that we also need.  We do need to invest in our young people, regardless of their circumstances of birth, but at some point, nearly everyone has to get out of formal education and start doing something else that society needs.  That doesn't have to be a paid position (shout out to stay-at-home parents and other caretakers) and what one does for money doesn't have to be one's whole existence (shout out to those who are creative as part of their lives while holding down a different job).

However, we do have to prioritize where the limited resources go (and that includes people's time) instead of always defaulting to "more education is better for everyone" with the net result that many people who should have been doing something else for their teens and twenties spend the time and energy in school spinning their wheels.

For example, In the US, we have aging infrastructure including unsafe bridges and highways that were never designed for this level of traffic.   California is currently experiencing the results of decades of neglect for the power grid.  Changing to a distributed generation system with renewable energy and converting to electric cars just puts more pressure on the already inadequate grid.

Healthcare, aside from any insurance issues, is in a dire state in many rural areas.  While we could use more primary care physicians, a greater need in many cases is the certificate programs through RNs who can handle the  basics and then nurse practitioners are filling additional gaps.  That broad education is nice, but we absolutely need people who get a specialized education and we really can't wait for everyone to do four years of something then four years of nursing and then another 2-4 years to get that nurse practitioner degree.  Britain, for example, lets students with excellent A-levels start their college careers in medical programs at the bachelor's level.  Are we really going to claim that British doctors aren't well educated enough by not having a liberal arts background?

We have many, many people in the US who need daily, personal care including small children, the elderly, and the temporarily-or-otherwise disabled.  Insisting that everyone have both a liberal arts education and then specialized training in childhood development, geriatrics, or anything else to provide that care means we will continue to be short handed in ways that greatly affect real lives.  Recognizing that humans have somehow managed to provide this kind of care through personal experience for ten thousand of years and being realistic about matching needs with good enough providers means we could open admit the current situation isn't a miserable failure in many cases.

A continuing societal problem is the confluence of automation, efficiency gains through technology, and the changing nature of work so that we no longer need everyone who can work to work for pay.  That's especially problematic as the gap widens between what people can do by being broadly educated and being able to learn on the job and what specialized education is necessary to do jobs we need done.  Everything that's pretty straightforward to learn in a few weeks/months is being automated or pays practically nothing because any average person off the street can learn it in weeks/months.  While an individual may enjoy knowing more about the world, the fact remains that the jobs that are hardest to automate are the ones that require years of specific education and experience to become proficient. 

What happens to the middle class when we don't need them and can't provide jobs for all who want them, but continue to have scarcity in areas that need highly qualified professionals or are physical labor that cannot be automated?  The basic idea underlying the value of a liberal arts education loses a lot of appeal when it turns out we don't need those folks at all.  A rambling, but good explanation, is at https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html:

When we see a welfare mom we assume she can't find work, but when we see a hipster we become infuriated because we assume he doesn't want to work but could easily do so-- on account of the fact that he can speak well-- that he went to college.  But now suddenly we're all shocked: to the economy, the English grad is just as superfluous as the disenfranchised welfare mom in the hood-- the college education is just as irrelevant as the skin color.  Not irrelevant for now, not irrelevant "until the economy improves"-- irrelevant forever.

...

It's hard to accept that the University of Chicago grad described in the article isn't employable, that the economy doesn't need him, but it is absolutely true, but my point here is that not only is he not contributing, the economy doesn't need him to contribute.  Which is good, because there's nothing he can do for it. 1. Anything requiring science is out.  2. "He can work manual labor!"  I love how people assume economics doesn't apply to construction.  The demand for those jobs is very high AND hipsters suck at them.  At any wage, Gerry the hipster will always be outworked by Vinnie the son of a longshoreman, who will always be outworked by a Mexican illegal, i.e. the system will always be able to find someone who can do the job better AND with lower labor costs. 

[Caracal]

I want to return to the question of resource allocation that looks at the big picture of needing much more in society than just education.  The discussion keeps turning back to which types of education instead of the trade-offs involved in having a functioning society in which education is just one piece of what we need to collectively fund and have people doing.

There's a big problem if we insist that everyone stay in school long past the point at which they are investing in their own broad education so they are just going through the motions.  That's wasted resources all around and is not resulting in the social goods of having more people with education upon which they are drawing either for the content knowledge or just the experience that more exposure to more areas brings.


Every dollar we spend on one thing is a dollar we don't have to spend elsewhere.  Every person who is working in education as a student, teacher, or support for students and teachers is a person who isn't doing something else that we also need.  We do need to invest in our young people, regardless of their circumstances of birth, but at some point, nearly everyone has to get out of formal education and start doing something else that society needs.  That doesn't have to be a paid position (shout out to stay-at-home parents and other caretakers) and what one does for money doesn't have to be one's whole existence (shout out to those who are creative as part of their lives while holding down a different job).

However, we do have to prioritize where the limited resources go (and that includes people's time) instead of always defaulting to "more education is better for everyone" with the net result that many people who should have been doing something else for their teens and twenties spend the time and energy in school spinning their wheels.

For example, In the US, we have aging infrastructure including unsafe bridges and highways that were never designed for this level of traffic.   California is currently experiencing the results of decades of neglect for the power grid.  Changing to a distributed generation system with renewable energy and converting to electric cars just puts more pressure on the already inadequate grid.

Healthcare, aside from any insurance issues, is in a dire state in many rural areas.  While we could use more primary care physicians, a greater need in many cases is the certificate programs through RNs who can handle the  basics and then nurse practitioners are filling additional gaps.  That broad education is nice, but we absolutely need people who get a specialized education and we really can't wait for everyone to do four years of something then four years of nursing and then another 2-4 years to get that nurse practitioner degree.  Britain, for example, lets students with excellent A-levels start their college careers in medical programs at the bachelor's level.  Are we really going to claim that British doctors aren't well educated enough by not having a liberal arts background?

We have many, many people in the US who need daily, personal care including small children, the elderly, and the temporarily-or-otherwise disabled.  Insisting that everyone have both a liberal arts education and then specialized training in childhood development, geriatrics, or anything else to provide that care means we will continue to be short handed in ways that greatly affect real lives.  Recognizing that humans have somehow managed to provide this kind of care through personal experience for ten thousand of years and being realistic about matching needs with good enough providers means we could open admit the current situation isn't a miserable failure in many cases.

A continuing societal problem is the confluence of automation, efficiency gains through technology, and the changing nature of work so that we no longer need everyone who can work to work for pay.  That's especially problematic as the gap widens between what people can do by being broadly educated and being able to learn on the job and what specialized education is necessary to do jobs we need done.  Everything that's pretty straightforward to learn in a few weeks/months is being automated or pays practically nothing because any average person off the street can learn it in weeks/months.  While an individual may enjoy knowing more about the world, the fact remains that the jobs that are hardest to automate are the ones that require years of specific education and experience to become proficient. 

What happens to the middle class when we don't need them and can't provide jobs for all who want them, but continue to have scarcity in areas that need highly qualified professionals or are physical labor that cannot be automated?  The basic idea underlying the value of a liberal arts education loses a lot of appeal when it turns out we don't need those folks at all.  A rambling, but good explanation, is at https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html:

When we see a welfare mom we assume she can't find work, but when we see a hipster we become infuriated because we assume he doesn't want to work but could easily do so-- on account of the fact that he can speak well-- that he went to college.  But now suddenly we're all shocked: to the economy, the English grad is just as superfluous as the disenfranchised welfare mom in the hood-- the college education is just as irrelevant as the skin color.  Not irrelevant for now, not irrelevant "until the economy improves"-- irrelevant forever.

...

It's hard to accept that the University of Chicago grad described in the article isn't employable, that the economy doesn't need him, but it is absolutely true, but my point here is that not only is he not contributing, the economy doesn't need him to contribute.  Which is good, because there's nothing he can do for it. 1. Anything requiring science is out.  2. "He can work manual labor!"  I love how people assume economics doesn't apply to construction.  The demand for those jobs is very high AND hipsters suck at them.  At any wage, Gerry the hipster will always be outworked by Vinnie the son of a longshoreman, who will always be outworked by a Mexican illegal, i.e. the system will always be able to find someone who can do the job better AND with lower labor costs. 

Really? You think we are overfunding education in the United States? Also you know we just had a whole thread about how, in fact, English majors are not unemployable. Compared to people who don't go to college they are far more likely to get jobs and make more money at those jobs. You keep accusing academics of ignoring evidence, yet you are willing to buy this whole story based around dumb cliches about hipsters and English majors which has no actual basis in reality. Also, I'm not really interested in an article that refers to a human being as a "Mexican illegal." I guess unlike Vinny the Longshoreman, he doesn't even get a name?

[polly_mer]

Summary:

1) We're funding the wrong things in US education and therefore certain areas are short-funded.  For example, funding remedial college courses instead of better K-12 education means we're doing it wrong if the goal truly is to have an educated population who have choices as adults and a good shot at a middle class life.

2) The big looming problem is what to do when we have more people who can do certain jobs than jobs that need to be done.  The idea that a smart enough person who has a good enough college education under their belt will get a good middle class job is going away in practice as those jobs are either automated or made into the jobs that require years of more specialized training.  We have far fewer of those jobs than we used to have and there's no reason to believe those jobs are coming back.

The concern is not that English majors are unemployable; the concern is that we continue to have the underemployment rate grow indicating we need far fewer people who are "only" college educated and that's a social equity problem.  People from certain socioeconomic classes tend to get stuck in underemployment, almost regardless of their college degree, while people with pretty good social and monetary capital have good outcomes regardless of whether they have a college degree.  That situation is expected to get worse as the middle class jobs continue to transition to either much lower level (i.e., anyone of average intelligence can learn them in a matter of weeks) or much higher level (i.e., if you can't do math through PDEs or the equivalent in other fields, then you are locked out of the market). The white shoe firms that only hire from a handful of universities is one indicator of how education itself matters less than one's place in the system.

The concern isn't a specific field, so much as we don't need all the generic college graduates we currently have, let alone the people still going through the system.  We need people with specific skill sets including the often neglected math and related programming far above algebra.  A true liberal arts education might include enough math (hence the hiring of all the liberal arts majors from elite institutions into banking and consulting); a college degree with checkbox "quantitative reasoning" from Compass Point State almost certainly does not.

What happens to those people who cannot get jobs and stay in the middle class?  Do we go full out dystopia or should we be making modifications to what constitutes paid work?

[Kron3007]

I think Poly has a point.  I'm pretty sure that the US funding per capital is quite high relative to many other nations, yet many places with lower funding rates out perform the US (obviously you can debate the validity of the metrics). I really think a lot of this has to do with inequitable distribution, but that is another story.  The main point is that it is not a 1:1 relationship between amount spent and educational outcomes.

As for people with humanity degrees getting better jobs, correlation does not mean causation.  It is very possible that they would have done as good or better without this education.

[Wahoo Redux]

I think Poly has a point.  I'm pretty sure that the US funding per capital is quite high relative to many other nations, yet many places with lower funding rates out perform the US (obviously you can debate the validity of the metrics). I really think a lot of this has to do with inequitable distribution, but that is another story.  The main point is that it is not a 1:1 relationship between amount spent and educational outcomes.

As for people with humanity degrees getting better jobs, correlation does not mean causation.  It is very possible that they would have done as good or better without this education.

Polly has very good points.  The problem is that they tend to be edited to find a certain conclusion and/or are very Manichean in structure.

We can conjecture all day about correlation vs. causation or the future of employment; what we do know for a fact is that humanities degree holders tend to do just fine on the job market.  People who ignore this are using bad critical thinking skills and/or are looking for something to snipe at the lib arts with.

[Caracal]

Summary:

1) We're funding the wrong things in US education and therefore certain areas are short-funded.  For example, funding remedial college courses instead of better K-12 education means we're doing it wrong if the goal truly is to have an educated population who have choices as adults and a good shot at a middle class life.

Well, as Kron said, really this is about economic inequality and racial inequality and school isn't going to solve these problems alone.

People from certain socioeconomic classes tend to get stuck in underemployment, almost regardless of their college degree, while people with pretty good social and monetary capital have good outcomes regardless of whether they have a college degree. 

No, this isn't true. Actually mobility is pretty good for people who get a college degree. The problem is that people who come from poorer backgrounds rarely get degrees. They aren't as likely to go to college, and if they do they aren't likely to finish. I can pretty much promise you that this isn't going to change if you drop distribution requirements or give up on the idea of a liberal arts education.

The concern isn't a specific field, so much as we don't need all the generic college graduates we currently have, let alone the people still going through the system.  We need people with specific skill sets including the often neglected math and related programming far above algebra.  A true liberal arts education might include enough math (hence the hiring of all the liberal arts majors from elite institutions into banking and consulting); a college degree with checkbox "quantitative reasoning" from Compass Point State almost certainly does not.

Oh, ok, so the math requirement can stay, its just that the humanities needs to go? Also I'm not really sure I think our world really needs all these people going into banking and consulting. One of the many bothersome things about your arguments is you seem to assume that the economy is some sort of arbiter of what is good and useful. High school teaching doesn't pay much and consulting does, so "we" need more consultants.

[fourhats]

We can conjecture all day about correlation vs. causation or the future of employment; what we do know for a fact is that humanities degree holders tend to do just fine on the job market.  People who ignore this are using bad critical thinking skills and/or are looking for something to snipe at the lib arts with.

I agree. The last articles I've read suggest that English majors are getting jobs at higher rates than biology majors. They also had great job satisfaction several years out.

[marshwiggle]

We can conjecture all day about correlation vs. causation or the future of employment; what we do know for a fact is that humanities degree holders tend to do just fine on the job market.  People who ignore this are using bad critical thinking skills and/or are looking for something to snipe at the lib arts with.

I agree. The last articles I've read suggest that English majors are getting jobs at higher rates than biology majors. They also had great job satisfaction several years out.

To be fair, biology isn't great to go by; it's the STEM discipline that is easiest to do with minimal math. (Yes, I know that there will all kinds of people in biology that are strong in math, and lots of sub-disciplines that use math, but getting through without  having to do much math is easier than in most other STEM disciplines.)

And to be blunt: The essence of the STEM/humanities divide is the presence or absence and relative importance of math.