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What’s Wrong With the Humanities?
The supply of people with PhDs in the humanities vastly exceeds the demand for them. Why?
The explanations for trouble in the humanities I see the most are:
1. People care too much about making money, not enough about the search for truth and beauty.
2. The Humanities disciplines caused their own problems by wandering off into fashionable theories of the liberal, relativistic, or goofily postmodern persuasion.
The first explanation sometimes involves criticisms of capitalism, and sometimes of Republican governors. The second explanation often appears in places like National Review’s Phi Beta Cons blog. A third explanation of this particular problem is pretty simple, and may not make it as easy for the left or right to toss blame at each other:
3. Too many universities have produced way too many humanities PhDs because universities look more prestigious when they have more PhD programs.
My own working theory is that all of these explanations are correct. Please note: I don’t think much of the first theory as a criticism of capitalism, though it might be a nice criticism of the reduction of the good life to capitalism alone (also criticized here, for example).
I might add that, even if the third theory carries the most weight as an explanation, I am a fan of the second theory, and I think it’s an important commentary on the humanities these days.
I might also ask, given the truth of the second theory, how much you can blame people if they pursue financial stability and a strong economy instead of studying these theories?
What say the Ricochetti?
Theory 1?
Theory 2?
Theory 3?
Theory 4? (Please provide in comments.)
Published in General
Which will certainly shatter the self-esteem of the Computer Science PhDs starting their careers at $250k a year.
No, but you know what does?
A statistical distribution of wages, where we can look at upper limits, lower limits, medians, averages, x percentiles etc etc.
I was not aware Computer Science was now considered part of the Humanities. Oh, and BTW, those PhD CS grads can be hired by the college dropout who founded the company paying the $250k salaries. Your statistical distribution of wages seems to ignore the dollar values of business ownership, which is where successful folks with skills can end up. I know this may be a foreign concept, but not all income is paid in wages.
I do grow weary of the back and forth. Points made by both sides. See you on some other thread. It is late where I am.
Funny how those 2 college drop outs you can think of, don’t hire other college drop outs, but dole out $250k a year for PhDs.
Funny how that works.
Oh so now you’re…only…talking about PhDs in humanities vs welders.
Lets look at that one, shall we.
Median salary of welder: $30k a year
Median salary of “humanities” graduates: $66k a year
Yep.
That….doesn’t make much sense. All you’re saying here is that a small number of people can be very successful. The same applies in PhDs of humanities.
That’s why we look at a …distribution.
Yet all income is reported to the IRS…which is where we get the data from ;)
Yes. But, disciplines that are not natural sciences would be more susceptible, I’d think.
I see a light dawning. Check out the thread title. It does seem to focus on humanities. When did the IRS include capital gains in job class wage data?
Thomas Sowell endorses theory 2 here.