Are you Major-ist?

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

gmal's original post is concerned with the possibility of a shortage of artists. In that situation, what matters is the percentage of artists who come from a particular field, rather than the other way around. To compare the other way, P(artist|Juilliard degree) is pretty high, but there would not be a shortage of artists were Juilliard to shut its doors, because P(Juilliard degree|artist) is very low.

[gmalivuk]

I don't see how P(STEM|artist) comes into play at all.

I said "STEM majors are rarely the ones providing those things". Which means, of the people providing those things, only a small portion are STEM majors. Which means P(STEM|artist) is small, if "artist" is taken to mean "the ones providing those things".

I'm saying that P(artist|STEM) and P(artist|Humanities), when normalized by student population, is probably pretty close.

What do you mean "normalized", other than to make the probabilities conditional, which was already done?

And I'd strongly suspect that you are wrong there. Humanities majors, while still not especially likely to become artists, are still probably more likely to become artists than STEM majors.

[gorcee]

I don't see how P(STEM|artist) comes into play at all.

I said "STEM majors are rarely the ones providing those things". Which means, of the people providing those things, only a small portion are STEM majors. Which means P(STEM|artist) is small, if "artist" is taken to mean "the ones providing those things".

Maybe I'm reading things backwards, but this is essentially the same thing I meant.

I'm saying that P(artist|STEM) and P(artist|Humanities), when normalized by student population, is probably pretty close.

What do you mean "normalized", other than to make the probabilities conditional, which was already done?

And I'd strongly suspect that you are wrong there. Humanities majors, while still not especially likely to become artists, are still probably more likely to become artists than STEM majors.

The chances of any given humanities major becoming an artist are much larger than the chances of any given STEM major becoming an artist, sure.

But, the number of available "direct" artist jobs is not very large. Again, I'm not talking about support work -- copy editing, magazine layout, whatever. I'm talking about John Grishams and Salvadore Dalis.

Because the number of humanities majors is larger than the number of STEM majors, the statistical likelihood of a humanities major becoming an artist is probably much closer to the statistical likelihood of an engineer.Or, in other words, P(STEM|artist) * POP(STEM) is probably going to be a number that is much closer to P(Humanities|artist) * POP(humanities) than you might think.

EDIT: Strike all that, I'm trying to merge colloquial language with mathematical language and it's not going well. Also, I just took my first sip of coffee.

What I'm trying to say is this: that although the probability of a single humanities major becoming an artist might be higher (because of his or her training in that field), the percentage of of humanities majors that become artists is probably not that much larger than the percentage of STEM majors who do the same.

In other words, studying the humanities gives you a much greater likelihood of success. But the number of opportunities is small, and the number of humanities students is larger than that of STEM students.

Count the number of new career artists this year (the number of people whose sole source of livelihood is the direct creation of art of some form). Count how many come from humanities backgrounds, STEM backgrounds, and other backgrounds. Divide those numbers by the number of graduating humanities, STEM, and other students. Because of the disparate populations, the number is probably not too far off. Sure, it is probably skewed in favor of the Humanities, but it is probably not so large that you can claim that art jobs are rarely occupied by erstwhile STEM majors, which is the sole point I am trying to counter.


Perhaps the confusion comes from my casual use of the word "probability." I am arguing from a more statistical viewpoint, if you prefer.

Either way, the total number of high visibility "artist" jobs that open per year is astonishingly small. It gets bigger if you count things like graphic designers and whatnot. But I was never, ever arguing that we could function without those things for a year. Going back to my original point, what I was saying was that we can live without paintings on our walls or books on our shelves, but not without water in our pipes. To make a career DOING those sorts of things, not SUPPORTING those things, is exceptionally hard.

If you want to admit the support work as a fundamental and inseparable component of creation, then you also have to admit the similar STEM related roles: web layout programmers, golf club designers, etc.

[Dream]

P(STEM|artist)

I'm an artist what is this

[Dason]

Because the number of humanities majors is larger than the number of STEM majors, the statistical likelihood of a humanities major becoming an artist is probably much closer to the statistical likelihood of an engineer. Or, in other words, P(STEM|artist) * POP(STEM) is probably going to be a number that is much closer to P(Humanities|artist) * POP(humanities) than you might think.

What? Didn't we already establish that P(Humanities|artist) > P(Stem|artist). Now you're saying Pop(Humanities) > Pop(Stem)

How exactly does that give us P(Humanities|artist) * Pop(Humanities) ≈ P(Stem|artist) * Pop(Stem)? It seems to me you're putting both of the larger quantities on one side which won't give approximately equality.

[gorcee]

Because the number of humanities majors is larger than the number of STEM majors, the statistical likelihood of a humanities major becoming an artist is probably much closer to the statistical likelihood of an engineer. Or, in other words, P(STEM|artist) * POP(STEM) is probably going to be a number that is much closer to P(Humanities|artist) * POP(humanities) than you might think.

What? Didn't we already establish that P(Humanities|artist) > P(Stem|artist). Now you're saying Pop(Humanities) > Pop(Stem)

How exactly does that give us P(Humanities|artist) * Pop(Humanities) ≈ P(Stem|artist) * Pop(Stem)? It seems to me you're putting both of the larger quantities on one side which won't give approximately equality.

er, you're right, I mis-typed what I was trying to say. I just woke up. Give me a moment.

I fix'ted it.

[gmalivuk]

that although the probability of a single humanities major becoming an artist might be higher (because of his or her training in that field), the percentage of of humanities majors that become artists is probably not that much larger than the percentage of STEM majors who do the same.

No, you're still contradicting yourself. The probability, P(artist|major), that a single [whatever] major will become an artist is the same as the percentage of all [whatever] majors who will become artists. That is, in fact, the only way we could in practice compute said probability in the first place. If each humanities major has a 1 in 1000 chance of being an artist, then we'd expect 0.1% of humanities majors to become artists. If each STEM major has a 1 in 10,000 chance, then we'd expect 0.01% of STEM majors to become artists.

When we further consider the relative populations we're starting from, which you yourself claim is higher for the humanities, then the disparity actually increases. If the numbers of STEM and humanities majors were equal, then you'd expect (with my hypothetical numbers) ten humanity-major-artists for every STEM-major-artist. If there are twice as many humanities majors as STEM majors, then this increases to 20:1.

And in any case, I was never talking about P(artist|major), which you agree is lower for STEM than for humanities, but rather P(major|artist), which is even smaller for STEM than for humanities, on account of the greater number of humanities majors.

Perhaps the confusion comes from my casual use of the word "probability."

No. The confusion comes from you repeatedly contradicting yourself. (I do find it ironic that the one arguing for the greater utility of STEM over humanities is the one who keeps messing up the math...)

P(STEM|artist)

I'm an artist what is this

That is the likelihood that any given artist is a STEM major. Or, put another way, the approximate fraction of artists who are STEM majors. The other way around, P(artist|STEM), is the likelihood that any given STEM major becomes an artist, or the approximate fraction of STEM majors who become artists.

[KestrelLowing]

Like you never mess up grammar!

Anyway, I think the questions that we're kind of skirting around with this probability stuff are:

What is the best of humanities and the best of STEM? and
What is the average of humanities and the average of STEM?

Now, I obviously don't have the facts for these, but I'd argue that the best of humanities and the best of STEM is probably about equal. On one side you've got Einstein, Newton, Darwin, etc. but on the other you've got Shakespeare, van Gogh, Bach, etc. And then you've got crazy awesome people like DaVinci that are ridiculous. Both sides have probably done about the same amount for the world - probably equally present in our everyday lives as the scientific world rests on many important scientists work, and the general entertainment world is obviously heavily based on those principles set up by past artists.

Where the big difference is, I think, is that the average person in STEM fields does a bit more in advancing society than the average person in humanities. Obviously I don't have any real evidence for this, simply what I've observed. I think I can give a decent idea of what the average STEM major does, can someone give a decent idea of what the average humanities major does?

The average STEM major will probably end up coding webpages, figuring out manufacturing processes, doing quality assurance, sitting in a cube all day crunching numbers, and generally having little bits to do with much larger projects like making a car or a city system, or a computer system.

With all my biases and everything, I feel like the average humanities major is not employed in their major. Please give me a better idea of what actually happens. Obviously we have to take the current economy into affect as many people can't get jobs right now.

Also, I think the point that gorcee was maybe attempting to make with the whole probability thing (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that STEM majors are more likely to be interested in humanities than a humanities major is to be interested in STEM. I think there are four major reasons for this:

• STEM majors are more practical (aka, more likely to get a higher paying job) so if someone is on the border, they'll probably choose a STEM major
• humanities interests are easier to pursue as hobbies than STEM interests (in general as STEM is usually expensive)
• Math in particular tends to scare people away (probably due to poor teaching) and if it does, a humanities major is probably not going to enjoy doing STEM things
• STEM tends to be more linear in learning than humanities - you have to know a to do b

I've always been pretty active in the engineering and music communities. There are tons of engineers who play music (evidence by the band at my school that made up of all non music majors as we don't have a major program - we also get the "you're really good for not having any music majors". I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not), but there aren't tons of musicians who are engineering on the side.

[gmalivuk]

Obviously I don't have any real evidence for this

Then please, for the love of Pasta, stop making such stupid claims.

I feel like the average humanities major is not employed in their major.

The average person is probably not employed directly in their major, apart from very specific marketable degrees like computer science. I doubt it's terribly different based on which of these two broad categories a person fits into. (And if you include actual art/music majors in the humanities, then I suspect the average shifts more in the opposite direction, because a lot of the people who major specifically in, say, piano, go on to make a living doing something piano related.)

but there aren't tons of musicians who are engineering on the side.

Unless you count all the ones who've ever built their own stuff for musical purposes, of course.

[gorcee]

that although the probability of a single humanities major becoming an artist might be higher (because of his or her training in that field), the percentage of of humanities majors that become artists is probably not that much larger than the percentage of STEM majors who do the same.

No, you're still contradicting yourself. The probability, P(artist|major), that a single [whatever] major will become an artist is the same as the percentage of all [whatever] majors who will become artists. That is, in fact, the only way we could in practice compute said probability in the first place. If each humanities major has a 1 in 1000 chance of being an artist, then we'd expect 0.1% of humanities majors to become artists. If each STEM major has a 1 in 10,000 chance, then we'd expect 0.01% of STEM majors to become artists.

You're right, I'm contradicting myself because I'm trying to communicate something while editing old posts and I'm not doing a good job. It's like trying to cover a Bondo job with paint that doesn't match your car. It doesn't help that I read the conditional probability backwards, because I was recently working with something similar that has a similar, but reversed convention.

Best to start over.

What I should be saying is that the number of positions for the art positions are small, which we all pretty much accept. Everyone knows it's exceedingly difficult to make a living creating new works as a musician, writer or artist. Every year, there is some room for new folks to make their livings this way. Some of them are from Humanities backgrounds, some of them are from STEM backgrounds, many of them have no college background.

I am saying that the percentage of students of the humanities that fill these positions each year is so sufficiently close to the percentage of STEM majors who fill these positions that the statement of "STEM majors rarely produce these things" is fallacious. So, maybe it's 5:1. Maybe it's 10:1. But I contend that number of STEM majors who go on to create artsy things is a sufficient percentage of the total number of new artist types each year that it is wrong to say that STEM majors rarely create those things.

Now, I also contend that studying the humanities gives you better tools to succeed. That's where I was using "probability" in a casual way. It was a poor choice of wording, and led to confusion both to myself and others. In other words, if you really, really want to be a novelist, then it is probably a good idea to focus your energies on things that will help your craft. It will give you better tools to succeed at the business of being an artist. Jim Butcher, for instance, went to a post-graduate writing program during which he wrote Stormfront.

But even if you take the Jim Butcher path, it is still possible to succeed as a Michael Crichton.

Anyhow, as we determined, anecdotes are bullshit, but now I have (some) statistics! It will have to wait for a follow-up post, though, as it is my lunch time.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

I think I can give a decent idea of what the average STEM major does

The average STEM major will probably end up [doing all kinds of shit]

can someone give a decent idea of what the average humanities major does?

Guess.

[KestrelLowing]

Obviously I don't have any real evidence for this

Then please, for the love of Pasta, stop making such stupid claims.

I'm just saying what my preconceptions are. I'm trying to correct those, and I'm just attempting to say what I think so that I can be corrected.

I feel like the average humanities major is not employed in their major.

The average person is probably not employed directly in their major, apart from very specific marketable degrees like computer science. I doubt it's terribly different based on which of these two broad categories a person fits into. (And if you include actual art/music majors in the humanities, then I suspect the average shifts more in the opposite direction, because a lot of the people who major specifically in, say, piano, go on to make a living doing something piano related.)

Eh, fair point. I'm not so certain about your second point though - while a piano major will probably end up teaching piano lessons and taking jobs when they can, there are more things like majoring in painting where you end up having to do a completely different job in order to pay rent. A literature major is not going to find anything besides teaching on some level that will pay the bills.

but there aren't tons of musicians who are engineering on the side.

Unless you count all the ones who've ever built their own stuff for musical purposes, of course.

That is something I didn't think about, and also about the artists that do large sculptures and stuff that would require some engineering. Question: for things like those random modern art sculptures you see all over college campuses (sorry, not a big fan. I don't understand modern art) do they personally do any engineering? Do they bring someone in? Or do they just kind of hope and pray it won't fall (I'm assuming not as that would probably be illegal or something)?

Oh, and TheGrammarBolshevik, thanks. It was really helpful.[/sarcasm] Really, I'm just trying to figure out if the majority of humanities majors actually do something with their major or if with the jobs they get they may have been better off getting work experience and not getting into ridiculous debt. (Yes, I know a college degree is almost a requirement for everything these days, but I think that's just plain wrong)

[doogly]

Ah yes, the liberal arts and employment have an iffy relationship. "Education is not purely about marketable skills! Treating people as a mere means to an economic end is dehumanizing! By the way, here's your tremendous debt, sucka."

This is not true universally, of course, but there is a lot of doublespeak that happens.

[Dark567]

Ah yes, the liberal arts and employment have an iffy relationship. "Education is not purely about marketable skills! Treating people as a mere means to an economic end is dehumanizing! By the way, here's your tremendous debt, sucka."

I remember sitting in an anthro class having the professor explain how education isn't about marketable skills and shouldn't look at it through the lens of economics, thinking to myself "I probably just spent $150 dollars on this lecture". You can't ask students to not look at education as a marketplace, when the university is looking at its students that way (particularly at the undergraduate level).

[doogly]

Ah, and I did a fun majorism to an anthropologist's majorism. First day of anthro class he was comparing his discipline to history, which can only go back a mere thousands of years. Anthropology can take us back millions!
It was time for the cosmologist to chuckle.

[gmalivuk]

the statement of "STEM majors rarely produce these things" is fallacious. So, maybe it's 5:1. Maybe it's 10:1. But I contend that number of STEM majors who go on to create artsy things is a sufficient percentage of the total number of new artist types each year that it is wrong to say that STEM majors rarely create those things.

Then you're using "rarely" in a very different way than I was. For me, if non-STEM artists outnumber STEM artists 10 to 1, it's perfectly valid to say artists are rarely STEM majors.

A literature major is not going to find anything besides teaching on some level that will pay the bills.

Are you seriously claiming that a literature major who goes on to teach literature is somehow *not* working in their field

[gorcee]

Fuck it, my sandwich can wait a moment.

BLS lists 10,320 jobs under the occupation "Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors and Illustrators". Of these, 3,260 are listed under the category "Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media Operations."

Some of these things are a little handwavey. If you want to argue that I was not generous enough in one of the numbers I chose (because statistics are unavailable), then please calmly and rationally suggest an alternative.

Now, make a couple assumptions just for generality's sake (if you want we can correct for growing population, etc. later, but I am hungry!): a.) That people choose this as a career, and as a result spend 35+ years doing it, and b.) that the incoming population AND demand grow at the same rate as the outgoing population, so the net flux is consistent (this is where population controls would be required).

If the population can support 3,260 people as career fine artists (in the Arts category, since that is most germane), and they all have 35 year careers, then each year there is room for 93 new Fine Artists each year.

Assume briefly that those 93 openings are representative of the general population, except that they ALL require a college degree. If those 83 openings for people with college degrees were perfectly representative of the general population, then 13 to 14 of those openings are represented by STEM majors. (According to http://www.bhef.com/solutions/documents ... Report.pdf, about 15.6% of graduates are STEM majors).

Since that's probably being over-generous to STEM graduates, let's say that only 5 recent STEM graduates begin careers as Independent Fine Artists. And let's ignore business majors, etc. in the picture.

So, if all but 5 of those openings were humanities majors, then that's still 88:5. That's still better than 5% of those new openings being taken by STEM folks. 5% is pretty solid. If you blindly purchase 10 purely artsy things, and 5% of them are created by STEM majors, then there's a 40% chance that at least one of them would be created by a STEM major.

Now, this is just for Fine Arts, and I made some assumptions, but I think if you go through the BLS data, and pick the jobs that we're talking about (ie, direct art creation), and exclude support things like graphic design, sound editing, etc., you can perform a similar study and find that the number of present jobs, divided by career length (to yield a rough estimate of new job openings per year), will give you a fairly small number, and that even if STEM jobs occupy a disproportionately small number of those openings, that there is still a good chance that average consumption will encounter something created by a STEM graduate.

So, again, my point isn't to say that STEM majors represent a majority of art creation positions, or even a representative minority. Just a sufficiently large number that the "rare" qualifier is inappropriate.

[KestrelLowing]

Ah yes, the liberal arts and employment have an iffy relationship. "Education is not purely about marketable skills! Treating people as a mere means to an economic end is dehumanizing! By the way, here's your tremendous debt, sucka."

This is not true universally, of course, but there is a lot of doublespeak that happens.

Exactly - and this really made me think about why I'm majorist.

(I'll try to be clearer this time. Sorry, that's difficult for me sometimes.)

Like I said before, I value logic pretty much above everything. It seems to me that a good portion of humanities majors are just doing a completely illogical thing.

I had a friend that dropped out of engineering to humanities. It's not really fair to say she dropped out as she had fine grades but realized engineering wasn't her thing. She still would make fun of the majority of humanities students because they had no idea what they were going to do with their lives in their 3rd and 4th year. My friend had an idea and a couple backup plans. If everything went the way she wanted, she'd be justified in getting her degree, and the masters she's planning. If she had to go to a backup plan, they'd still be very useful as she had planned it that way.

If you've got a plan and a reasonable expectation to be able to carry out that plan, I really don't have an issue with whatever major you choose. The problem is those people who go to college just to party or to get their MRS degree, or just to have a college degree under their belt and inevitably choose the 'easy majors' in humanities. Communications and Gender Studies are (rightly or wrongly) infamous for this. The people who just study a subject because they like it and don't have a future plan are also lumped in this category.

Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on your degree is so that you can make that back and more when you graduate. While everyone says that education is so much more than that (and I would agree) the problem is that you're going into major debt for it unless you manage to score some good scholarships or you're independently wealthy. (Or if your country pays for it, tax payers are paying money for things they don't really see any advantage for) It doesn't make sense.

This is, I believe, the biggest problem with the education bubble that is about ready to burst - you get a degree in something that won't allow you to pay back your loans. Some people also do this in STEM fields, but they're usually at the bottom of the class and that has to be expected.

I've had to suffer through a lot more humanities crap than humanities people have to suffer through STEM crap. While the world obviously isn't fair, we could change that. Also, the perceived huge amount of work in humanities pales in comparison to STEM classes (at my school). We have to take junior level humanities courses to graduate - they're the exact same courses as the humanities majors. I know what the workload actually is. They only have to take some science and math classes at the freshman or sophomore level.

Add this all together, and that's why I'm majorist.

[gorcee]

That is something I didn't think about, and also about the artists that do large sculptures and stuff that would require some engineering. Question: for things like those random modern art sculptures you see all over college campuses (sorry, not a big fan. I don't understand modern art) do they personally do any engineering? Do they bring someone in? Or do they just kind of hope and pray it won't fall (I'm assuming not as that would probably be illegal or something)?

It depends. Some sculptors are trained engineers! (Which, as it turns out, is what my prior post was all about).

But even still, typically any public installation has to undergo a safety analysis. If it's a small, life-sized bronze statue of the university president, there probably isn't a whole lot of engineering involved.

On the other hand, the moving metal tree at RPI, for instance (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjgraham/3790289559/) probably required some engineering oversight to ensure that in a strong thunderstorm students didn't end up stapled to the JEC.

Usually, an institution will perform some sort of analysis even if not required just to limit liability if something does go wrong.

[gmalivuk]

Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on your degree is so that you can make that back and more when you graduate.

No. Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on *anything* is that you think the thing is worth that much money. *One* form this can take is in expected monetary return, but that's far from the only possible way a thing can have worth.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

So, again, my point isn't to say that STEM majors represent a majority of art creation positions, or even a representative minority. Just a sufficiently large number that the "rare" qualifier is inappropriate.

…

…

So you are talking about P(STEM|artist)?

A literature major is not going to find anything besides teaching on some level that will pay the bills.

I'm sure my lit major friend at Bain & Company will be sorry to hear that.

If you've got a plan and a reasonable expectation to be able to carry out that plan, I really don't have an issue with whatever major you choose. … Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on your degree is so that you can make that back and more when you graduate. While everyone says that education is so much more than that (and I would agree) the problem is that you're going into major debt for it unless you manage to score some good scholarships or you're independently wealthy.

Ok. So if you mean to criticize people who are mistaken in their investments, why are you using the words "humanities majors"? That's not what those words mean.

I've had to suffer through a lot more humanities crap than humanities people have to suffer through STEM crap. While the world obviously isn't fair, we could change that.

If you think a degree should be useful, I don't see why discipline equity should be a criterion in planning general education requirements. Humanities skills tend to be more transferable than STEM skills — engineers still have to write, but writers rarely have to engineer. Thus, it makes sense to require more humanities training for STEM people than STEM training for humanities people. (Your university probably uses reasoning like this. Do you really think that Michigan Tech is biased in favor of the humanities?)

[gorcee]

Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on your degree is so that you can make that back and more when you graduate.

No. Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on *anything* is that you think the thing is worth that much money. *One* form this can take is in expected monetary return, but that's far from the only possible way a thing can have worth.

That would be true if it weren't for the fact that a college education often requires leveraging tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes even over $100k. At that point, the same logic that says "this milkshake is worth $5!" no longer applies. At that level, it becomes a financial decision, almost as big a financial decision as buying a house, and arguably, it should be considered an investment.

[gmalivuk]

almost as big a financial decision as buying a house

Which is, coincidentally, *also* not something people do solely because they expect future monetary profit.

[gorcee]

So, again, my point isn't to say that STEM majors represent a majority of art creation positions, or even a representative minority. Just a sufficiently large number that the "rare" qualifier is inappropriate.

…

…

So you are talking about P(STEM|artist)?

I'm not talking about P anything anything.

I'm talking about the fact that artists create products, products get consumed, and that even if a small number of producers come from a STEM background, the "rare" qualifier has to be used in the context of the field.

To put it another way, if only one of the ten chefs at my favorite restaurant is blonde-haired, but I eat there every Thursday, then at some point it becomes statistically inappropriate for me to say "it is unusual that food has been prepared for me by a blonde-haired person."

[gorcee]

almost as big a financial decision as buying a house

Which is, coincidentally, *also* not something people do solely because they expect future monetary profit.

Well, invent a time machine, go back to 2004, and tell that to the national realtors convention.

Sarcasm notwithstanding, you can't buy a house based on it's worth. You have to have a repayment plan. You have to fit it in with your financial future. If you don't, you're an idiot. The housing crisis has shown us that there is certainly an abundance of idiots.

And there are non-zero levels of concern that there is a coming Student Loan bubble that will devastate the economy. My point, and Kestrel's point, is that people NEED to consider the financial impact of their college decision. Not that it has to be the sole factor, but that it has to be at least a pretty fucking big one. Right now, to many high school students, it gets ranked somewhere between "where to sign Rebecca's yearbook" and "what gum should I buy".

In addition, in the US, college loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy*. Your college loans affect your ability to acquire credit, and the monthly payment can affect your retirement planning. So looking at future employment prospects isn't a buzzkill, it isn't cold profit-mongering. It's an actual important, rational decision that isn't being taken seriously enough in American society.

*except in extreme circumstances. Like, the loss of all of your limbs. Seriously.

[gmalivuk]

I'm pretty sure realtors know quite a lot already about the various reasons people buy houses, without my needing to break physics to tell them.

As for your other argument, it would have been a lot less confusing if you'd just come right out and said at the beginning that you don't think 1 in 10 counts as "rare" and been done with it, instead of contradicting yourself repeatedly with bad math in the meantime.

[gorcee]

I'm pretty sure realtors know quite a lot already about the various reasons people buy houses, without my needing to break physics to tell them.

As for your other argument, it would have been a lot less confusing if you'd just come right out and said at the beginning that you don't think 1 in 10 counts as "rare" and been done with it, instead of contradicting yourself repeatedly with bad math in the meantime.

And I would have done that, had you actually said 1 in 10 prior to a couple hours ago, and had I been doing actual math, instead of trying to argue rhetorically.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

My point, and Kestrel's point, is that people NEED to consider the financial impact of their college decision.

And my point is that you should make this point in a thread where it's relevant, rather than using it as ammunition in an orthogonal dispute.

[Puppyclaws]

I am going to largely ignore the trope that despite the history of the university as a place of learning for learning's own sake, we should now regard it as a job training facility. This is a flawed way of looking at education, but it is also very common. Even many STEM majors doesn't make sense if your only goal is ROI.

I am going to attempt to simultaneously answer the "what are you going to do with that?" handwringing and the charge that almost nobody becomes an artist. First of all, you have to understand the arts as a larger field. A limited number of people are going to become self-sufficient artists, but the support positions around them are also filled almost entirely by people with degrees in fields like English, History, and Art. Publishing houses, museums, music venues, film studios. Anybody working in any one of these places is undeniably working "in the arts." If you only understand "working in the arts" as being an artist whose income is 100% from creating art, or if you conclude that you can only say that you are working in your field as a philosophy major if your income is entirely from publishing tracts on philosophy, then you are failing to understand what liberal arts education is.

[gmalivuk]

And I would have done that, had you actually said 1 in 10 prior to a couple hours ago

I didn't have any particular number in mind, other than that it was a small minority. And I'd say 10% is a fairly small minority.

and had I been doing actual math, instead of trying to argue rhetorically.

"Arguing rhetorically" doesn't absolve you of the obligation to make logically consistent statements.

[gorcee]

I am going to largely ignore the trope that despite the history of the university as a place of learning for learning's own sake, we should now regard it as a job training facility. This is a flawed way of looking at education, but it is also very common. Even many STEM majors doesn't make sense if your only goal is ROI.

I am going to attempt to simultaneously answer the "what are you going to do with that?" handwringing and the charge that almost nobody becomes an artist. First of all, you have to understand the arts as a larger field. A limited number of people are going to become self-sufficient artists, but the support positions around them are also filled almost entirely by people with degrees in fields like English, History, and Art. Publishing houses, museums, music venues, film studios. Anybody working in any one of these places is undeniably working "in the arts." If you only understand "working in the arts" as being an artist whose income is 100% from creating art, or if you conclude that you can only say that you are working in your field as a philosophy major if your income is entirely from publishing tracts on philosophy, then you are failing to understand what liberal arts education is.

No one here ever said that those support jobs weren't "working in the arts." But we excluded that because there are also a lot of STEM majors involved in those processes as well, so the arguments kind of wash each other out.

Either way, the original contention was that STEM majors are frequently involved in the creation of art-oriented life-enriching products that are not strictly necessary on a regular basis. Because things like magazines, video games, movies, etc. occupy large parts of the economy, these things really are required on a regular basis. Things like sculpture, poetry, art and fine-art photography are more like luxury goods. That was the original context.

And I would have done that, had you actually said 1 in 10 prior to a couple hours ago

I didn't have any particular number in mind, other than that it was a small minority. And I'd say 10% is a fairly small minority.

and had I been doing actual math, instead of trying to argue rhetorically.

"Arguing rhetorically" doesn't absolve you of the obligation to make logically consistent statements.

Rarity must be taken with respect to context. And 10% represents a pretty important, impossible-to-ignore fraction in most things.

Also, I already admitted that I was wrong in what I was saying and that I was communicating poorly and was unclear. See, I can admit when I'm mistaken. But keep harping on it if you'd like.

[KestrelLowing]

A literature major is not going to find anything besides teaching on some level that will pay the bills.

I'm sure my lit major friend at Bain & Company will be sorry to hear that.

Yeah, but that's not exactly a literature company. I was referring to the point previously made that a piano major will work with pianos because it is feasible to gain a (small) income from teaching and from some gigs. A literature major will not really be able to be in literature unless they're an amazing author (very rare) or they teach. There just aren't "literature" jobs.

If you've got a plan and a reasonable expectation to be able to carry out that plan, I really don't have an issue with whatever major you choose. … Logically, the reason for spending a bunch of money on your degree is so that you can make that back and more when you graduate. While everyone says that education is so much more than that (and I would agree) the problem is that you're going into major debt for it unless you manage to score some good scholarships or you're independently wealthy.

Ok. So if you mean to criticize people who are mistaken in their investments, why are you using the words "humanities majors"? That's not what those words mean.

No, but if someone wants to go to college just to go to college or to get an MRS degree and they choose a STEM field, I've got a lot more respect for them because while they don't really want to be there, they are at least making a good choice towards their future as a job directly dealing with STEM majors are more likely than those dealing directly with humanities majors. While I don't like when they do that because then they're in my classes being annoying, they at least showed some forethought.

Because I am at a technical university, maybe my views are a bit skewed, but the majority of humanities majors I have met have no idea what they're going to do later on in life and the ones that have plans are few and far between. Note that I work in the humanities computer lab so it's not just that I'm not meeting them. (That may be another reason why I'm slightly majorist - Have you tried restarting the computer? Where did you save it? You didn't. Well, SOL. No, the computer is not dead, the screen saver's on. Note: I know this is not limited to humanities majors but those are the ones I see)

I've had to suffer through a lot more humanities crap than humanities people have to suffer through STEM crap. While the world obviously isn't fair, we could change that.

If you think a degree should be useful, I don't see why discipline equity should be a criterion in planning general education requirements. Humanities skills tend to be more transferable than STEM skills — engineers still have to write, but writers rarely have to engineer. Thus, it makes sense to require more humanities training for STEM people than STEM training for humanities people. (Your university probably uses reasoning like this. Do you really think that Michigan Tech is biased in favor of the humanities?)

No, I'm not talking about Michigan Tech being biased in favor of humanities. (However, I think they got some annoying people who insisted that more humanities were absolutely needed because we wouldn't be 'well rounded'. Why do we need to be well rounded? The best thing about humans is that we can specialize. And if you knew the quality of humanities education there, you'd understand why I really don't like taking it.) My high school certainly was though, as are the majority of non-technical colleges.

As to humanities being more transferable, that's correct - if we were taught to do anything but analyze literature. My history classes were ok. We actually tried to understand reasons behind things and wrote about those. That kind of skill is very transferable - the critical thinking skills we were talking about before. However, English was just a disaster. Perhaps it was just my teachers, but I remember specifically one paper (in high school) where we were basically only graded on including a quotation correctly: "This is a quotation"(Book 173). We learned nothing about how to actually write clearly, just how to interpret symbolism (aka, read the spark notes because if it wasn't in there you were going to fail).

We didn't even learn grammar in English. The only reason I have acceptable grammar is because my parents speak with correct grammar and I learned grammar in German.

In the one English class I actually learned something in, AP Language, we didn't always focus on literature, we also read persuasive columns, satire, historic recollections, poems, even some sci-fi, and many other types of writing. While we didn't do anything technical (which I can understand, although I do wish I had some prior experience with that) we did so much more that I could actually transfer to technical and expository writing.

I still hated the class but I begrudgingly respected the teacher and although I didn't learn tons, I had to have learned something. After all, I somehow ended up with a 4 on the AP test (although I do think that was mainly due to the multiple choice portion as that was really easy for me).

Also, I think it would be absolutely wonderful if someone could come up with a better teaching method for people who are not naturally gifted at writing and speaking. I would want that class, as I know it's my weakness. So far, all I've heard is "practice and you'll get better." Um, no. You'll just keep practicing the same bad things. I'm past the 5 paragraph essay, what do I do now?

[doogly]

Humanities skills tend to be more transferable than STEM skills — engineers still have to write, but writers rarely have to engineer. Thus, it makes sense to require more humanities training for STEM people than STEM training for humanities people. (Your university probably uses reasoning like this. Do you really think that Michigan Tech is biased in favor of the humanities?)

Ah, this is a very hated thing! It is a conceit of humanities folks that their criteria for good writing and communicating are universal. Smash these notions with a hammer.

This comes up a lot in science journalism - you have scientist trained science journalists, and journalism trained science journalists. When I want something at a popular level (like if I'm reading science history, or something about bio or chem, and I am essentially a lay person) I find more often than not those with a science background communicate more to my tastes.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Yeah, but that's not exactly a literature company. I was referring to the point previously made that a piano major will work with pianos because it is feasible to gain a (small) income from teaching and from some gigs. A literature major will not really be able to be in literature unless they're an amazing author (very rare) or they teach. There just aren't "literature" jobs.

Sure there aren't. You just have to pretend, as gmal points out, that teaching literature isn't a literature job. If you get to do that, though, I also get to pretend that pre-meds are wasting their time taking organic chemistry.

I also think the distinction between literature jobs and non-literature jobs is irrelevant. What matters (accepting, for the sake of argument, that the only thing that matters about college is your career) is that your choice of major helps you get a job. And this can certainly be the case even if your career isn't major-specific, so long as your choice of major affects your chances of success. For, while I know consultants who majored in literature and consultants who majored in biology, chemistry, and physics, I doubt that any of them would have been as successful had they decided to study fields that they didn't care about. For many careers, what matters is simply how well you do, rather than what field you do well in; if you're going for one of these careers, then it would be foolish to choose a field where you won't succeed.

Ok. So if you mean to criticize people who are mistaken in their investments, why are you using the words "humanities majors"? That's not what those words mean.

No, but if someone wants to go to college just to go to college or to get an MRS degree and they choose a STEM field, I've got a lot more respect for them because while they don't really want to be there, they are at least making a good choice towards their future as a job directly dealing with STEM majors are more likely than those dealing directly with humanities majors. While I don't like when they do that because then they're in my classes being annoying, they at least showed some forethought.

No, they didn't. If they're only there to party or to get married, they aren't showing forethought. They're only accidentally simulating it because people are foolish enough to think that STEM majors are categorically career-minded. Someone who studies professional writing in order to become a professional writer is showing far more forethought than such a person (though even that isn't categorically true; I imagine there are families who can afford the price tag of college for the social experience alone, and who am I to say what their money is worth to them?). I see no reason to respect someone who, for poor reasons, makes a decision that happens to work out for her benefit.

Ah, this is a very hated thing! It is a conceit of humanities folks that their criteria for good writing and communicating are universal. Smash these notions with a hammer.

My experience with writing in STEM courses is that STEM majors treat it as a sign that the course has been dumbed-down for humanities majors.

[gmalivuk]

There just aren't "literature" jobs.

Again: are you seriously claiming that teaching literature is not a "literature" job?

[KestrelLowing]

There just aren't "literature" jobs.

Again: are you seriously claiming that teaching literature is not a "literature" job?

EXCEPT for teaching. I said that in both of my posts. I also said that being an author would also be a literature job.

Yeah, but that's not exactly a literature company. I was referring to the point previously made that a piano major will work with pianos because it is feasible to gain a (small) income from teaching and from some gigs. A literature major will not really be able to be in literature unless they're an amazing author (very rare) or they teach. There just aren't "literature" jobs.

[gorcee]

Ah, this is a very hated thing! It is a conceit of humanities folks that their criteria for good writing and communicating are universal. Smash these notions with a hammer.

My experience with writing in STEM courses is that STEM majors treat it as a sign that the course has been dumbed-down for humanities majors.

Yes, well, college students are idiots.

There is a distinct need for -- and a distinct lack of -- good technical writing courses as part of any STEM curriculum. Even though it might not be considered important by students doesn't really bear any relevance at all. The curriculum should prepare a student as well as possible for as many of the functions he or she might perform in his or her job. As it turns out, technical writing is a frequently-needed skill. Just because students poo-poo it doesn't mean that the Humanities needs to come in and say, AH HAH, I TOLD YOU SO.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Sure. But this contradicts your claim that "There just aren't 'literature' jobs," which is what gmal was responding to.

[KestrelLowing]

Sure. But this contradicts your claim that "There just aren't 'literature' jobs," which is what gmal was responding to.

Hyperbole, ok? There are very few literature jobs, comparatively.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Compared with what? There are far more teachers in the United States than there are engineers. [1][2].