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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   25739 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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I am firmly of the opinion that there very much should be English literature faculties in the Anglosphere. There should be perhaps 12 in total. Oxford, Cambridge, the Ivy League, Stanford, Berkeley. That is sufficient. Each should have the full complement of specialists, modern literature, Shakespeareans, so on, maybe thirty or forty academics each. That is enough.

The same is true for academic philosophy. The same is true for anthropology, Latin, Ancient Greek, Egyptology and so on. These are all worthwhile fields. There is nothing wrong with an advanced civilization having a couple hundred academics who specialize in niche fields within the humanities. Let us have our Chaucer experts and our Hume biographers and our hieroglyphics translators and so on.

But the idea of thousands of English literature or philosophy professors? This is wholly unnecessary. The best, the 99.99th percentile verbal IQ people who also want to be academics (rather than entertainers or salespeople or whatever) can do these jobs at a handful of elite research universities. Nobody else needs to. Nobody else should.

I actually think the key problem here is that most English lit and phil professors are, on the object level, not doing valuable work. It's not that they categorically couldn't be, under a hypothetical different academia, it's that they currently aren't - when I think of the median philosophy or literature paper published from a second tier university, I think 'filler or garbage', not 'contributing to human knowledge', and not even 'interesting hobby'. And the vast majority of it isn't even political, it's bad poetry or commentaries on commentaries on commentaries or poor reinventions of existing concepts in other fields. Most people with an innate drive to do something actually interesting got selected out in favor of people with worse taste. That's the reason they should be defunded, not anything more abstract.

Thousands of English professors might be unnecessary but why the heck not? We had many more monks in monasteries whose whole job was just upholding a way of life and an institution. As long as they're deeply passionate about it (which I think most English scholars are), I think they're adding to the sum of human fulfilment. There are hundreds of millions of people doing bullshit jobs, after all.

I think that there is a big problem with post-grad programs at low ranked schools. The school is basically scamming students who think an MA/PhD from that school will open up academic career possibilities.

I think we should accept that there are degrees that are primarily conspicuous leisure. Philosophy, literature, history - they are qualitatively different from STEM degrees or BA/Marketing/Accounting/Finance/Law.

The latter are, honestly, glorified trades. "Oh, you come from a class that has to work for a living? Here's a four-year course that will help you earn more or at the very least will reduce your occupational hazards to hemorrhoids." The former are for trust-fund kids and for those few who can't imagine any other future for themselves and are willing to sacrifice their economic prospects to study the agricultural practices of 18th century SEA peasants.

As long as we keep lumping them together into "find your true vocation", people will remain confused and angry: both the undergrads that were duped into getting a useless degree because Miss Doe the high school history teacher was their favorite and the professors that have been deluding themselves about their relative worth.

You're both overstating and understating the situation.

On one hand, it goes way beyond just literature and philosophy. Open up the STEM box and you'll find that it's only really the T and E parts that lead directly to careers. There might be more demand for PhD graduates in the sciences but the majority of students stop with a bachelors and there aren't really any more jobs that specifically need a degree in e.g. biology than those that need you to have studied history. High school teacher is basically the full list.

But on the other hand, you're missing the generic value of a degree. Pretty much all white collar jobs these days need you to have a degree and most aren't particularly picky about what you studied. Yes, maybe a lot of that is just signaling, but the signal is a real thing (earning a degree proves that you have some combination of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is also valuable to an employer) - so playing the game is rational for both students and companies.

A BA was originally about helping wealthy and intelligent people to lead a more enriched life.

The problem is that schools took over credentialization without adjusting their programs.

Right now no one has an interest in explaining to students which subjects are rich kid majors.

I think the real solution is to involve actuaries in the federal student loans program. Analyse data and warn kids that their program is unlikely to ever pay off their student loans.

Or make the whole thing more direct and don't provide loans that are statistically unlikely to be repaid.

I think we should accept that there are degrees that are primarily conspicuous leisure. Philosophy, literature, history - they are qualitatively different from STEM degrees or BA/Marketing/Accounting/Finance/Law.

I would add all of the Social Sciences to the list. Pretty much all papers I read leave me with the thought "that's nice to know" and not "this will change how we do things and generate all sorts of positive effects in practice". I'd really like to know how many Social Science papers had any large positive impact on any policy. I would guess it's a small minority and if we stopped doing it altogether, almost nothing of practical value would be lost.

I somewhat disagree. High IQ people are not the only ones who can do these jobs and there is a value in cultural production, preservation and appreciation.

There is a benefit of a shared culture and that requires more than just highest IQ people to sustain it. While some subjects can be more niche and others need to be removed entirely.

What is necessary is to purge far leftists, those who side with foreign ethnic identity while are deconstructing and are hostile to their own. So the field must be reformed. I am not against cutting it down though, so you have a smaller but more efficient at transmitting positive culture. Or exchanging academia for hobbyists who then would be more funded. Someone like the Culture Critic on twitter is reaching a lot of people. Things outside of academia such as having more neoclassical styles over more minimalist and ugly architecture, or more films that touch on themes can be part of the change.

It is fundamentally important to promote the passing the torch idea and show people a connection through their roots, and to create a common continuous culture that appreciates that they stand on the shoulders of giants and want to continue on that legacy.

A common culture that appreciates this isn't just the result of academia and so there might be areas that we can get more bang for our buck for normies while also retaining the humanities but in a more lean form, while more focused on what is good and important and with less of the negative.

This requires people writing books on history, and appreciating it. Same for great works of literature. It doesn't require certain niche stupid obsessions and certainly if we get rid feminist, marxist lenses academia, ethnic minorities and women studies, nothing of value will be lost.

Regarding Egyptology, Chinese civilization studies, even Russian studies, etc, etc, some fields can be legitimate but makes sense for them to be niche. Appreciating foreign history cannot be too subsidized but can exist in a limited degree as part of legitimate study. It isn't healthy for them to be too mainstream of an obsession, but also not necessarily a bad thing for people who retain objectivity to have such understanding and interest. But certain subjects that are pushed as a X group studies are just part of subversive foreign nationalism, and meant to instil self hatred and guilt and grievances and hatred on the intersectional alliance member groups and fit too much within progressive activism ideology and so they are much more destructive. They also have been pushed too much with the attempt to make them a mainstream obsession that parasitizes over healthier issues.

This divide and conquer education at expense of your own civilization is a net negative and I would rather to just reject that than throw away the humanities concept. Education became much more far left leaning, and much more for retaining self hating guilt complexes due to a march on institutions of ideologues who had this agenda and it can change again to promote healthy values.

I think there is certainly a value in appreciation. I’m rather a fan of history, philosophy and similar subjects. Where I think the reformation must come is in decoupling it from the protected and tenured oligarchs of college professors in university. I’m thinking of a much more open model where instead of people going to university to pay $100K to have guided programs of reading literature and history and philosophy, you simply make such material available online. The uselessness of the diplomas is in fact a good reason for moving to guided self study for those interested. You don’t need much to read literature. You need books time, and on occasion study aides all of which can be made available for cheap if not free. Once there’s no institutional value and the material is cheap/free there’s not much reason to keep the initial institutions captured. Nobody would be going to 4-year university for history or literature.

I’m thinking of a much more open model where instead of people going to university to pay $100K to have guided programs of reading literature and history and philosophy, you simply make such material available online.

It is. People still go to four year universities all the time.

By why do the university part for 100K a year? I can buy the works of Shakespeare for $50 or less. And unless you actually need the credentials, paying a house mortgage for a piece of paper that says you’re a Shakespeare expert is pretty prohibitive for most people.

A lot of people don't understand what they read or how to apply it until they have had a conversation with others about it. Hence the usefulness of book clubs.

I don't know why people do this. But lots of people take on a mortgage to get a piece of paper saying they studied when the resources for autodidacticism are readily available.

I’ll be honest that colleges have done an excellent job of conflating the ideas of education and credentials to the point where a sizable percentage of Americans believe that you cannot possibly have learned anything about a subject unless you’ve done so in a university and received a course credit if not a diploma from a university. It’s a brain bug that most people have been trained to believe that keeps them willing to spend big money to make their learning count even if the return on the investment isn’t there.

I think that this is starting to change as the prospects for those students is known to be less than people who study more job-skills oriented degree programs. The Gen Z term for a humanities degree is “Mom’s Basement Studies”. It’s probably going to change a lot more as competition for good office jobs gets fiercer and thus the need to get a useful degree becomes paramount, the idea that you can’t hobby-study these interesting but not very useful things on your own will fall away. It’s hard to remain a snob about having a diploma on your wall when you have a job that doesn’t require any college and owe your college $100K in principle and interest and cannot ever see yourself being financially successful

The Gen Z term for a humanities degree is “Mom’s Basement Studies”.

This isn't new. Us Millenials had "What do you say to an English graduate with a job?" Big Mac and a large fries, please and "Barista of Arts"

Sorry, Gen X said the same thing about English majors.

“Underwater Basket Weaving” as a pejorative for worthless degrees dates back to 1953.

a sizable percentage of Americans believe that you cannot possibly have learned anything about a subject unless you’ve done so in a university and received a course credit if not a diploma from a university

Traditionally, a diploma functions as proof that a reasonable person has assessed what you've learned about a subject and confirmed you actually understand it. A lot of autodidacts think that they know more about the subject than they do; you need someone to push you in uncomfortable directions and point out the flaws in your understanding.

Obviously, universities are increasingly bad at this, but it's still necessary.

A lot of autodidacts think that they know more about the subject than they do;

It's one of these things repeated uncritically, like how it used to be common wisdom in the anglosphere that raising a kid bilingual somehow confuses them. Literally, where are you getting this from?

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If you can self-study to the same level then definitely do it! It takes a lot of self-motivation though. Humans are social creatures and being around other students and professors is the typical way to become invested and excited about your ideas as they'll have more purchase with those around you. The internet and new remote learning models could maybe compensate for some of this but not all.

Then, obviously, the career value of a degree, any degree.

I mean it depends on the goals, but finding or creating a reading group for a bunch of relevant books or on a given topic could probably, given appropriate study materials do at least as well as the median introductory courses are n that subject with the added bonus that unlike the students in most introductory courses, the group using a study guide and meeting to discuss the book are quite likely to have read the material in question. In most of the same courses at university, most students don’t care enough to actually read the text and quite often barely bothered to read the study notes of the text. Most only care in the sense that they want to figure out how to get a decent grade from the course while doing as little work as possible.

And unless you’re going to try to make a career of that subject, it’s probably much better as far as utility goes as instead of spending $100K on a lit degree you can spend the time and money learning career-based skills that allow you to pay off the loans. I don’t think “a degree, any degree” advice really holds anymore. It might have been true in 1970 when going to college was pretty rare and thus “BS in X” was rare enough on a resume to make you stand out. By 2024, college has become the default, and thus “degree in X” is almost expected. In fact, outside of the skilled trades, almost anyone hiring for a liveable wage job expects you to have college, and preferably something that at least signals a practical minded person. At least by getting a skill-based degree and learning about literature or history on your own, you’ll be able to get as good a job as your talents allow rather than having to try to explain to the interviewer how your four years of reading French literature makes you a good fit for the hard nosed number crunching corporate job you’re applying for.

Interestingly, my understanding is that Oxbridge and the Ivies dominate in prestige, but US state flagship schools- EG UNC and University of Texas- are the workhorses for actual English-language research in such fields.

I mean with 300M people in a country, if just 5% of the top 99.99% at english lit talent want to be academics that's 1500 full-time jobs, too much for the top 10 institutions.

I think there is value in a humanities education (though I suspect not as currently subjugated to one political cause). It was always intended as a finishing school and there is actual value in that. I don’t regret my English degree, paid for by in-state tuition at a public ivy. The price was tolerable, there. I was fortunate to get mine in the Aughts and things weren’t quite so critical-theory heavy.

And, I’ve got a comfortable career in finserv. Far from being a barista.

While I agree there is an overproduction of PhDs, I disagree that the general undergraduate population doesn’t benefit from exposure if not from gen-ed courses, alone, and think we’d be much poorer, culturally, as a society, were college purely a mercenary pursuit. Let us at least produce enough professors for the latter. It can’t all be a procession of unmitigated STEM sperges and unmoderated B-school sociopaths.

I disagree that the general undergraduate population doesn’t benefit from exposure if not from gen-ed courses

That's literally why there's high school.

The fact that US high schools aren't up to that is no reason to waste a university education on that stuff (except for the small minority who're rich enough to study just for leisure).

That's literally why there's high school

That may have been true in the past, but ever since graduation rates became a target to optimize for this is no longer the case. Turning high school into daycare was the most effective way to make number go up.

An easy counterpoint is that both should account for some liberal arts education, and at differing levels of rigor; that there’s specific benefit in high school for a future plumber, and specific benefit in college for a future banker, etc.

I mean, it makes sense to require eg engineering students to take some English and history classes for gen-ed reasons. To the extend that 'they should have done this in high school' is true, it's mostly an argument for moving engineering, computer science, medicine, etc out of a university setting and into their own institutions- that is, trade schools.

Like, universities originated for the study of the liberal arts. The entire reason job tracks(with a few exceptions like teaching and law) go through university is so that they can have gen ed requirements attached, and I suspect that getting rid of gen ed requirements would be a nail in the coffin of the university's prestige over trade schools.

The entire reason job tracks(with a few exceptions like teaching and law) go through university is so that they can have gen ed requirements attached

"Gen ed requirement" is distinctly a US feature, found mostly in US universities and universities influenced by the US model. In the UK and continental Europe, you get to pick a specialization and perhaps may pick an elective or minor, but no always.

it makes sense to require eg engineering students to take some English and history classes for gen-ed reasons.

Snarkly, I think it makes sense for humanities students to take some math and physics classes for gen-ed reasons. I see lots of pontificating from the self-declared "educated" classes that clearly lack an understanding of calculus and other entry-level numeracy concepts.

I am entirely in agreement. When my GED gives me a better understanding of statistics than you you shouldn't be allowed to graduate from college is my attitude, even if it's a degree in psychology or communications or some other kind of bullshit that came out of someone's ass.

This but unironically. When STEM students take humanities distribution classes, they take the same lower-level classes students of the humanities take themselves. When humanities students take distribution classes, they take dumbed-down "math for English majors" classes which the STEM majors can't take for degree progression. We should eliminate that and until it's eliminated, ignore all calls for well-roundedness of STEM majors.

The idea is that virtually everyone, as a free and politically engaged liberal subject, will have to deal with questions of politics, culture, and ethics; but not everyone will have to deal with STEM in the sense of actually requiring technical knowledge. On this particular day, there were probably more people who had to engage with questions about transsexuality (and therefore might benefit from an understanding of the history and philosophy of the concepts of sex and gender) than questions about calculus or linear algebra (particularly if we exclude people who require that sort of knowledge for their professional work). The humanities are thought to contribute to the education of a "well-rounded" individual because the humanities are everywhere while STEM knowledge is primarily utilized by professionals (and is therefore closer to a type of vocational training).

I say this as someone who makes a living as a software engineer. Knowing how to code is obviously useful for making money, but I don't think it really makes someone "well-rounded" in the way that studying history or art does, and certainly not in the way that studying philosophy does.

This isn't really well-roundedness, then, it's humanities-supremacy.

Coming from the other side, I’d say that numeracy and clear logical reasoning is probably more important to creating the mythical “well rounded citizens” than humanities. The reason is that almost every decision made in policy or even discussion of policy positions requires logic and statistics. The idea that you can have a productive conversation about things like economics without understanding utility curves and statistics is crazy. Figuring out the percentages of trans people in a population and what the percentage of increase is kinda matters if you’re trying to make a case that the entire thing is biologically based. Algorithmic logic is extremely useful in learning to plan and communicate a plan precisely. And as far as understanding anything in science, understanding the statistics and how probabilities work and so on is critical to understanding what is going on.

Obviously, I think a well rounded person would know all of the above. The thing is though, that we’re actually nearly backwards where there’s more emphasis on exposing people to the humanities in ne form or another over and above giving people the tools to understand their very scientific and mathematical world. The results, as far as I can tell, is a world where people fall for conspiracy theories, but don’t understand science. They can’t understand science or technology because they re not forced to learn those things after high school, if they had much exposure in high school.

it makes sense to require eg engineering students to take some English and history classes for gen-ed reasons.

Why on earth would it? They've already taken those in high school.

Not in the UK, you study one subject all the way through.

Not totally familiar, but doesn't the UK have some system where not every high school diploma allows college admission(like elsewhere in Europe)?

I've never heard of that. The UK and European systems are pretty different. In the UK it basically boils down to your A-levels (usually you take 3-5 subjects). Any university can make you an offer, but whether they will depends on your grades. You can only apply to 5 universities, and only one of Oxford/Cambridge. So you put down one stretch goal, one safe choice, and then three you like.

I mean, I'm not going to have a kneejerk egalitarian response and discard your proposal wholesale. But if we're going to have a widespread public university system, then I don't see why we would intentionally handicap all but a few of those institutions. If Ohio State has a right to exist at all, then I don't see why it shouldn't have English and philosophy faculty as well, all else being equal.

On a personal level, there are also certain academics scattered around random state schools whose work I greatly enjoy and follow closely, so I have a personal interest in perpetuating the current system roughly as it exists now.

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