<p>I admit I was being patronizing, but I here I invoke the ancient legal principle of “you started it.” Specifically, when you say:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You are not arguing the common trope that humanities degrees are a sham, children’s fantasy, waste of money, etc., which is in my opinion a poor but nevertheless understandable, and popular, argument. In fact, you a priori assume that argument to be fact.</p>
<p>Instead, you are taking the grossly patronizing stance that humanities concentrators are aware of their degrees’ inherent inferiority, but they have different “life goals” and therefore pick it anyway. But here’s the point. The only reason you’ve put forth for humanities degrees’ inferiority is that they have limited job prospects. So, if a humanities guy does not steer clear of humanities because of his different “life goals,” the “life goals” necessarily involve not worrying about job prospects. Which is what I said when I said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So, instead of you hedging and saying that you and humanities concentrators consider “dead end” to mean two different things (as if there’s any chance you’d let me call an engineering degree a “dead end”), I welcome you to step up to the big kids’ table and actually say you want to say.</p>