I don’t think any specific major makes it more or less likely for someone to become a leader. Most political leaders don’t have STEM backgrounds and if you google the CEO’s of top firms (outside tech companies) most of them don’t have a STEM background either (although there are a fair number of history majors). Much of what makes someone successful comes from personal qualities - ambition, grit, strong interpersonal skills etc. - not from what course of study they followed as an undergrad.
6 Likes
The really good ones are too preoccupied with their passions in STEM and are generally much less interested in politics than those in the humanities and social sciences (particularly social sciences). Among people in STEM, we generally don’t see the same deep political divisions that exist in our current society.
2 Likes
One of the most intelligent students I’ve met now happily works in publishing after majoring in something just like the program described. She was a Fulbright scholar also and had excellent and varied job offers.
Again, employers are VERY interested in how people think. My son is a college senior and is job searching right now. He’s already done umpteen online employer quizzes, the kind that determine if you then get an interview. He’s majoring in Economics and has had a bunch of interviews. No job yet, but getting interviews is how you start, haha.
His major is quite focused on theory, but he has also done a lot of classes in history and film, which he finds fascinating and relevant. I believe those classes give him another life perspective.
7 Likes
I think that is true in the US context, but if you look more globally there have been a lot of STEM political leaders, who demonstrated leadership qualities, good and bad. I don’t have any data in front of me, but I think US political leaders would be more likely to have a Poli Sci or social science background than humanities. And it is likely their law degrees that qualify them for politics (or MBAs in the case of CEOs & business), not the humanities degree itself.
2 Likes
Sometimes I read the posts of forum members who don’t see the relevance of humanities, and I wonder if they have ever tried a thought experiment of imagining what their lives would look like without humanities scholars.
Who would curate the collections and create the exhibits at the museums that they visit or would we just get rid of museums altogether? Who would write the magazine and newspaper articles (not the news articles, but the analyses, long-form journalism, arts reviews, etc)? Who would become the set designers, directors, and composers of the performances that they attend? Who would design the interiors and exterior of their homes and neighborhoods? Who would write the books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry)? Actually, for that matter, would those that dismiss the humanities just stop reading and watching new works? New creative work and research does not come out of vacuum or get invented on the spot out of imagination and thin air. The people who create new work usually have studied older material and their work comes out of an engaged dialogue with others who have also studied past work.
Would those unable to see the importance of humanities scholarship just stop visiting new places or seeking to understand people unlike themselves? Would they close themselves off from trying to learn about other cultures, races, and ethnicities? Would they base their understanding of the past and contemporary issues on shallow news reporting, pop psychology, and their own “common sense” rather than on the scholarship of people who have spent decades working in specialized fields and doing research on their topics.
If someone they love was experiencing a mental health or existentialist crisis, what would they do? Who would help them understand the behavior of friends and family members and who would be skilled enough to help their loved ones when popping a psychiatric med doesn’t do the trick? Who would teach their children? Who would be available to help the least fortunate among us? In a world without the humanities, I can’t imagine that we would make progress as a society.
What would we actually do with our time outside of the eight hours that we spend at our jobs? When I imagine a world without the humanities, I imagine that we’d just all go to work producing widgets (just kidding here), come home, eat dinner, maybe go to the gym or a bar, spend a couple of hours on our phones scrolling through shallow news articles (that confirm our own pet theories) and the most nonsensical of YouTube videos and then go to bed. That is a fine life for some but a thin life for many. Plus without the humanities folks, what would happen to the TV binge watching thread on CC that I am enjoying so much??? 
The whole premise that the humanities are irrelevant just seems baffling to me.
13 Likes
2 Likes
What do you think all these graduates DO once they graduate?
NOTHING gets you a job except for a certificate in phlebotomy, a hair styling license, or an AA in early childhood education. Every other degree actually requires some thinking as to “how am I going to support myself”. We are coming off of a ten year tech boom so it’s easy to think “major in STEM and you’ll never have to think about what comes next”. But I’ll introduce you to the 10,000 or so recently let go employees from Facebook, similar numbers from Amazon, Spotify, et al and you can decide whether CS or whatnot was the “iron clad guarantee for a job for life”.
The best boss I ever had was a Renaissance Studies major. He got a job at a corporation which ran a “mini MBA” for liberal arts grads-- a bootcamp for non-business majors. Which reinforced his belief that the best business hires had NOT studied business as undergrads.
What piece of paper is it that you believe proves that someone is qualified for the work force??? Cause I haven’t seen it, except for the Vo-Tech disciplines (not knocking them, but nobody is graduating from U Michigan or UVA with a certificate in AC repair).
4 Likes
This is natural ebb and flow. The cumulative layoffs in tech are about 250k out of a total employment of 5.5mm (this number from here How the tech workforce is changing | Deloitte Insights).
If the situation were so dire, salaries would come down. They have not.
This is not a comment on the overall humanities discussion.
Just putting things into perspective on tech employment.
2 Likes
I don’t think anyone here has said that the humanities are irrelevant. I certainly see them as relevant and essential. But how relevant are they to the students as they’re currently taught? Students are the ones who are going to decide their relevance in college by their choices of majors. Fewer and fewer of them have chosen to major in the humanities each year. At the minimum, they’re saying that the humanities as they’re currently taught have become less relevant to their careers. There’s no sign that this trend isn’t going to continue, or even accelerate. When faced with growing challenges, the disciplines could use some self-critical thinking skills and creative ideas instead of staticism and overconfidence.
2 Likes
Hence the purpose of this thread.
2 Likes
Perhaps some analysis is useful as to how many full time humanities majors does society need/want in each bucket – history, english, anthropology, african american studies etc, and how many are being produced. It is one thing to do a major, and another thing for everyone to get some meaningful exposure to the humanities, but not quite get a major. If the desire is to put the genie back in the battle and go back to producing the number of humanities majors that we used to produce at a time when we were not competing as aggressively with the rest of the world (the rest of the world was less educated at that time), then that is a challenging task. You are also competing with technology as you are competing with the rest of the world to hold on to your current job – everyone. Not just humanities majors. Tasks that require garden variety critical thinking skills are being automated away.
It is incumbent on each department to articulate clearly what jobs they have managed to place their students into over the past 5 years. They need to be up front about this, rather than waving their hands and hoping that people would go back and reskill another 2 years in law school or an MBA for significant additional cost.
2 Likes
It may be unintentional, but this makes it sound as though politics is not worthy of the interest of true intellectuals. I think we desperately need smart, well-educated politicians (and political advisors) at all levels of government. My S24 is fascinated with politics: the cultural trends which encourage populism, why Americans don’t vote in greater numbers, political misinformation, grassroots mobilization, authoritarian impulses, etc. Lately, he’s been researching the death of our local newspaper and how it relates to the fact that George Santos is now our representative. One topic he’d like to study in college is the Lost Cause Myth—how it was developed and sustained, its effects on American elections/policies today. What good would it do if he were dissuaded from majoring in history because employers don’t want humanities majors?
We’ve looked at lots of liberal arts colleges, and every history department connects the major to issues of relevance and interest to students, such as immigration/migration, cross-cultural understanding, power dynamics, democracy, reform movements, history of pandemics, etc. Maybe advice-givers need to make sure students can hear this message over the many pro-STEM voices.
I think the study of history and politics is crucial for the good governance of our towns, states and country. STEM people won’t be able to stay above politics when laws and policies affect them. It would actually be beneficial if scientists had better communications skills in order to inform the public and advise decision makers (who are very often politicians). It would also be beneficial if people stopped thinking of education as humanities vs STEM. How about a push for more interdisciplinary studies? Or, I guess I shouldn’t use the word “studies” 
.
7 Likes
I would agree with you except for the “reskill” part. It does not explain why so many business majors end up getting an MBA. Why should they reskill if they already covered the material over four years in undergrad?
Law school is not a reskill. It’s a completely different set of content, analysis, etc. MBA IS somewhat of a reskill for sure (how many times can the same kid take Corporate Finance to learn how to construct a valuation?) but your post doesn’t indict the humanities per se…why does a person with an undergraduate degree need a grad degree in ANYTHING?
1 Like
Where’s the data analysis in this list of topics? As I noted above, data is so much more available nowadays, proposing policies and actions without providing analytical evidence, no longer gets you very far. One of the easiest ways in which humanities and social sciences departments could make graduates more employable is to include some sort of quantitative methods course in the major.
3 Likes
Make sense to me only if they want to go into academia.
And MBA if they want to change course, or up the prestige to place into IB, Consulting etc – i.e., the sales jobs.
Because some employers want the MBA in order to be able to sell the candidate better to a client :-). Especially management consulting.
Law school is a reskill if you have no skills to begin with except that you can just read and write, that are directly useful to an employer – e.g. a history major.
1 Like
Why is the curent number of humanities majors considered inadequate by some?
They are inadequate as they put stress on the educational industrial complex to shed those departments.
1 Like
I do not know if (m)any humanities majors require quantitive coursework, but I was under the impression that most social science majors do require at very least a statistics course or two. And some social science majors require several more tailored quantitative methods courses. For what it is worth, not all data analysis in the social sciences should be solely quantitive though --qualitative research is also important.
Certainly some politicians and many know-it-alls like to propose policies and legislation without grounding their ideas on research, but that has never been a good way to design successful policies or interventions to social issues. And I am sure many social scientists are appalled at the execution of their policy ideas. Unfortunately, some politicians prefer to suggest easy solutions based on popular sound bites rather than learning what the data actually shows. Furthermore many people like to convince themselves that they understand what would make a good domestic (or for that matter international) policy based on factors like their common sense, moral outrage, personal experiences, and a shallow sampling of research that confirms their biases. Which is all the more reason for scholarship that seeks to understand the political and cultural forces in our society. Often it is the opinions (and manipulation) of voters that often ends up weakening or even undermining policy initiatives.
2 Likes
By that logic, MD, DMD, DVM’s are all reskills. “no skills to begin with”? Have you NEVER met a successful person with a BA in history?
One of my kids has a BA in a liberal arts subject routinely mocked on CC. Runs a large tech team at was an early stage startup which went public. Kid never took a single programming course, CS course in college. Kid got hired specifically because of reading and writing skills (a bunch of brilliant tech folks who couldn’t craft a coherent strategy statement or develop an investor deck for a VC) and somehow, my dumb, unskilled kid was part of the team that took the company public.
Don’t knock reading and writing until you are sitting in a room with a bunch of folks that can’t.
11 Likes
First of all, I know many high successful people who don’t have any undergraduate degree at all – and I don’t mean the likes of Bill Gates. I mean old style industrialists, politicians in countries in the developing world etc.
Secondly, I am not knocking reading and writing at all. There was a thread a long time ago where we talked about how if you get your kid to start reading a lot from a very young age, you don’t need to worry about the SAT, or other aspects of academics at all.
Thirdly one would give false hope, and ill serve the casual reader, that all it takes to get a product role at a hot tech startup is to major in history, and therefore be able to read and write well. There are many missing links in that chain of logic. Your son must have other exceptional skills. Don’t short change him to “just” reading and writing.
Yes MD, DMD etc are all reskills. No skills of relevance were there to begin with. I think it is the work of the AMA to insist on this structure to raise the cost of medical education, and lower supply, in order to keep wages high. In many other parts of the world, you don’t need the “4+” in the “4+4+3” minimum it takes to become a doctor here. This structure is unfortunate.
1 Like