<p>I believe the argument was much larger than simply the idea of money. Can we hop off that?</p>
<p>I’m a chem and bio major and I support the liberal arts training (I also attend a top 20 institution). Liberal Arts aren’t simply a set of majors, it’s an approach to teaching in learning. In fact, many studies find that LACs are actually better at “teaching” science (science education), which makes sense in my opinion. LA is simply a method that employs critical thinking, among other analytical skills as a method of education. For example, I could claim that intro. biology is influenced by a LA approach as some of the sections incorporate/employ problem-based learning/case studies into the lecture and lab. This allows one to think critically/creatively, analyze, and research further into topics, as opposed to the mundane rule-based approach to teaching and learning science/mathematics. I can’t imagine being at a top school that primarily gave multiple choice exams that test our understanding of boring, drya** lectures. A liberal arts approach affirms that science actually has important implications outside of a laboratory or hospital. Not to mention, it teaches one how to approach problems in various settings in an effective way. Given this, Liberal Arts approaches can even be applied to pedagogy and learning in STEM majors. Something probably very shocking to your short-sighted a**. Also, my education would have be much less worth it without the skills I picked up from my social science and humanities courses. Some critical skills need to assess problems and lead discovery even in the scientific realm are typically de-emphasized or emphasized to a lesser extent in the science curriculum of even top schools. Perhaps as an engineer, you need these skills less, but as a person pursuing a career in academia, I need and want such skills. The LA approach has served me well in that regard.</p>
<p>Also: As for sociology, psychology, etc.- I actually find such courses actually employ a scientific method of study/analysis way moreso than you think. In fact the psyche dept. here is extremely oriented toward current findings in scientific research (neuroscience, behavioral biology, etc.)</p>
<p>Also, consider the idea that some/many pursue higher education to actually better society/humanity, and salary is not as important to them. I can’t see STEM folks (including myself) serving humanity and solving complex social issues by themselves. Oh, wait, your attitude or stance seem to indicate that you only care about your salary, prestige, and the limited(though great) scope of world issues that science and engineering can solve. Why don’t we STEM majors just get together and engineer World Peace by engineering people who will run the perfect political system and thus eliminate all forms of re/and oppression in todays world. I’m sure we can do it with only a solid grounding in science. Screw the historians, political scientists, sociologists, theologians, everyone, and all of those who actually have a legit interest in societal issues.</p>
<p>Haha god, you’re such a misguided American. You still think the U.S. is a powerhouse? Wake up. In December of 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the 2010 World Education Rankings.</p>
<p>European Countries that ranked better than the U.S. in Reading, Science and Math include:</p>
<p>Finland
Netherlands
Belgium
Norway
Estonia
Poland
Iceland
Switzerland
Germany
Denmark
France
Luxembourg
Slovenia
Portugal
UK</p>
<p>So as you see… Manyyyyy European nations are far ahead in Reading (Liberal Arts) <em>and</em> STEM subjects… Yet, even though they are better than us, their culture PRAISES and CELEBRATES Culture, Art, Music, Philosophy and more. Why?</p>
<p>[Ten</a> Important Reasons to Include the Humanities in Your Preparation for a Scientific Career - Science Careers Blog](<a href=“http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2011/05/ten-important-r.html]Ten”>http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2011/05/ten-important-r.html)</p>
<p>um, at a college level the US is still a powerhouse, both in perceived educational value (judged by number of international people trying to go to American universities), and in research output. Is that not the ranked list of countries by high school test results?</p>
<p>Utterly absurd, and this is coming from a soon-to-be STEM major. I literally laughed out loud when you acted like teaching people to look into the past is a bad thing. We learn more from our past than perhaps anything else.</p>
<p>This is completely ridiculous.</p>
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<p>It’s easily the strongest argument (“liberal arts don’t make much money, teaching the liberal arts is a waste of money, and not teaching the liberal arts will free up money for more useful STEM research and education”). It’s still a crummy ‘argument’ based on delusion rather than facts, but it’s not as shoddy as the rest of the OP’s naive stereotyping based on unverifiable anecdotes (“liberal arts majors are lazy, uninformed”, “liberal arts majors become indoctrinated with liberal politics”). Honestly, the rest of the posters here are doing the OP a favor by focusing on his/her least pathetic arguments.</p>
<p>I can’t believe people entertained the OP for 8 pages.</p>
<p>Studying history; can someone give a concrete example of how that has helped the world in any way?</p>
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<p>This is a piece of history commonly shown to students in physics courses and I would hope that anyone aspiring to be an engineer would be familiar with it.</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Tacoma Narrows Newsreel](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHgQALH9-7M&feature=related]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHgQALH9-7M&feature=related)</p>
<p>Is there any point to it whatsoever?</p>
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<p>You really are trying very hard. Are you one of the OP’s sockpuppet accounts?</p>
<p>I don’t want to curse, but can u come up with a decent answer?</p>
<p>I can, but I won’t. This is much more fun.</p>
<p>See? I knew you couldn’t!</p>
<p>We learn from history that dumb, ignorant people are exploited by smart, educated people. This is a useful thing to know!</p>
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<p>I’m shocked that you would even ask. I take it that you’re not an engineer or involved with science in any way.</p>
<p>Another example would be the Therac-25. The 60-minutes piece on the Therac-25 is often shown to computer science majors. Can you understand why it is shown to Computer Science majors?</p>
<p>Alright, so the bridge collapsed…pretty cool</p>
<p>I don’t think it should be abolished but I do believe it should be under funded. Mostly the arts. Psychology and political science might benefit society with one or two students that bring a new idea or hypothesis.</p>
<p>Sent from my iPod touch using CC
1st year cc student (transfer after 3)
Undecided (technically)
3.670 GPA (2.6 hs)
Want to transfer to UCSD aerospace or mech/electric engineering</p>
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<p>So why would you want every prospective engineer to see that video? What is the value of history in this context?</p>
<p>If you take an advanced database course at the graduate level, you may have to use the Stonebraker book. This book is mostly a collection of papers about databases over the years starting with System R at IBM several decades ago. Some of those papers have been moved out in the latest edition but they are readily available on the web. Why would you bother to talk about what happened several decades ago during the foundations in a modern class?</p>
<p>Someone posted an interesting little math puzzle question involving probability on a board that I frequent. I spent about a week working on it but I had problems with part of my solution involved in combinatorics. I looked around for an algorithm to solve this and I happened to find a paper by Euler in the 1700s that had the algorithm that I needed. I only found the solution because a university had hired a student to translate some of his papers to english and the translated papers were made available on the internet (BTW, I found an error in the translation). So knowing a bit about history can be used to solve modern problems.</p>