Getting Rid of Humanities

I'd wager its easier to go through a three year Eng Lit degree with no love of the subject than it is to go through a three year Biochemistry degree with no love of the subject.

Humanities and social sciences are so easily accessible - if you can read, you can do the degree. A lot of the sciences require some element of mathematics which is where a lot of people fall down.

That's all well and good, and a valiant argument for the merits of humanities, which again, people seem to be misunderstanding me here - I'm not saying we get rid of them in their entirety. I don't think we need as many humanities graduates as we produce.

Also for you saying "not a humanity, not a humanity, not a humanity" what I mean by humanity is a degree like english, sociology, history etc, I know they have their own distinct sub-genres, but that's the category I'm placing them in, and I couldn't really make a decent thread title with - Getting rid of the humanities, and social sciences, and this, and that etc.

You give 'jobs that X is important for'

Do we really need the thousands of psychology graduates to work in marketing? Do we really need the thousands of sociologists to work in social policy? Do we really need the thousands of History?

Does everyone, for instance, who doesn't do a history degree "repeat the mistakes of the past" or whatever it was that you said? No, because they're taught the basics in that at school. They're taught the basics of English, of Geography, of History, of RE, etc.

Degrees are specialist courses, there is absolutely no reason why we should have so many places on history, english, sociology, psychology, etc courses.

We lose more than we gain.

To educate a hundred sociologists, it costs us 27,000 x 100 for their entire degree - there are probably at least five thousand sociology undergraduates in their first year right now. That is so damn expensive and we get nothing from it.

Look - as I've explained - my terminology may be a little off, but I'm including psychology in the same category of degree. I couldn't think of a better word that encompasses all those degrees. If you can think of one, let me know, please.

I never said that we didn't need psychologists, I said we didn't need as many.

How many psychology students go on to do a bloody clinical psych. doctorate? In fact, you're just helping my point along - we need some but for every clinical psychologist there are another ten bloody Starbucks, call-centre or McDonalds psychologists doing a job they don't need a degree for because they've no doubt done a psychology degree they shouldn't have done.

I have an English degree, and I have a job that did not require an English degree. However, it did require a degree. If I had a science degree but still had the same job, what would the difference be? Would the degree be any more useful? No, it wouldn't. And it would have cost more to teach, so really I'm not sure who the winner would have been.

Besides, I am the only English grad in my department, and a few times I have been approached by superiors to ask questions about communications/language, because they know I have the sort of mindset that has adapted to thinking about these things in a different way to how most of my colleagues might think about them (most of my colleagues have science degrees). My firm is keen to have employees with a diverse range of skills and attributes.

I am likely to earn significantly more than the average person without a degree, and it's not because I took a subject "that is needed in industry".

"Too many people go to university and for the wrong reasons" is a different argument. Or are you saying that all science students go to university for the right reasons and all arts students go for the wrong reasons?

We don't "need" tens of thousands of English graduates every year, but then, we don't "need" tens of thousands of maths graduates every year either. It's quite a strange argument really. In the end, arts students aren't unemployed because we have too many arts grads. They're unemployed because there aren't enough jobs. It's not like there are thousands of empty jobs that the arts grads are being turned down for. Unless you're trying to imply that the employment situation in this country would improve drastically if everyone had a science degree? I find that somewhat hard to believe.

I don't think it's as simple as that. I see what you're saying, but at least with something like Biochemistry you can turn up and listen and makes notes which is psychologically a lot easier than sitting down and reading tomes of literary/historical criticism/psychological theory or whatever in your own time.

Psychology is quite an expanding field of science and I'd say it's probably good that so many undergraduates go for it with the best moving on to research posts. Granted it makes it difficult for undergraduate psychologists aiming to do postgraduates but the high competition is good for the field itself.
I think people underestimate the importance of psychology in a lot of aspects of life, in the near future there's going to be a lot more clinical based psychology jobs made available.

And OP, why would you assume that psychology is too essay based? It's very research based.

Yeah, but come on - what's easier now, doing an essay on 1984 or understanding biochemistry?

The term I would propose is 'degrees you don't see the value of in spite of there being little distinction between them and some of the degrees you listed as being valuable'.

Obviously, the number of psychology graduates doing a clinical psychology doctorate will be proportionate to the number of clinical psychology doctorate places that are available, in the same way that the number of people studying medicine is proportionate to the number of medicine places available. The lack of clinical psychology doctorate students isn't due to a lack of psychology graduate applicants; it's due to a lack of places on the doctorate programme. Would it thus not be far more realistic to increase funding for clinical psychology doctorates than 'get rid of' psychology as a degree or somehow limit the number of psychology applicants?

Which brings me to my next question - how exactly do you propose to have 'some, but not as many' psychologists (by which I presume and hope you mean psychology graduates rather than professional psychologists)? If you got rid of the degree, there would be none; how exactly would you go about decreasing the number of psychology graduates?

As a final point, what exactly is the distinction between the degrees you implied were pointless, such as geography, and the degrees you listed as valuable, such as chemistry? (Aside from the obvious 'it's a science and is thus automatically great and valuable' bias.)

Depends on the person, really.

I did Bio Chem Maths and English for A Level, and English was by far the most challenging for me.

What I'm saying is that if say 60% of humanities students were directed away from their degrees and into other jobs, we'd be better off. Too many English students do non-specific jobs after their degree.

Are you saying psychology isn't an essay based subject? I know people who do it and they say to me that its essay based.

Psychology is quite an expanding field of science and I'd say it's probably good that so many undergraduates go for it with the best moving on to research posts. Granted it makes it difficult for undergraduate psychologists aiming to do postgraduates but the high competition is good for the field itself.
I think people underestimate the importance of psychology in a lot of aspects of life, in the near future there's going to be a lot more clinical based psychology jobs made available.

And OP, why would you assume that psychology is too essay based? It's very research based.

Fair point.

What would you say for society at large, what would be easier?

Does your job require a degree because the content of the job is something you can only do with a degree, or did it require a degree because the employers decided to only recruit graduates? Like I said about graduate schemes where they put people into HR or managing their store - you don't need a degree to DO the job, you need a degree to APPLY for the job.

I'll confidently say that not very many science graduates go to university for the lifestyle, etc because their subject is something that has required prior planning (taking specific A-Levels) and their subject isn't something you enter into lightly and then stick with.

I can also confidently say that I could enter pretty much any humanity/social science course as a first year undergrad and stick it out - I couldn't do any science course though.

What I'm saying is that if say 60% of humanities students were directed away from their degrees and into other jobs, we'd be better off. Too many English students do non-specific jobs after their degree.

To be honest, a very large part of the problem is qualification inflation. Employers asking for graduates when there is absolutely no need, which massively fuels the fire of 'GO TO UNIVERSITY OR YOU'LL BE ON THE DOLE FOREVER' which is what happens anyways when you've done an English degree at Leeds Met because you thought you had to go to university. The difference being you've now got 30k+ of debt that the government will never see back

An accurate term but doesn't make catchy reading in a thread title

Well that depends, do we need more clinical psychologists? If there's a genuine need, get them on board - I don't think you can say that we need every psych. graduate in a psych. position though. Which is why so many end up on the dole or in menial service jobs they could have done at 16, with career prospects limited only to generic graduate schemes.

We could have some, but not as many, by restricting the places.

Say there are (for arguments sake) five thousand psychology undergraduate places a year, why not just knock that down to two-thousand? This is part of a larger problem, as I've stated, of people feeling they have to go to university. In my opinion, a lot of people who go because they feel they have to, do humanities courses. Limit the humanities, limit the jobs that demand a degree when they don't need one at all.

Degrees that are 'less valuable' I'd say - degrees which don't give you a job. Chemists get jobs. Medics get jobs. Nurses get jobs. Biologists get jobs. Mathematicians get jobs.

Their skills are necessary. The skills of a sociologist are much, much less necessary. Needed, yes, but not on the scale of the graduates we're putting through university. Not at all.

Geography is not a humanity

I don't think BP or Shell would be too happy with getting rid of it either.

Why would we be better off? What's wrong with doing non-specific jobs after your degree? Who says because you have a degree in 'x' you must have a career in 'x'?

Most people have no idea what they want to do in life so it'd be wrong to force people do so called 'important degrees'. A Humanities degree ( and any degree in fact) gives you a much wider choice of jobs and careers to pursue in the future.