(03-09-2022, 01:14 PM)rachel83az Wrote: I'm not sure that nursing could be considered a humanities degree. But the point still stands that there are some very important humanities degrees.

(03-09-2022, 01:14 PM)rachel83az Wrote: I'm not sure that nursing could be considered a humanities degree. But the point still stands that there are some very important humanities degrees.

(03-09-2022, 11:45 AM)bluebooger Wrote: "Humanities degrees and STEM degrees deserve equal respect"

no

in fact, I think student loans should only go to STEM degrees

that should have the effect of actually lowering the cost of non-STEM degrees            
and actually weeding out the useless degrees

(03-09-2022, 11:45 AM)bluebooger Wrote: "Humanities degrees and STEM degrees deserve equal respect"

no

in fact, I think student loans should only go to STEM degrees

that should have the effect of actually lowering the cost of non-STEM degrees            
and actually weeding out the useless degrees

(03-09-2022, 04:30 PM)freeloader Wrote: The practical impact of that would be to force many students who have no interest in STEM to pursue STEM degrees. India is actually an excellent example of this sort of thing actually happening. The IIT schools are the best in the country and teach, basically, STEM. Many of the best students go to IIT schools, earn STEM degrees and then go into business or other areas. I actually had 2 classmates in my history PhD program who were from India and had engineering undergraduate degrees. They earned their degrees because that’s what the best students in India did, never mind their lack of interest in the subject. If loans to non-STEM degree earners stopped, there would be many more people, I think, who earned their STEM degree but never “used” it. Perversely, if you didn’t dramatically increase the size of STEM programs, you would almost certainly worsen shortages for STEM workers, drive up STEM salaries, and likely have to bring even more foreign workers with STEM degrees. 

There are already shortages of professors in many STEM disciplines and they tend to be much higher paid than in many of the social sciences/humanities. Part of why universities love humanities/social sciences is they can charge the same tuition to someone earning a history degree and someone earning a physics, computer science, or accounting degree, but pay the history faculty say1/3-1/2 what they would pay in other disciplines.  More demand for faculty will drive up prices (salaries) for professors even more. It would also pull even more people from working in STEM to put them in classrooms, further driving up costs (salaries) across broad swaths of the economy. 

It also occurs to me that for centuries, from antiquity to the industrial revolution, what we now recognize as the humanities were really the most prized disciplines.  The precursors to today’s engineers, doctors, architects, businesspeople, and scientists were often not welcome in proper society. No proper gentleman or lady would condescend to studying in these fields. If there were no student aid for the humanities, might we return to that?  If STEM degrees become degrees for poor people, why would a wealthy or socially powerful person want one?  A history degree might become, by its cost and scarcity, a marker of social standing. Perhaps the history degree would become, as it’s precursor was a few hundred years ago, a way of confirming or even entering the highest rungs of society. 

That, or we will just stop teaching it in any meaningful way. Most of the state legislatures seem to be working toward that already, but that’s a post for a different board/different part of the board…