As someone with a degree in fine arts, good. A lot more of these programs need to be downsized or removed. Not because they aren't popular, they are (or were when I went) extremely popular. Rather they have poor outcomes for the students. After 4 years, I was left with the realization that I had wasted my time, and I was further away from a career than my peers.
I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
techpineapple · 1h ago
Yeah, I feel like something has got to give, maybe we don’t fund student loans for certain majors. Maybe we bring back certain types of book or social clubs to learn these materials instead. Online learning? I totally see the beauty in the humanities, it’s largely all I read for fun, But you can’t have a system that incentivizes people to take out bigger and bigger loans on investments that don’t pay back.
delichon · 1h ago
IMHO Outcome Based Funding is a better model for public education.
As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.
I know people will push back and say that is not the point of the university. But it doesn't change the fact that our economy is not built on poetry and painting, but we educate large number of people to specialize as one. Those people are instead left in debt with no path forward in their chosen field.
https://freopp.org/whitepapers/aligning-state-higher-educati...
As you might imagine this is favorable to STEM and unfavorable to the humanities. But I think that expensive private institutions are a better venue to educate students who are more insulated from economic disadvantage in disciplines with a low return on investment. It's a good thing to bias the opportunities of disadvantaged students in favor of greater earning capacity. In higher education, the lower the expected pay for a skill set, the more it should be treated as a luxury good.