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Originally Posted by MarchHare
This is exactly the attitude I bemoaned in my earlier post. Take courses in philosophy, for example. Students learn about formal logic and how to form cohesive arguments. That should rightly be seen as valuable to any profession. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer or a business manager or a doctor, rhetorical skills are immensely important to everyone. And yet so many people are like, "Why are you wasting your time and money studying Plutarch and Solon? What use is that in today's workplaces? Enjoy your career as a barista, Epicurus! STEM master race forever amirite? LOL!"
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I think those are important subjects for students to learn. They transmit our cultural history, and (ideally) foster critical thinking in citizens.
However, I think we need to be honest with students about the job prospects of someone entering the workforce with a degree in Women’s Studies, English Lit, or Anthropology. It doesn’t do any of us any good if students rack up debt and feel resentful or cheated when they discover that their hopeful path to a middle-class livelihood was delusional.
Better to foster critical thinking and cultural literacy by making more humanities and social sciences classes mandatory for all degree programs, including STEM. So fewer degrees in classical philosophy, but more graduates with some understanding of classical philosophy.
Then there’s the matter raised in the CBC story of the decline in critical thinking. Are the programs that are supposed to be teaching critical analysis and rationalist rigour doing the job? Not to derail the thread, but some programs in Canadian universities seem to have veered away from skeptical and critical rigour and into dogma and advocacy. Which I suppose fulfills the need of some students for purpose, meaning, and belonging. But that’s yet another role universities have taken on that is at odds with its other roles.