In academia there is often a strong backlash to the idea that STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) is more valuable than humanities or liberal arts, with those who argue for STEM often accused of being cold or not appreciating art/literature etc. You’ll always have people rallying in favor of the arts; it has more sentimental strings to pull.
I am not arguing that liberal arts or humanities are unimportant, and as someone who graduated with a liberal arts degree myself I’d be a hypocrite if I did. But the most pressing problems facing this world are those of a STEM nature. Climate change is an immensely urgent issue, and it is a STEM problem (well, political too.) The ongoing coronavirus pandemic demands immediate STEM/medical solutions. Energy is always in high demand, and we need more clean/renewable power at all times. Famines, diseases, antibiotic resistance, clean water, etc - all of these demand technical/science-based solutions.
Furthermore, arts and humanities are usually comparatively cheap to teach. You don’t need wind tunnels, complex labs, engineering tech or a nuclear reactor (like MIT’s campus reactor) to teach painting or Shakespeare. STEM thus very reasonably ought to command more education dollars.
Do you have any examples of STEM programs being defunded to support humanities?
If your point is just that humanities departments are always pushing for more funding, well, of course they are. That’s what departments DO. Everyone is pushing for more funding. Everyone is dreaming up ambitious plans for the wonderful things they could do with more money. And every department is defending themselves against perpetual proposed budget cuts. What do you want? English departments to offer to lose a teacher or two to shore up Chemistry?
by far, the most popular degree field, like 20%, is business, which neither STEM nor Humanities wants to claim. This is followed by health and medical services, at over 10%. Then, history and social sciences. I think that includes economics, which is arguably a STEM field, though traditionally a social science. No idea how large of a component it is, however.
Yeah, I’d appreciate some fleshing out of the OP’s assertions as to instances of such “backlash” and how “value” is assessed. My anecdotal experience is that the greatest investments in my alma mater (UofI) were in the Engineering campus and hard sciences.
My personal opinion is that an average STEM degree is much more difficult to obtain than a general LAS - or business - degree. Never really understood why business degrees are valued, but they are, so they are apparently worth getting. The equivalent of most LAS degrees could be obtained through dedicated reading.
I’ve long contended that elementary and high school teachers should be compensated in terms of the availability of candidates, and comparable pay in the private sector. I can’t imagine any justification for paying a high school social worker or gym teacher - not to mention English or history teachers - the same as a math or science teacher.
Any reason? When I came to my (nationally recognized STEM school) and took over the Humanities Department and the College Access program, we went from less than $10m in scholarships each year and almost everyone borrowing money to attend local universities to over $$30m in scholarships (for 100 kids) and a third of the class with enough funding to attend fancy private schools . . .and the remainder also had much, much better funding and a wider array of schools they attended, because we matched them better.
We have brilliant STEM teachers. But they couldn’t get kids into colleges or offer college advice or teach them to write and research because it wasn’t theirskillet. .We have incentive pay in my district. I’m in the top 1% of all teachers. I honestly make really good money. Way more than lots of STEM teachers. Is that offensive to you? Does it seem ridiculous thay I could be offering as much value as someone teaching freshman bio at some random high school?
Thank you for pointing out the inappropriateness of my use of extreme terms.
I stick to my belief that an undergraduate degree in education or the humanities is far easier to get than one in math or the sciences, and the private sector (on the whole) pays considerably more for science/math grads than social scientists.
Take an extreme example - in a “average” school, what is the argument why a gym teacher should be paid the same as the teacher of AP Physics?
I will concur that it’s easier to half-ass your way through a humanities degree than a STEM degree. The path to a C is much easier. But I worked my ass off in college. I lived in the library. I went to lecture series. I revised everything I wrote far beyond what was required. I put 80 hours a week into my student teaching, to begin mastering my craft as quickly as possible. And every job I’ve ever had, I’ve worked really, really hard at what I do–so I have gotten better and better. And I offer a lot of value. But my skills, research, reading, writing–and teaching others to do them–are often seen more as a matter of talent than grind. But they aren’t. To get a degree with a 2.0 in these things may be relatively easy, but to be good at them takes dedication and it’s also rare.
Heck, MJ, I certainly hope my respect for you has been obvious. Sorry I phrased that in a way that caused you distress. And - of course - there are exceptions. And schools, communities, individuals can differ widely.
But across the board, in an AVERAGE situation (however you define that) if Dinsdale High is trying to hire teachers, and can pay teachers w/ a BA $40k each - am I going to have more candidates for PE, the humanities or the sciences? And how will the caliber of candidates compare to their comparable folk in private industry? How does supply and demand work out - for the vast majority of teachers, not paragons of the profession such as yourself?
I would argue that very few of these are fundamentally scientific problems; instead, they are primarily political and economic and social problems. Most famines in recent years, e.g., have had as major contributors corruption, armed conflict, and ill-conceived governmental policies, none of which are readily solvable by science. Climate change isn’t a problem to be solved by some scientific breakthrough; it will be the politicians and economists who will have to get the human race to settle on the solutions. Science and medicine can help inform us of the best ways to handle a pandemic, but actually handling it is mostly political and economic: how to produce, stockpile, distribute, and get people to use PPE, e.g., or implementing and enforcing quarantines and other restrictions on movement.
PE is actually really hard to find, especially if you want a talented coach, which you probably do, because the community does. Coaches make more than anyone.
It just doesn’t come down to averages. Never met at average. When you start dividing compensation by what, on average, is hard to find, you end up with lots of injustices that tick people off. A below average science teacher isn’t adding more value to the school than an above average humanities teacher, even if he was the only one you could find. So paying him more for doing a terrible job is a great way to lose your good humanities teachers, and then everyone sucks.
Moving teacher pay beyond years of service is a debate on its own, and beyond the scope of this thread (which is about funding college programs, I believe). But I feel pretty strongly that if you are going to differentiate pay, using subject taught is a poor way to go about it.
This is a good point. And, as much as I hate to admit it, a lot of those are management problems: organizing people and resources. So maybe it makes sense that 20% of.college grads are business majors.
There’s an old Dilbert strip where he’s having a similar argument with a marketing guy.
Marketing Guy: What makes engineers think they are so much better than Marketing?
Dilbert: Engineers built every single contribution to society. You Marketing people just misrepresent it.
Marketing Guy: I guess it takes all types.
Dilbert: No, it doesn’t.
Certainly there is a value in a liberal arts education in and of itself. And not every job requires the cold logic of a STEM degree - architects (buildings…not computers), designers, UX experts, writers, teachers, lawyers, etc all certainly can benefit from a liberal arts education. Even STEM people should mix some humanities courses into their education (I did). But there is also a bit of a stigma that liberal arts classes are easy (which they are compared to Structural Engineering 101 and Differential Equations 405).
Also, STEM careers aren’t necessarily all that they are cracked up to be. At least in IT, engineers seem to be generally treated as a commodity to be outsourced as needed.
[quote=“msmith537, post:13, topic:914060”]
But there is also a bit of a stigma that liberal arts classes are easy (which they are compared to Structural Engineering 101 and Differential Equations 405).
[/quote] I can’t speak for the humanities but if you think arts classes are easy you haven’t taken any at degree level. As a music major I spent twice as many hours in class and out of class on coursework than my engineering roommate. The college admitted that it had reduced the number of credits the various music classes were worth because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to cram them all into the degree program. My sisters likewise worked long into the weeknights on their arts degrees, when the engineers and business students were already out drinking. You’re right that arts students would likely struggle in engineering classes (although music and math/comp sci have a surprisingl amount of overlapping skillset), but no one seems to note that engineers would likewise struggle in arts classes.
More broadly, there is a lot of evidence that arts classes produce significant positive benefits for students, even where the ultimate goal is not a career in the arts. They develop creativity, lateral thinking, analytical and presentation skills, and collaborative working, not to mention enhanced confidence and interpersonal skills. No one seems to question the need for sports even though arts activities produce far better outcomes than sporting ones, but shortsighted administrators love to put the arts on the chopping block at the drop of a hat.
BTW, in more enlightened cultures they work to a STEAM educational model - the A being “Arts”.
Exactly right. How much is climate change being dealt with in a good way now, even though we have plenty of climate scientists doing lots of good work? It’s because the politicians don’t care to listen to them. If you can’t convince politicians that they should listen to STEM folks, they won’t. And a lot of those solutions are humanities based - mostly making persuasive arguments (and sometimes using creativity to do it - art can be very powerful for moving opinions).
I think maybe some of the issue is that STEM, most specifically engineering, has always had a distinct weed-put culture. Humanities has traditionally been more open to the “gentleman’s C”. In engineering, a student with straight Cs is still pretty capable: in humanities, less so. Possibly because the grading is more subjective, partially because its where the institution as a whole tends to send people they would like to see be successful. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t rock stars, and there isn’t a ton of education to be had, if you work on it.
I suspect STEM types see this as evidence that the humanities are illegitimate, whereas the attitude in humanities is more that high quality people don’t need fear of failure to motivate them.
Again I ask, is there evidence of widespread supply and demand issues when it comes to STEM? What does “prioritizing” mean? More money thrown at it? Is throwing more money at it going to make more people want to participate in it? Fact is there are a limited subset of people that want to go into STEM, most of them men. I think most people of reasonable intelligence realize from a money making perspective, a STEM degree is going to pay more money than a humanities degree, on average. The humanities people either don’t care about that as much, don’t think they would enjoy the work as much, or don’t think they can hack it (and if they think that, they’re probably correct). I don’t see how “prioritizing” STEM would change that.
BTW I’m a software engineer with a communications degree. I was into software engineering as a hobby before I went into college. I took a few STEM courses and it became quite apparent that I
Couldn’t hack it (without more effort than I wanted to expend), and
Didn’t need it to be an in-demand software engineer in a niche market (currently, mobile development).
The degree did help my communication/writing skills immensely though, which comes in handy no matter what you do.
I see this argument a lot, and I don’t think it holds water. The skills you need as an educator are not necessarily the skills you need to succeed in the field in which you are instructing. Teaching, like any other professional path, has its own skill set, methodologies, philosophies, and professional development requirements/opportunities.
The implication that being proven in the field you’re teaching is an indicator of being good at teaching that subject is pernicious, and not borne out by facts. A successful educational experience needs a good teacher, not a good [chemist/engineer/insert STEM trade here].
For some definitions of “easy”, perhaps, and for some students, perhaps.
You seem to be implicitly including humanities faculty in academia and STEM faculty outside of it.
Most of these arguments I’ve read have played up the humanities, not explicitly played down STEM. They are of the “English majors make good salaries also” or “it teaches you to think” varieties. The latter bugs me because STEM teaches logical thinking just fine.
I suspect a lot of this comes from rising college costs which makes the problem of how you’re going to get a job to pay off your loans a lot more important than in the old days.