By Mary Churchill
for The Chronicle
I think that too much has been made of recent statements from Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) on higher education. While Jobs stresses the importance of the liberal arts, Gates supports majors that correlate to jobs. That divide could easily be portrayed as liberal arts vs. business, but a recent episode of the radio news show “The Takeaway,” entitled “Liberal Arts vs. Technical Degree,” chose to focus on STEM degrees vs. liberal-arts degrees. This debate seems to be about using education as a way of spouting ideology rather than as a way of expressing a sincere interest in improving American education.Rather than get bogged down in the centuries-old humanities vs. science war, it is important to keep in mind that not all STEM degrees are technical degrees. While degrees in physics, mathematics, biology, and chemistry are not liberal-arts degrees, they are definitely not technical degrees. It may seem as if I’m splitting hairs, but this slippage from science to technical is frequent and more often than not, ideologically driven.
A degree in Math is not a liberal-arts degree? Since when?
ReplyDeleteToo many liberal arts and humanities majors that I talk with lack the logic to understand consequences, and the understanding of science and technology to really grasp history.
ReplyDeleteThe history of the world is written by those in control of the current technology: the Greeks had bronze and the phalanx; the Romans had iron, small-unit tactics, architecture (the arch) and road-building; the Catholic Church dominated with its control of literacy; England dominated with cartography and clock-making; the US helped win WWII and achieved world dominance with its enormous industrial capacity, even though the tanks and ships were often inferior to those of the Axis. The list could be much longer.
@mathesian - the math degree that I took included 'pure' mathematics, statistics, engineering, and physics, and nothing else.
ReplyDeleteThis is very clear in my writing-in-the-disciplines classes. The mathematicians (and pure/theoretical physicists, chemists, biologists, etc.) can be as hard to fit into group work with their applied brethren as the philosophers in the humanities classes. Even the computer scientists and IT folks have less in common than you'd think (it's about equivalent to the physics/engineering split, but the computer scientists tend to be a little more practical/applied in their outlook than the physicists). And I definitely know some Ph.D. physicists from grad school who have had to go quite far outside their disciplines to be employed in industry. They're very, very smart, so they are employed, and well-paid, but they're not doing what they went to grad school to do.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, the students in my classrooms could care less for mathematics and logic, and also could care less for reading and writing.
ReplyDeleteThe whole system needs an overhaul and students need to be held accountable for knowing (and applying) every tool in their kit to coursework.
If I hear one more students whine, "But you can't mark down for poor writing because this isn't an English class...."
I almost think this "debate" is similar to the story about a bunch of blind-folded people touching an elephant and trying to guess what it is based only on the part they are touching.
Paddington -It is of course true that every educated person ought to have at least a cursory understanding of other major fields of study. Perhaps you could follow up your comment with a description of some way in which STEM students' and graduates' understanding of the world is also lopsided, so as not to appear to be attacking humanities students specifically for being ill-informed, parochial idiots.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else make a mental note of the design - physical as well as functional - of Apple products versus Microsoft products and how the two relate to their leader's perspective? Or, am i just making a liberal education leap?
ReplyDelete@Merely Academic - I would, and chide my Engineering students for not knowing some of the quotes I use. However, when I talk to my colleagues in the humanities, they tell me that the science and math students are among the best in their classes too.
ReplyDelete@iahprg - Apple is based now on Linux, and is definitely designed for and by geeks.
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ReplyDeleteDear Paddington,
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, your anecdotal evidence proves that Humanities students really ARE ill-informed, parochial, and stupid, or at least, far, far stupider than your science and engineering students. What a waste my life has been, spent in - I now see - a completely wasted effort to get any information at all into their sadly deficient little noggins.
I would advise the university to stop wasting money on Humanities at all, now that I have seen the light, and close down the Faculty, but of course we have to have somewhere to put all the pathetic little morons who would never last a day in Engineering. Perhaps when they graduate - those few who do - they could be put to work mopping the floors of your labs.
@ Paddington, yep, you're right. Has been for about a decade now. My question though was whether there was a connection between the way the two company leaders thought about education and their products' designs. I think there is. Found it interesting - must be a theatre thing.
ReplyDelete@Merely Academic - do I detect a little thin skin?
ReplyDeleteIn the past year I have seen several articles in Academe magazine that echo C.P.Snow's observation that the sciences and mathematics are not 'really' academic (according to the humanities), and that the only place where 'true' critical thinking and learning take place is in the humanities. Some small comments are made that those other subjects might be useful in a dreary real-world sense. No rebuttals have been published, despite my attempts to do so.
In most private and many public universities (I know because I work on transfers among other things), the mathematics and science requirements are so watered down as to be meaningless.
Faculty in the non-science disciplines make a face when mathematics, science or engineering are mentioned, and actively vote against efforts to strengthen them.
On average, according to AAUP figures, humanities faculty earn about the same as mathematics faculty, and usually teach less.
On our own campus, I have spoken with two people in our Provost's office who considered that writing a 1-page poem was equivalent in effort to writing a 10-page mathematics paper. In short, ignorance of science abounds in university administrators, who are chiefly from the humanities and Education. By comparison, most of the science faculty with whom I talk know about a lot of other things, principally because most people in social settings don't want to talk 'geek' stuff.
@iahprg - I always thought that Steve Jobs was much more a tech geek than Bill Gates. That's why they money guys eased him out of the CEO spot years ago. Of course, they had to bring him back when they realized that marketing doesn't replace actual products.
ReplyDeleteIt is one-hundred percent about money and power--the money Jobs and Gates stand to earn with their blatherings, and the increase in power and influence each seeks. That's all this is. Anyone thinking that either of these guys 1) knows anything about education in the U.S. or 2) gives a rat's ass about anything other than his own bottom line (money+power=bottom line)is either accidentally uninformed or willfully ignorant.
ReplyDeleteThis article isn't about higher education or education of any kind. It's about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
@Great Lakes Greta - while I happen to disagree with Gates' ideas on education (since his intensive school appears to have been a failure), I wouldn't tar him too much with the 'power and money' brush. Isn't he the bollionaire who is working on giving 95% or so of his money away, including working on eradicating malaria?
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