US Colleges See a Surge in CS Majors, Fewer Humanities Majors (msn.com) 284
The Washington Post notes a trend at U.S. colleges like the University of Maryland: "booming enrollment in computer science and plummeting student demand for the humanities."
The number of students nationwide seeking four-year degrees in computer and information sciences and related fields shot up 34 percent from 2017 to 2022, to about 573,000, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The English-major head count fell 23 percent in that time, to about 113,000. History fell 12 percent, to about 77,000... In 2010, arts and humanities majors of all kinds outnumbered the computer science total at the University of Maryland more than 4 to 1. Now the university counts about 2,400 students majoring in arts and humanities — a collection of disciplines that fill an entire college — and about 3,300 in computer science...
As with many schools, the University of Maryland is searching for a new academic equilibrium to simultaneously handle rising demand for tech credentials and preserve what appear to be vulnerable pillars of the humanist tradition. New majors, such as "immersive media design," are arising to bridge technology and humanities as departments in older fields push to stay competitive. The ferment has fed debate about the purpose of college, the value of degrees and how much career prospects — rather than passion for learning — shape the academic paths that students take. Some schools have taken radical steps. Marymount University, a Catholic institution in Northern Virginia, decided in February to phase out history and English majors, citing low enrollment and a responsibility to prepare students "for the fulfilling, in-demand careers of the future." St. Mary's University of Minnesota made a similar announcement last year. There is no sign that more prominent colleges and universities will follow suit...
Computer science, a base for exploring artificial intelligence and other topics, is not the only hot subject these days. Data science has taken off over the past decade. So has nursing. Business, management and marketing have enduring appeal. In a time of economic upheaval, avoiding debt and landing a good job are top goals for many students. Value matters. "Public confidence in college paying off is being questioned at a higher rate than ever before," Michael Itzkowitz, former director of the federal College Scorecard, wrote in an email. "Some of this has to do with rising tuition costs. Some of this was influenced by the pandemic, where many students were questioning the cost they were paying to learn from their home computer, rather than being on a physical college campus."
As with many schools, the University of Maryland is searching for a new academic equilibrium to simultaneously handle rising demand for tech credentials and preserve what appear to be vulnerable pillars of the humanist tradition. New majors, such as "immersive media design," are arising to bridge technology and humanities as departments in older fields push to stay competitive. The ferment has fed debate about the purpose of college, the value of degrees and how much career prospects — rather than passion for learning — shape the academic paths that students take. Some schools have taken radical steps. Marymount University, a Catholic institution in Northern Virginia, decided in February to phase out history and English majors, citing low enrollment and a responsibility to prepare students "for the fulfilling, in-demand careers of the future." St. Mary's University of Minnesota made a similar announcement last year. There is no sign that more prominent colleges and universities will follow suit...
Computer science, a base for exploring artificial intelligence and other topics, is not the only hot subject these days. Data science has taken off over the past decade. So has nursing. Business, management and marketing have enduring appeal. In a time of economic upheaval, avoiding debt and landing a good job are top goals for many students. Value matters. "Public confidence in college paying off is being questioned at a higher rate than ever before," Michael Itzkowitz, former director of the federal College Scorecard, wrote in an email. "Some of this has to do with rising tuition costs. Some of this was influenced by the pandemic, where many students were questioning the cost they were paying to learn from their home computer, rather than being on a physical college campus."
Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:5, Insightful)
The housing shortage is artificial, anyway. People stopped treating houses as a necessity and started treating them as an investment.
Building more houses would just devalue everyone's investments, now. So we can't have too much of that.
Re: Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:2)
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Its short sighted. Sure your property value doubles every 10yrs, but so does the house you buy next.
Worse: It means the price of food goes up in restaurants and shops so the owners can meet their doubled rent payments, ie. You actually lose money because your house doubled in value.
(unless you never go out of the house)
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If you invest the money you save renting, you end up with more money overall (unless you time your house sale correctly)
You mean if you invest correctly, and not during a time when the market is about to take a bath, or on the wrong investments. Property is usually a reliable investment unless it's in a neighborhood which is presently going to shit, or prices are massively inflated by shortages (whether natural or artificial, like the ones we have now.)
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Re: Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:5, Informative)
Another falsehood. Mortgage plus upkeep plus taxes is usually double rent. If you invest the money you save renting, you end up with more money overall (unless you time your house sale correctly)
Where are you buying houses? My mortgage on a 2300 sq ft (above ground) house cost me the same as my rent on a 750 sq ft apartment (with no yard) did when I bought the house 10 years ago. Its value has more than doubled since then and rent here for that same apartment has almost tripled...
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"usually double rent".
That would be market dependant. It hasn't been the case in most areas I've lived in, actually. Rent is usually 50-100% more than the mortgage + escrow payment, so covering mortgage, insurance, and tax payments. Maintenance is a thing, but it's usually NOT going to be 50% more than even that.
You also have to figure that while taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs will go up over time, that mortgage is fixed(if you were smart).
So even if the mortgage starts a little behind year 1, b
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How does that work? If the mortgage and all taxes/costs are double the rent, isn't the landlord losing money?
Surely they can't all be cash buyers who own the property outright. In the UK most let property is mortgaged, often with an interest only mortgage that is never paid off.
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In places with "negative gearing" (allowing the property owner to offset a loss on an investment property against another source of income), rental income may be lower than the cost of property maintenance and mortgage interest if the owner is expecting to make a capital gain on the property.
Re:Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:5, Interesting)
The housing shortage is artificial, anyway. People stopped treating houses as a necessity and started treating them as an investment.
It's not "people". It's investment firms, which now own 15% of the starter homes in America. It's a small percentage of the total number of homes, but it's a massive share of the new homes that people would have bought as their first.
Also, homes have always been both a necessity and an investment. They are the most valuable thing anyone outside of the 1% owns, their automobile being the second. This whole "people are now seeing their home as an investment" idea is beyond ridiculous. Further, rentals were always investment properties, and between half and a third of homes are rentals (depending on state) so that makes it an even more insane thing to say.
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The US isn't short of space, so why aren't quality, affordable new homes being built? Seems like the only answer is developers wanting to fleece everyone as much as possible.
In the UK we actually do have a shortage of space to build on, but it's artificial. Less than 9% of land in the UK is developed, but many who already have homes are desperate to protect the "green belt". Of course the home they live in may well have been built on green belt after WW2, and even if not the benefitted from the availability
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This whole "people are now seeing their home as an investment" idea is beyond ridiculous.
No, what is ridiculous is the idea that an already-overpriced starter home market can and should be targeted by investors instead of first-time homebuyers. Like targeting waitress and server jobs with kiosks and bots, you manage to affect all who attempt to climb the Ladder of Success by removing the bottom rungs from it.
Starter homes, are just that. Meant for humans to get a start in life in, not be robbed of even being able to afford to move out of an apartment because of incessant greed. And corporati
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what is ridiculous is the idea that an already-overpriced starter home market can and should be targeted by investors instead of first-time homebuyers.
The idea that it should be targeted might be ridiculous, but the idea that it can be is perfectly sensible. The investment firms have access to other people's money, that's literally what they do. And since they collectively operate as an organized pricing cartel because they all use the same pricing software, it makes some sense, too: they are in a position to control pricing. It also fails to make sense on some bases, for example they're in the process of killing the goose. But that doesn't matter at all
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As someone who owns a house, I disagree. I would like to buy a better house. As the value of my current investment in my house increases, and proportionately, the price of all houses, the gap between my current house's value and that of the one I want to buy increases proportionately, making it unaffordable to bridge the gap.
It's not just the value of my current house that matters; only one part of the equation.
Re:Should be getting more urban planning majors (Score:4, Insightful)
Except women's bodies, right?
Better question (Score:3, Insightful)
We learned from COVID and falling test scores that parents make lousy teachers.
Another question, who's gonna teach your kids to think critically and evaluate claims?
Ever work with somebody who's a whiz at anything they've been taught but can't solve new problems? That's a kid who learned math & science but not the humanities. You can't teach critical thinking and problem solving with Math & Science. You spend the 1st 22 years of your STEM education reg
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The housing shortage is not caused by a shortage of labor. It's caused by a government that: a) severely restricts when and where you can build housing and makes getting permission to build a years-long process and b) rent control, which ensures no new rental properties will be built (and in extreme cases even takes existing rental properties off the market). As a bonus, the latter even affects the price of owning a home, as inability to rent drives up demand for buying homes.
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Actually, labor shortages are very much part of it. I've been reading about delays all over the place because the contractors are all too busy. They're at full employment, at least the competent ones.
The other shit doesn't help either.
Stop the sardine can shit (Score:2)
There are plenty of houses and plenty of real-estate. Houses sit empty in the rust belt. The problem is that everyone wants be in a few narrow places. It would take national coordination to "factor population" better, but the red-blue culture wars muck up any such cooperation. Thus, we are slowly growing a Mad-Max/Soylent Green dystopia.
Who'd have thought? (Score:4, Insightful)
In an economic downturn, people prefer studying stuff they can monetize.
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I thought CS was a dead end now, because all the jobs are taken by Indians. At least that's what Slashdot commentators keep telling me.
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No, it means both of those things. https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
They've learned from Millennials' suffering (Score:5, Insightful)
No one in their right mind would take on student loan debt with its interest calculation rules to get a B.A. in English at these prices.
$70k+ on an English degree is life-ruining for most of the graduates. $70k+ for a CS degree is a cost of doing business if you are frugal early on because the wages and advancement are night and day better.
It also doesn't help that the humanities and social sciences are some of the most political majors on campus now. Colleges forget that at least half of the country doesn't go in for that, and even a large chunk of the side nominally sympathetic to those radicals is smart enough to realize spending massive amounts of money for a politically-charged "education" is not a good investment.
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It also doesn't help that the humanities and social sciences are some of the most political majors on campus now.
Covering the breadth of art, history, philosophy, et al is now 'political'?
Colleges forget that at least half of the country doesn't go in for that, and even a large chunk of the side nominally sympathetic to those radicals is smart enough to realize spending massive amounts of money for a politically-charged "education" is not a good investment.
Generally speaking, I don't think the education is comprised of 'radicals' or has such an agenda. Most of what is attributed as 'radical thinking' should be pretty mundane, like "my sex life is none of anyone else's business" or "boy it sure would be nice if I didn't have to risk ruining my lifelong finances to try to get an education". Again, it's not that politically charged of an education, this is the always true reality of you
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Covering the breadth of art, history, philosophy, et al is now 'political'?
It is when you mix religion and politics. I only had to take one class in humanities to get my asswipe of science degree, it was Intro to Western Humanities, and it wound up being roughly 50% a comparison of western religions. And there was a lot of material on the advent of monotheism and the difference between the orthoprax and orthodox religions. If you're an ultrachristian who believes the earth was made 6,000 years ago (with artificial dinosaur bones to confuse the unfaithful) this is all going to make
It always was political (Score:5, Informative)
People who know about all that stuff are going to start learning to be both cynical and critical. They're going to learn to evaluate claims made to them. They're not just going to believe what they're told. Especially when they start finding out stuff like who and what Christopher Columbus *really* was or the history of outright terrorism in America that ran up until the 80s.
Anything that makes citizens more capable of not being fooled by their betters is always political. Your betters *make* it political. Because they don't want you asking "hey, why do I have betters"?
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Digging into how art, history, philosophy, and bending logic into a pretzel until the topic at hand is found to be "racist" somehow, yes, that is political.
Pretending that race is a thing is racism. Pretending that racism doesn't exist is willfully ignorant. Pretending that racism doesn't affect things, likewise.
I think that humanities ought to teach how to think, not what to think.
Neither is their job, which is to teach about how and what other people have thought throughout history. The goal is to provide perspective which is invaluable for thinking to be meaningful. Otherwise you are either wasting your time thinking about things without getting an overview of what's been thought about already, or you're thinking about things
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Yes, Racism is real, and race is not.
Unfortunately, what's being taught in schools is "racism is real, and race is real, and we have to discriminate in favor of disadvantaged races to counteract racism." And you'll be severely punished for maintaining otherwise.
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Unfortunately, what's being taught in schools is "racism is real, and race is real, and we have to discriminate in favor of disadvantaged races to counteract racism." And you'll be severely punished for maintaining otherwise.
You and yours are going to have to make up your mind: Is CRT being taught in schools, or are schools teaching that race is real? Because CRT teaches that race is an artificial construct.
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They say the words, but don't follow to the conclusion. They say "race is an artificial construct" and then say "you must order your behavior based on this artificial construct." It's not my fault that they can't be consistent.
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So we will get people to stop basing their behavior on race by basing our behavior on race? That doesn't strike me as a very coherent plan of action.
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Pretending that race is a thing is racism.
Isnt this the line right wingers always give when they dont want to acknowledge race based inequalities? Just pretend that race doesnt exist?
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If that was what they were doing, no. But that's not what they are actually doing. Digging into how art, history, philosophy, and bending logic into a pretzel until the topic at hand is found to be "racist" somehow, yes, that is political.
As far as I have seen, that's not really the bent of thing. Racism is a topic that is covered, but it doesn't encompass all of those topics.
So either you haven't paid attention, or you're being disingenious. For the sake of argument I'm going with the former.
I have been paying attention. We have college interns, new college hires, family members going into college, friends with now college aged children. In discussing their experience, I get zero hint that racism is a preoccupation with them. In fact, at work in a survey group only one person answered a question to suggest they have concerns about sexism or racism at wo
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Some people like to make money (Score:3)
No humanities majors? (Score:3, Funny)
Where will the Uber drivers com from then?
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The number of tech jobs has contracted sharply of late, and the total number of programming jobs is certainly going to be decreased by AI (since people don't have enough money to buy a bunch of frivolous software, the technology will be used to reduce costs, rather than to create more output) so the answer is that the Uber drivers will come straight from their CS degree graduation day.
Staying Relevant (Score:2)
With a Tech half-life estimated to be about 2.5 years [ibm.com], spending 4 years at a University doesn't make much sense from a pure knowledge play. Of course, critical thinking skills, the ability to interact and complete something, etc. are essential life skills but your tech skills won't be of much value. That Visual Basic will come back some day....
Types of skills [Re:Staying Relevant] (Score:4, Informative)
With a Tech half-life estimated to be about 2.5 years [ibm.com],
That link does not say tech half-life is 2.5 years. It divides skills into three categories:
Perishable skills : Half-life less than 2.5 years – Specific technology skills that are updated frequently; organization-specific policies and tools and specialized processes all can be classified as perishable skills.
Semi-durable skills : half-life from 2.5 years to7.5 years – These tend to be those frameworks with base sets of knowledge from which field-specific technologies, processes and tools arise.
Durable skills : Half-life greater than 7.5 years –
In principle, what you learn in university is the "Durable skills". You learn the other ones too, but only as practice examples for you while getting basics in the durable skills.
spending 4 years at a University doesn't make much sense from a pure knowledge play. Of course, critical thinking skills, the ability to interact and complete something, etc. are essential life skills
Exactly. In principle, college courses tell you how to think, how to analyze a problem. The technical details of coding languages may change, but the point is if you have a decent education, you know how to keep up.
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My daughter is currently enrolled in a Computer Science program. One of the conversations we've had is that working the language she's working in will probably change 20 times in her career.
The only real constant is the average quality of the peers you work with on group projects. ;) :(
Cost/benefit analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
If you:
* Promote college as a guaranteed lifelong income raiser
* Raise the price of a degree by adding administrators and climbing walls
* Shift the burden of paying from donors and states to student loans
You get students who are focused on the immediate economic benefits of their studies, if only to pay off their loans.
Hollywood (Score:3)
If the population doesn't read more mature, evolved, complex, challenging literature, guess who scriptwriters have to appeal to. I guess they can carry on ripping off stories from more evolved, sophisticated cultures from around the world but will US viewers understand it?
As they say "Trust The Science" Computer Science (Score:2)
Someone has to code it all.
I guess they choose to forget (Score:2)
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
My bachelor's is Liberal Arts (International relations, history, and German). Liberal arts degrees are NOT the same value/meaning as actual applied degrees. Completely different animals.
The latter gives you skills and technical knowledge to perform in a field that requires that knowledge to function successfully. It's applied knowledge.
Liberal Arts was originally something much less focused, more about general knowledge and just being a 'better informed human being' sort of rounding.
Don't get me wrong: I value my liberal arts degree. I think learning in general is always good. And the learning that goes on at the college level in liberal arts classes is a step-change more in-depth, more focused, and a level that just isn't something most kids could or should be bothering with in the high school level. It's dilettante knowledge, honestly.
And it shouldn't be regarded as anything near the same certification of ability, nor, if I'm honest, valued as highly as an applied science degree. About the only Liberal Arts degree that I would agree is comparable would be foreign language as that's actually hard, and having it represents actual, usable knowledge.
That your university (in most cases) charges the same for a degree whether it's Math, Computer Science, Engineering, or Biochemistry and...International Relations, Russian Medieval Literature or Indigenous Women's Studies is a polite conceit which maybe we should dispense with?
Everyone passes (Score:2)
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(I teach CS at $LOCALUNIVERSITY)
In general, everyone passes in MS programs. It used to be because people coming back to grad school were serious learners. And so, in practice, students performed well and so everyone passed.
These days, we see that it is no longer true. And the failure rates are increasing. They started to no longer be 0% failure rate before covid hit. But covid blurred the statistics, so it is hard to have a clear picture.
We are currently sending quite a few MS students to academic probation
Personal Experience (Score:3)
I graduated in Computer Science in 2000. My freshman class was so big it had to be divided into three. However, my senior-level classes only had 4 students. This tells me that people see potential salaries in the CS dominated fields, but discover it's too hard or doesn't align with their personality or thinking.
Don't read too much into it. (Score:3)
That didn't used to be true (Score:2, Insightful)
Society does need a few people who can spell ye olde englishe, maybe some other languages too, hey there's an idea, jot down what happens now and tell of what happened before, think of things, philosophical things, be able to sound knowledgeable or at least learned moreso than pompous, and so on.
What society really doesn't need is a bunch of yelling cnuts shouting down people that dare disagree with them, that find fault with everything and everyone on the premise that they don't like those people therefor
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Subverted by whom and for what reasons? It could be society itself is changing and that terrifies boomers, conservatives, and religious zealots.
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So, professors aren't radicalizing students. (Score:3, Informative)
https://www.insidehighered.com... [insidehighered.com] And that was 5 years ago
Interesting link. It says that the people teaching college aren't radicalizing the students:
"faculty members have seen their ability to set the tone and agenda on college campuses significantly diminish. With constant focus on enrollments and rankings, and classes and programs that cater to those ends, collegiate corporatization has marginalized the role of faculty in terms of setting the teaching and learning agenda. Moreover, with stresses of family life and the dictum of publish or perish, survey data
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Faculty. Not the same as administrators.
Correct, faculty are not the same as administrators.
Faculty are the ones who deal with students on a day by day basis. Administrators don't.
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You are defending faculty by saying that the administrators that do the above dont deal with students on the day to day.
How come your defense is a lie? This is an honest question, if the faculty is so good, why are you defending them with a lie?
Have you ever not lied in defense of them? Thats an honest question too. Is it always a lie spewing out of your maw?
Re:That didn't used to be true (Score:5, Funny)
You might benefit from higher education. You linked an op ed piece.
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What is the agenda and why have they taken it?
Radical protesters of the 1960s/70s (Score:3)
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Subverted by whom and for what reasons?
English professors stating that proper English grammar standards are "racist" [news10.com] would be a starting point.
It could be society itself is changing and that terrifies boomers, conservatives, and religious zealots.
It IS changing. Into a society of morons that is making Idiocracy a prophecy. But that's what you get when expecting correct answers in arithmetic is white supremacy [seattletimes.com].
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Well your first link poses an interesting premise. There is no inherent standard of English. Languages are fluid and evolve over time. You can’t understand English before the great vowel shift. As for your second link perhaps you should actually read it. Minority students grades improved when “racist” math was taught. You literally grabbed links based on headlines alone.
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Minority students grades improved when “racist” math was taught.
Thats one interpretation, one that ignores the major fact, so it is interesting reflection on you.
Everyones grades improve when standards are lowered. Its not a fucking surprise and it doesnt mean racism.
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Minority students grades improved when “racist” math was taught.
Thats one interpretation, one that ignores the major fact, so it is interesting reflection on you. Everyones grades improve when standards are lowered. Its not a fucking surprise and it doesnt mean racism.
Huh? I think you didn't read the article either. Standards were not lowered.
Re:That didn't used to be true (Score:4, Interesting)
Well your first link poses an interesting premise. There is no inherent standard of English. Languages are fluid and evolve over time. You can’t understand English before the great vowel shift.
You'd probably understand it, but you would struggle; from what I've read, it seems like it is pretty close to English when spoken with a heavy Irish accent, which is intelligible, but requires concentration. The huge shifts in grammar and word meaning needed to make the language almost unintelligible haven't really been happening since the advent of the printing press.
And it's not really true that there isn't any such thing as standard English. There are certainly regional variations, where words take on different meanings in certain places (e.g. a boot is a trunk and a bonnet is a hood), but the vast majority of the language (including grammar) is the same whether you're speaking it in the U.S., England, India, Australia, or any other randomly chosen country that speaks English.
A requirement for communication to occur is a sense of shared meaning. Without that, communication starts to break down. It is for that reason that we have dictionaries, that we teach languages to kids rather than expecting them to just pick them up on their own with whatever random deviations might occur, etc.
If we don't enforce at least some level of consistency, at some point we'll look back and realize that one group of people can no longer usefully communicate with another group of people, at which point, you'll have two different languages, much like Portuguese and Spanish are two separate languages today. This isn't generally a good thing if your goal is for everyone to understand each other. For this reason, it is dangerous to treat heavily dialectal English as correct. And this is equally true regardless of whether that dialect has a racial origin or a regional origin. Failing to teach the language with some degree of standardization would be doing everyone a disservice.
This is not to say that language can't be allowed to change, but it must do so in a slow, steady fashion, not arbitrarily, and only with some level of consensus. The real question should be whether there is adequate racial diversity in the group of people who are reaching that consensus. (I have no idea, but probably not.)
Re:That didn't used to be true (Score:5, Informative)
English major here (I think it's really funny that people think English majors are experts on grammar. That's linguists you silly bunny!):
The grammar of which you speak results from a poorly implemented attempt to bring Romance language grammar to a language that functionally has no grammar. Also, they tried to get rid of "monosyllabic" Saxon words. Thus "shite" is unacceptable, but "manure" is benign.
I have no idea whom you are addressing with your criticism, but expecting a bunch of native speakers to abide by grammar rules from the 17th century is a fools errand. To penalize those who use such archaic rules incorrectly is not essentially racism, but certainly contributes to it.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-i... [www.bl.uk]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
The problem with defending the purity... (Score:3, Interesting)
The article's not wrong. Let me give you a great example.
Standardized math testing used the phrase "saucer" (as in a saucer used for tea). It was found the black kids disproportionately didn't know that word and thus couldn't a
Re:The problem with defending the purity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Standardized math testing used the phrase "saucer" (as in a saucer used for tea). It was found the black kids disproportionately didn't know that word and thus couldn't answer the question. They've never seen a saucer in their life. At that level of poverty you don't use saucers, you drink out of a jar. It was changed to a more neutral term and test scores went up. Same question phrased differently.
Ok, so this is clearly a problem with class exposure -- that doesn't mean the question is "Racist". The person who wrote the question wasn't maliciously targeting another race, they just wrote based on their experience, which was less universal then they percieved. I'd bet there are plenty of poor white people who also drank out of jars. To call it "Racist" implies 1) intent and 2) malice. It's name-calling at this point. But "The word problems have changed to reflect a more diverse experience" is less of a headline-draw then "Math is racist", so we must get everyone angry.
In conclusion, it's the journalist's fault.
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If idiocy and bigotry spreading through academia doesn't scare you, you're an idiot. And if you're using tribalism to excuse your idiocy you're willfully idiotic.
Idiocy has always been with us. Bigotry, likewise. Before we had organized theories of race (i.e. racism) people were bigoted about color, culture, and religion. Tribalism is always used to excuse idiocy, because tribalism is idiotic. It's especially idiotic when it's founded on specious bases like religion, which has often been one of the largest proponents of racism — notably, in the actions of missionaries, who treat every aspect of a foreign culture as primitive.
Should a man be judged by the content of his character or whether he came from a "historically disadvantaged group"?
If you don't take into account how
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Balderdash. I'm a racist if I treat different races differently, full stop. So are you.
You're a racist if you believe race is a real thing. I don't, which is why I'm not.
I do believe in critical race theory, because it doesn't state that race is real. It states that racial prejudice is real, which only requires that the person perpetrating it believe in race, and not anyone else.
Finally, you attributed a comment to me that I didn't write, although I did broadly agree with it and post a comment supporting its assertions.
You're an oikophobe. That means you hate that which is familiar.
That's nonsense. I don't hate anything because it's familiar. I hate thing
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"You're a racist if you believe race is a real thing."
Nope. "Racist," in common usage, includes a prejudice of superiority (or at least hatred). You must believe race is a real thing AND that racial differences present an inherent superiority of a particular race (or just have an emotional bias against people of a particular race), in order to qualify as "racist." The simple use of the word "race" to categorize people by a handful of genetic traits is not automatically hateful, nor does it necessarily in
The most important task - a revolutionary movement (Score:3)
Subverted by whom and for what reasons?
Marxists. To bring the Revolution. A lot of the current woke nonsense literally goes back to the more violent elements of the 1960s protesters. Many of these were literally marxist or maoist in nature. They wished to overthrow what they label "American imperialism."
Lets look at the Weather Underground for instance:
"The most important task for us toward making the revolution, and the work our collectives should engage in, is the creation of a mass revolutionary movement, without which a clandestine revol
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"Humanities" comprises a vast array of subjects, from history to theatre to ancient languages, and an even vaster array of different topics, different teachers, even different approaches to teaching. The right-wing attack does the usual ideological thing, lumping vastly different things together into one "good or evil?", and then saying "all humanities education is the same, it's all evil teaching people to be woke!"
You k
Re:That didn't used to be true (Score:4, Interesting)
"This has become the new right-wing attack vector, an attack on University education."
There's nothing new about it. I went to school in the 70's and 80's, and we in the engineering college always wondered what those humanities people thought they were doing, studying to flip burger? Sure, if you can starve for several decades, you can then become curator at some museum and make good coin. But dang... overall, learn STEM.
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I wonder how many of those engineers not think their higher paid boss is an idiot.
? [Re:That didn't used to be true] (Score:2)
But... there really isn't anything new about students going into fields they think will make make money. That way predates the recent discussion of student loan forgiveness.
Re:That didn't used to be true (Score:4, Informative)
Or... it could be that students... now that they know there'll be no "student loan forgiveness"... are deciding that "Hey, I have to PAY for this shit. Maybe I'd better major in something that, you know, makes money."
Or this could have nothing to do with whatever right wing talking point you want to try to shoehorn into this. Plenty of students were taking classes in the humanities prior to Biden becoming president and the issue of loan forgiveness became something that might happen. I havent seen any data suggesting that humanities enrollment somehow peaked when Biden started talking about loan forgiveness after all.
Re:Humanities degrees are as useless as... (Score:5, Funny)
tits on a bull
A trans bull? Oh, the humanity!
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Hard to say which will be replaced first by AI (Score:2)
Re:Says you (Score:2)
Kids, this person is a moron. Knowledge is power. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
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Humanities degrees are as useless as tits on a bull. Interestingly, it's overwhelmingly humanities majors who don't understand the absurdity of tits on a bull.
It's called Furry Futanari you insensitive clod!
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On their deathbeds, nobody cares about how useful they've been. Rather, people tend to care about what kind of person they've been, which is summed up in what we sometimes call the eulogy values. It might surprise you to learn that the humanities are good at exploring these (and the vices). I am not denigrating science or tech or whatever floats your boat, which should be obvious as I spend a lot of time on /. and genuinely love tech. But it is ridiculous to devalue the humanities just because they are not
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That sounds dangerously transphobic!!
What if that bull "identifies" as a cow????
Don't you know trans-cows are REAL cows and can give milk, give birth, etc....?!?!
Err....wait a minute.
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While I don't know the trans rate for cows, I do know that it's apparently measurable for chickens. Source: Chicken magazines; I recently bought a house with a bit of property and zoned for agriculture. So besides the start of a garden, we're looking at raising chickens. And reading that, chickens are highly instinctive actors - they're basically feathery computers.
Anyways, what apparently happens in chickens is that only one ovary is active. So if something happens to that, female hormone production s
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next you are going to say Sherwin-Williams makes the most accurate colors because an editorial in a painters trade mag was trying to sell more Sherwin-Williams paint.
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next you are going to say Sherwin-Williams makes the most accurate colors because an editorial in a painters trade mag was trying to sell more Sherwin-Williams paint.
I know the difference between advertisement and article, even advertising trying to hide as articles, thank you very much.
These are more generic "how to raise chickens, or how to raise them better if you already are" type magazines. There's advertising in them, but most of the articles, while not "studies" or peer reviewed, are more practical in their writing.
In any case, for hens acting like roosters, what are the magazines trying to sell?
https://www.livescience.com/13... [livescience.com]
The first sign that something was afoot with Gertie was that she stopped laying eggs, her owners, Jim and Jeanette Howard of Huntingdon, England, told the local media. Next, she began strutting around their garden and crowing like a rooster. Over the next few weeks, Gertie put on weight and developed wattles beneath her chin, a feature normally exhibited only by males. She also grew dark brown plumage and a scarlet cockscomb atop her head, both male traits.
https://www.thechickentractor... [thechickentractor.com.au]
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They're not hateful, they're inclusive.
Also in the news, war is peace and freedom slavery. And most of all, ignorance is strength.
Re: Who will teach the kids to be hateful wokeists (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well you seem like a good candidate to teach hate.
And also to promote ignorance, which is what you get when you don't have education. You know who hates an educated proletariat? Conservatives [bestcolleges.com].
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My comment in no way suggest not educating people.
Your comment was an unsupported attack on educational institutions, and there's no way for a reasonable person to take that except as an attack on education.
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What will happen if the universities' demented humanities professors don't teach their students how to be hateful, censorious, discriminatory wokeists ?
I can't recall my Latin professor ever teaching anything about how to be hateful. He was more about getting us to understand that Ovid's language was intended to be poetry, and in actual day to day speech Romans undoubtedly talked more plainly, like Caesar.
Come to think of it, can't think of any of the humanities courses I took mentioning any of these things. (I quite liked the art history course.)
The world is doomed to be a happy and productive place where people of different genders and races and sexualities learn to accept not deny their differences and we all coexist happily together.
This is pretty clearly not the right wing agenda, since the right wing absolutely hates the idea of people of
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NORMAL FUCKING PEOPLE. Not rabid right, not hateful woke, but NORMAL PEOPLE.
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Of course you can't recall it. They mostly don't exist.
I work at $LOCALUNIVERSITY in a STEM discipline. And we surveyed students recently using an external completely anonymous survey. What the survey showed was that right-wing students early on were concerned about being pushed into a liberal agenda. But by senior year, the number of concerned student dropped by 80% with no student being able to point to a case of indoctrination.
There were a few reports of minor incident which were investigated and basical
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Do you have any data that what you are describing is happening?
I teach in a public universities and we do see some students changing majors. But the local data I have seen show that STEM students when they change majors go to an other STEM discipline.
You see pre-meds and chemistry go to biology.
You see ECE go to CS.
You see Maths go to CS and Data Science.
You see CS go to MIS.
You don't see Physics major go to philosophy.
Or at least, that is what I see locally.