Knowledge for knowledge sake, paid for by others is truely impractical.

Ours are the times of endless free knowledge (mostly), which can be easily accumulated and tailored by the individual towards their own personal quirks.

Sadly, it has become patently obvious, the "disconnected from the practical" knowledge offered by tertiary educators, is no more than a tool for divisiveness of the cultural type.
And that point is the crux of the matter.

Dan

I love the humanities.

However, confining my discussion to politics (my PhD area), my experience as a former student and staffer is that any claim to excellence (in terms of teaching and research) is complicated by the extreme bias towards the left that prevails in this environment.

In addition, given that arts students should also be learning competent writing and research skills, there may also be the problem that there are now too many people graduating with humanities degrees with not enough jobs related to such skills.

Having said that, producing good humanities scholars should be an important goal for any society.

"Across the political map"? Can that be true? People on my part of the map generally regard the Arts and Humanities as a crock at best, treasonous rubbish at worst. I suppose we should be more tolerant, but tolerance is not a trait exhibited by the people turned out by the discipline. To me, they are the cause of all our problems. Although, gawd help me, I have to say that Chris Lewis's reaction is almost reasonable.

Scott Buchanan is obviously miffed at the eminently suitable action of the Coalition (one of very few from them lately) on useless degrees for troublemakers and naifs, naturally unemployable in any worthwhile, productive area; so there's little point in reading further. I would just like to say that all education after secondary level should be 'user pays' - no cost whatever to taxpayers, ninety seven percent of whom do not avail themselves of tertiary education.

I did slip through to the last chapter (all but the first and last are more often than not just padding) to read this: "The humanities preserve some of the deepest principles of Western culture and learning …".

Why, then, are the misfits turned out by the humanities the very malcontents and troublemakers who are trying to tear down Western culture!

"Why, then, are the misfits turned out by the humanities the very malcontents and troublemakers who are trying to tear down Western culture!"

I would argue that too many idealistic people have prevailed to gain teaching positions, the structure of universities is geared to getting more money rather than excellence, and political correctness makes those with more guts less able to speak through our voice.

Now I know I am deemed too left by some on OLO, but I had to control my individuality to get good marks at university so I could do honours and a PhD.

There were a few subjects, and a few teachers that more willing to rock the boat, but most academics I have met are not willing to consider the other side, whether it be the business side or the Coalition.

And, many of the students attracted to the humanities also don't want to know the harsher truth.

One girl lectured me one day about my sympathy to the coalition side, given my working class background.

I would consider myself on the left given my concern is most for lower income people, but I try hard to be balanced, albeit my views will still annoy many.

Thousands of basically very dumb youth doing basically useless courses in so called humanities, they will never use, at university mostly because they can't think of anything else to do, & don't have the grey matter to do anything useful because it is much harder to do. This is a drain on the long suffering tax payer, who has enough problem funding everything else including a useless bureaucracy, consisting of thousands of humanities graduates who could not find a job doing something useful.

A couple of years in a gang camped out in the bush clearing rubber vine & prickly Acacia from our national parks would be a much better education for this mob, & would give them more useful calluses on their hands, rather than those on their back side, sitting in class.

Hell they would have at least done a little something useful in their other wise useless lives.

If people want to study humanities that's fine, provided they do it at home in their own time. That is what the internet is for, not what universities should be for.

Hasbeen,
Exactly what a National Service would do !