Mr. Opinion,

That was a joke? Humour obviously doesn't figure among all the qualifications you claim for yourself.

Plantagenet,

Your comment is too childish to respond to.

I found the document at http://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/IPA-Report-Humanities-Dehumanised-1.pdf and there's very little to it. It clearly wasn't a thorough study, but thankfully they didn't waffle on or pretend it was.

Looking at the content:
>Of the 1,181 subjects offered, only 177 treat the Essential Core Topics
>which should be the basis for the study of each discipline.
It is not clear exactly what they mean by "treat" but it it means studying them in detail then I don't see a problem with that. If those core topics are essential then I'd expect most them to dominate first year studies while playing a smaller role in subsequent years. As students specailize more, the class sizes would mostly be smaller, so it's only natural that those treating the core topics would be a minority.

Considering the first example:
>45 out of 182 English Literature subjects treat the Western Canon.
...one wonders what the document's anonymous authors would want the figure to be?
Certainly a university with a figure near 100% wouldn't be a very good one!

The claim that:
>The Essential Core Topics have been replaced with Identity Politics and Critical Race Theory
...would be a damning indictment if it were true. But I notice the document only looks at what is treated not HOW it is treated. It seems to assume blind acceptance of Critical Race Theory rather than a critical analysis of it. And the labelling of "class, race and gender" with the pejorative term "identity politics" overlooks the fact that unconscious biases (as well as more blatant ones) are very real, and are still holding a lot of people back. You certainly don't have to hold the view that "the treatment afforded an individual should be decided by their identity" to see there's a lot that could and should be done to overcome these biases.

From what I understand of humanities degrees (which admittedly is second hand) much of their value comes from teaching people to see the world from perspectives other than their own. This document seems to be dissing the universities for doing just that!

Aidan,

The confusion comes from the fact that for most people university education is all about just getting the vocational training needed to get a job.

I split university into three areas: Arts, Sciences, and Vocational.

Arts has all the scholarly subjects and humanities like history, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, languages, etc. These are for people who want to study what it is to be human.

Sciences of course are the familiar ones like physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. These are for people who want to study how the physical world works.

The vocational ones are the work-related ones like engineering, medicine, law, architecture, accountancy, nursing, etc. These are for people wanting to qualify to work in the labour force principally in the professions.

The core of any university will always be the Arts and Sciences where the principal focus is on learning about ourselves and the world we live in. It's all about getting knowledge rather than about getting a job.

Unfortunately, especially today, we live in a society where status and success are determined primarily by one's income and occupation so people tend to place more emphasis on having a vocational education that will fit more readily with our cash nexus society in which wealth matters more than knowledge.

The humanities are certainly "teaching people to see the world from perspectives other than their own" to those of Marxist lectures.

ttbn,

What you just said above doesn't make any sense.

Would you like to try again?

Mr. Opinion

English comprehension is not among your vast educational achievements apparently.