"Want to Save the Humanities? Make College Free"

Yes, yes, yes, I couldn't agree more. I have to say that in my own life, some of the smartest, most thoughtful and most sophisticated people that I've ever met didn't have college degrees. Most of them are gone now, members of the World War II generation.

The whole emphasis on degrees is a combination of two things I think. First, laziness. Degrees, and the name of the university that issued the degree and that university's standing in the pecking-order, makes it easy (too easy) to assign a weight to other people's ideas without having to ever consider them. Prospective employers can assign weights to applicants. It's just so convenient. And second, idealism. There's this idea that 'education maketh the man'. If you can just put somebody into a suitable educational program, he or she can be rendered moral, intellectual and effectively into one of Plato's "philosopher kings". A rightful member of some new aristocracy.

Again I strongly agree.

At one time, public libraries were conceived as something like free universities. That was why they were originally created. The larger ones had very good academic collections and one often saw people studying there, not in order to earn a degree but because the subject that they were reading about fascinated them. Today we see public libraries getting rid of books and turning into community centers and in some cases homeless shelters.

Probably most of the iconic intellectuals of the early modern period weren't associated with universities. It wasn't until the 19th century when universities rolled out the research doctorate and this became the union-card for intellectuals, professors and scientists, that universities started to monopolize intellectual life. It's when many of our academic subjects appeared as separate categories (when "science" separated from "natural philosophy" for example) and it's part of the ongoing institutionalization of all aspects of human life.

That was once the role of the high-school diploma. I remember people who grew up in the first half of the twentieth century being very proud of their high-school diplomas. They were sometimes more demanding than bachelors degrees today, demanding some basic literacy in Greek and Latin for example.

But when everyone has a diploma, possession of a diploma no longer enables us to separate out the extraordinary individuals. So attention moves to graduate degrees and the process is inexorably dumbed-down.

I'm increasingly inclined to agree. It varies though.

In the actual productive performing, visual and literary arts, universities are less influential. A university degree isn't necessary to become a good musician, artist or writer. Many of the biggest names in these areas are informally taught.

But... a whole crowd of "scholars" has gathered around these subjects. While it isn't necessary to be university educated to be a professional artist, it certainly is to become a professional art theorist or oftentimes even a critic for the bigger urban newspapers. The people that tell everyone else what to think about art and what it all means. Many of these art theorists never produce any art of their own but instead have written dissertations associating various artists and their art works with various trendy French theorists or contemporary political obsessions.

Yes, yes, yes, that's the reductio of most of general education. Science is treated the same way.

Couldn't agree more.

 

It's not totally dragging things off-topic, it's more like a detour

https://www.king5.com/article/news/scammers-are-targeting-students-with-promises-of-paying-off-loans/281-717b0c31-0e01-46a2-94fc-f7f2139671d9?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

I think it really opens up questioning as to the utility of some of these fields. Critics blasted Mickey Spillane. Yet, people loved his books and he sold many of them. I think that Dan Brown's writing is crap but he has sold millions of copies. What does it mean for a piece of art to be "good?" And does that definition factor in popularity and reception? Should it? Why am I reading a literary critic in the Times ripping apart the latest release? They are telling me what to think. But they aren't even really influencing people all that much.

But the critics and theorists are also seldom PhDs. They're people who studied this stuff in school and now make a living by, well, being critics. Applying a very critical, and at times wholly cynical, color to something. The big newspapers tell us that this is somehow helpful to us. And they'll continue to do it as long as those individuals help them to sell more papers. That is their goal, after all. Not contributing to a discipline. Not enriching our society. They want to sell papers. I imagine criticism sells more than praise.

If one of my kids came up to me and said "Dad, I want to be an artist." I'd want them to go to school and refine their skills to be the best artist they can be. I would hope that they would be pursuing a discipline that can be refined as in fine art. Go to the best painting schools. Become the best painter you can be.

Unfortunately, I am also aware that there are a plethora of BFA and MFA programs out there where you can get a degree in art without doing actual art, taught by people who also have never made art. You emerge able to shock people or make political statements. A former colleague of mine, who had a BFA and was able to wiggle her way into HR, who was very proud of the fact that her BFA from a well respected school had no instruction whatsoever. No one actually taught her anything. Every semester she'd sign up for "classes" and be assigned a professor. That professor would then say "make me a project. Anything you like" by the end of the semester. She tells tails of massive structures made of duct tape designed to make a statement about the patriarchy. As she had gone to study painting she had to sign up for a separate painting course after graduation. Her BFA never actually taught her fine arts.

So, I mean, I fail to see why that should be allowed but we shouldn't let other disciplines get a bit more experimental. The people who are going and taking classes are often not emerging with much more knowledge than my colleague with the duct tape womb.*

*In fairness, she showed us pictures and it was kind of cool. I don't think it was 9 undergrad credits worth of cool, but it was cool.

 

People talk about free college degrees as if that's a new, radical concept.

It's not. I have two of them.