The humanities should be harder

Low standards have devalued non-STEM study

Credit: SeventyFour

If you major in philosophy, as I did, you will inevitably get jokes about whether they’re hiring at the philosophy factory. The truth, though, is that philosophy majors have above-average earnings compared to the typical college graduate. And that’s not just a function of would-be philosophers going to law school. People whose terminal degree is a bachelor’s in philosophy earn pretty good money.

Most philosophy departments have a line about this, pitching students on the very real value of the skills that philosophy undergraduates practice.

I don’t think those departmental lines are wrong, exactly. Skills like reading texts closely, understanding the logical structure of arguments, and writing persuasively certainly do come in handy in a wide range of settings. That said, I don’t think this explains much about the relative earning power of a philosophy degree. The skills you learn studying history — reading documents, evaluating evidence — are also broadly applicable. What’s interesting isn’t that philosophy-type skills have some utility, it’s that philosophy majors earn more than history majors or English majors or students of other traditional, non-STEM academic topics.

And I think Scotty Hendricks nailed the explanation in a Big Think piece he wrote a couple of years ago: philosophy majors earn more because philosophy majors are smarter, on average, than students of other traditional liberal arts disciplines.

But why are philosophy majors smarter?

I don’t fully understand the historical or sociological factors behind this. Whatever the factors are, though, they are highly contingent. Philosophy professors have higher GRE scores than professors of English or history or sociology. They run classes that are relatively difficult and that dissuade people from pursuing the major unless they’re smart and hardworking. Philosophy graduate programs don’t have many slots to offer, and the few slots they have go to people with high GRE scores. And the cycle continues.

I was thinking about this the other day when I saw a round of Twitter discourse expressing frustration that English and history students don’t get the same respect as STEM students

.

I believe deeply in the value of studying literature and history and philosophy and big ideas. And DOGE just gave the entire country an object lesson in the dangers of Arrogant Smart STEM Guy Syndrome.

But if you want respect, you need to earn that respect. The way to make humanistic learning more respected and prestigious, it seems to me, is to make the classes harder. Assign more work. Grade the work more harshly. Get the laziest and dumbest students to opt out. And then repeat the cycle.

The gut-course equilibrium

This is a touchy subject, so I want to be clear. I’m talking here specifically about undergraduate education. What happens beyond that, I have much less information on, and the relevant considerations seem different.

And I’m not saying that studying undergraduate-level humanities is inherently easier than studying a science or engineering topic.

In fact, I’m saying the reverse.