I think debt cancellation would make sense as a sort of amnesty if it came together with some kind of reform that has the goal of preventing the situation from repeating in the future, whatever that may be. Otherwise, it’s just a one off with the downsides you mention.
The problem is that fundamentally the argument is that humanities studies have positive externalities that aren’t reflected in the salary of their graduates. I don’t dismiss this argument, though I think with humanities a lot of value is provided by the very top percentile (e.g. a handful of very capable historians will write books that will be read by millions, most others will do very little unless they teach). In that sense there may be a need to subsidize the humanity degrees, but that might be best done in the long run with things like fully paid bursaries for deserving candidates. There’s also a problem of evaluation because of course if you push such an argument you must accept some political accountability, and right now humanities are often terrible at making a case for themselves (every discussion about this I see tends to degenerate into “you can not appreciate our sophisticated knowledge, you bumpkins, but somehow studying humanities makes you a Better Person, so just accept it and thank us for our existence”, which isn’t terribly persuading. And at the very least, that the experts in subjects most closely associated with rhetoric and the understanding of human nature are so awful at persuasion is in itself concerning).
Agreed. Quite aside from questions about whether the govt should be subsiding university education (I think it should) it is clear that retroactive cancelation of debt is the wrong way to do it.
Price controls or subsidies going forwards (for new students) would have a better long term impact, and would also help poorer students more. Right now there are probably people out there who chose not to get a degree, or to get a different one, because they were worried about the debt. We can assume those people mostly were poor, and probably still are. They are the real victims of debt relief landing out of the blue. Imagine, that rich kid who took your place when you couldn’t afford uni now get a government bailout. Rich getting richer. Making the actual upfront price lower helps the next generation of these people more than it helps anyone else.
I’m skeptical a humanities education doesn’t show up in earnings. Coming out of Daniel Gross and Tyler Cowen’s Talent book, they argue a common theme they personally see among the very successful scouters of talent is the ability to “speak different cultural languages”, which they also claim is helped along by being widely read in the humanities.
I expect it matters a lot less whether this is an autodidactic thing or a school thing, and plausibly autodidactic humanities is better suited for this particular benefit than school learned humanities, since if reading a text on your own, you can truly inhabit the world of the writer, whereas in school you need to constantly tie that world back into acceptable 12 pt font, double-spaced, times new roman, MLA formatted academic standards. And of course, in such an environment there are a host of thoughts you cannot think or argue for, and in some corners the conclusions you reach are all but written at the bottom of your paper for you.
Edit: I’ll also note that I like Tyler Cowen’s perspective on the state of humanities education among the populace, which he argues is at an all-time high, no thanks to higher education pushing it. Why? Because there is more discussion & more accessible discussion than ever before about all the classics in every field of creative endeavor (indeed, such documents are often freely accessible on Project Gutenberg, and the music & plays on YouTube), more & perhaps more interesting philosophy than ever before, and more universal access to histories and historical documents than there ever was in the past. The humanities are at an all-time high thanks to the internet. Why don’t people learn more of them? Its not for lack of access, so subsidizing access will be less efficient than subsidizing the fixing of the actual problem, which is… what? I don’t know. Boredom maybe? If its boredom, better to subsidize the YouTubers, podcasters, and TikTokers than the colleges (if you’re worried about the state of humanities with regard to their own metrics of success—say, rhetoric—then who better to be the spokespeople?).
I’m skeptical a humanities education doesn’t show up in earnings.
The question is more about whether a humanities degree does. It may be that the humanities “genius” is not something you catch in a bottle successfully. After all, the most successful authors don’t usually come out of a special Author College. An employer might appreciate theoretically the talent without thinking it significantly correlates with any one degree. And on the other hand, someone like Steve Jobs certainly did have quite a bit of this knack—design and branding require artistic sensibility—yet he’s mainly seen as a STEM figure.
If its boredom, better to subsidize the YouTubers, podcasters, and TikTokers than the colleges
The problem with this is that there absolutely are plenty of humanities studies that require time, impartiality and rigour, and that sort of format has all the wrong incentives for it. I think in many ways the subdivision is sort of artificial. History or philology for example are, much like natural sciences, digging towards one truth that theoretically exists, but is inaccessible save for indirect evidence. They’re not creative, artistic or particularly subjective pursuits. “Human sciences” would be a more appropriate name for them.
I think debt cancellation would make sense as a sort of amnesty if it came together with some kind of reform that has the goal of preventing the situation from repeating in the future, whatever that may be. Otherwise, it’s just a one off with the downsides you mention.
The problem is that fundamentally the argument is that humanities studies have positive externalities that aren’t reflected in the salary of their graduates. I don’t dismiss this argument, though I think with humanities a lot of value is provided by the very top percentile (e.g. a handful of very capable historians will write books that will be read by millions, most others will do very little unless they teach). In that sense there may be a need to subsidize the humanity degrees, but that might be best done in the long run with things like fully paid bursaries for deserving candidates. There’s also a problem of evaluation because of course if you push such an argument you must accept some political accountability, and right now humanities are often terrible at making a case for themselves (every discussion about this I see tends to degenerate into “you can not appreciate our sophisticated knowledge, you bumpkins, but somehow studying humanities makes you a Better Person, so just accept it and thank us for our existence”, which isn’t terribly persuading. And at the very least, that the experts in subjects most closely associated with rhetoric and the understanding of human nature are so awful at persuasion is in itself concerning).
Agreed. Quite aside from questions about whether the govt should be subsiding university education (I think it should) it is clear that retroactive cancelation of debt is the wrong way to do it.
Price controls or subsidies going forwards (for new students) would have a better long term impact, and would also help poorer students more. Right now there are probably people out there who chose not to get a degree, or to get a different one, because they were worried about the debt. We can assume those people mostly were poor, and probably still are. They are the real victims of debt relief landing out of the blue. Imagine, that rich kid who took your place when you couldn’t afford uni now get a government bailout. Rich getting richer. Making the actual upfront price lower helps the next generation of these people more than it helps anyone else.
I’m skeptical a humanities education doesn’t show up in earnings. Coming out of Daniel Gross and Tyler Cowen’s Talent book, they argue a common theme they personally see among the very successful scouters of talent is the ability to “speak different cultural languages”, which they also claim is helped along by being widely read in the humanities.
I expect it matters a lot less whether this is an autodidactic thing or a school thing, and plausibly autodidactic humanities is better suited for this particular benefit than school learned humanities, since if reading a text on your own, you can truly inhabit the world of the writer, whereas in school you need to constantly tie that world back into acceptable 12 pt font, double-spaced, times new roman, MLA formatted academic standards. And of course, in such an environment there are a host of thoughts you cannot think or argue for, and in some corners the conclusions you reach are all but written at the bottom of your paper for you.
Edit: I’ll also note that I like Tyler Cowen’s perspective on the state of humanities education among the populace, which he argues is at an all-time high, no thanks to higher education pushing it. Why? Because there is more discussion & more accessible discussion than ever before about all the classics in every field of creative endeavor (indeed, such documents are often freely accessible on Project Gutenberg, and the music & plays on YouTube), more & perhaps more interesting philosophy than ever before, and more universal access to histories and historical documents than there ever was in the past. The humanities are at an all-time high thanks to the internet. Why don’t people learn more of them? Its not for lack of access, so subsidizing access will be less efficient than subsidizing the fixing of the actual problem, which is… what? I don’t know. Boredom maybe? If its boredom, better to subsidize the YouTubers, podcasters, and TikTokers than the colleges (if you’re worried about the state of humanities with regard to their own metrics of success—say, rhetoric—then who better to be the spokespeople?).
The question is more about whether a humanities degree does. It may be that the humanities “genius” is not something you catch in a bottle successfully. After all, the most successful authors don’t usually come out of a special Author College. An employer might appreciate theoretically the talent without thinking it significantly correlates with any one degree. And on the other hand, someone like Steve Jobs certainly did have quite a bit of this knack—design and branding require artistic sensibility—yet he’s mainly seen as a STEM figure.
The problem with this is that there absolutely are plenty of humanities studies that require time, impartiality and rigour, and that sort of format has all the wrong incentives for it. I think in many ways the subdivision is sort of artificial. History or philology for example are, much like natural sciences, digging towards one truth that theoretically exists, but is inaccessible save for indirect evidence. They’re not creative, artistic or particularly subjective pursuits. “Human sciences” would be a more appropriate name for them.