Higher education is about more than job training: Open

[Into the Night]

Yet another thread trying to impose censorship. The BidenWannabe still hasn't figure it out. Bringing it out for open discussion.

The OP:

By Audrey Bilger, President of Reed College.

A broad-based curriculum educates young people to be productive members of society who contribute to the overall well-being of those around them, from adding beauty through art to solving problems with the latest scientific breakthroughs. A liberal arts and science education is an education for life.

We nurture biologists who are also watercolor artists; dancers who study computer science; psychology majors who are creative writers. The ability to draw insight and inspiration from across disciplines leads to innovation and the betterment of society.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/humanities-college.html

 

[Into the Night]

Citizens. Full participants. Not workers.

The BidenWannabe is apparently not aware that most liberal arts graduates work in fast food or other minimum wage jobs. Their degree winds up being quite useless.
These two posts sound like an advertisement for Reed college, an institution located in a State that teaches that 2+2=4 is racist.

 

[Into the Night]

The point of studying art history, philosophy, English literature is not to prepare to build widgets or sell insurance.

The point is to prepare to be a rational being.

Ultimate truth, authenticity, and beauty are not found in widgets, spreadsheets, software. They are found in art, literature, rational contemplation.

It isn't religion, Sock.

 

[Into the Night]

We need people who can invent and build the next widget far more than someone who is trying to make a career of selling modern art. Without the widgets, those who luxuriate in the arts couldn't exist at all. The arts don't build modern society, science and engineering do. The arts add to it certainly.

The arts without science and engineering end up being little more than:

Artisans, craftsmen, and tradesmen are also a necessity ahead of the arts. They create and make the tools and materials society needs to function. The liberal arts only function because people like them with scientists and engineers made it possible for people to have leisure time to create art, music, and the like.

Reed unfortunately has little in engineering, science, or even computer science.

 

[Into the Night]

It sounds like you didn't go to college.

I was able to take elective class in art history, music appreciation, English literature, history, while still taking all the classes neccessary for a STEM degree.

Did you realize College students are required and encouraged to take elective classes?

Liberal arts colleges don't have electives, twit.
You don't know history, you obviously can't spell, and I bet you couldn't code your way out of a wet paper bad or know which end of a soldering iron to hold.

 

[Into the Night]

It's clear you never took any science, math, engineering, or other classes where you had to actually produce results, if you even ever went to college.

Good call. BidenWannabe is well known for boasting about things he isn't.

 

[Into the Night]

You lie all the time. You're a joke.

...annnnnnd his lame response, trying to blame others for his own problems.

 

[Into the Night]

I did. Those courses were 'fluff' ones you did as electives. Sure, they can be useful in a secondary role to life, or in the pursuit of a hobby, but they aren't the ones that are likely to lead to a productive career.

In a liberal arts school like Reed, there really is no such thing as electives. Those are in high school, not such a college.

You are quite right. Reed doesn't teach much that is useful in a productive career.

 

[Into the Night]

Leibniz invented the calculus. And he wrote about metaphysics as well. You're just a fucking know nothing moron.

Nope. Kepler and Newton did. Leibniz invented the symbols that are used for it now, but that's all.

 

[Into the Night]

He's one of several persons given that honor. So?

Quite right. Kepler was the first to calculate the volume of an irregular shape using calculus, and Newton used his own version along similar lines in geometry. Leibniz created the symbols and notation that we use today, but that's about it.

 

[Into the Night]

So history is full of people doing math, physics, philosophy and other imaginative work.

And you aren't one of them.

 

[Into the Night]

Adam Smith, inventor of the theory of capitalism, was not a professor in the business school. He was a professor of moral philosophy.

Adam Smith did not invent capitalism. It is not a thing that is 'invented'. It simply exists and has done for as long as the history of Man.

 

[Into the Night]

There are plenty of people to produce all of the above.

"Between 2010 and 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, the number of STEM bachelor’s degrees awarded grew by 62%, compared with 20% growth for all degrees."

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/

You really should try to stay on topic, Flash.

 

[Into the Night]

People like Gardner know nothing about higher education. He claims to have a graduate degree in history but he admits he only served in the military.

He quite probably makes a hell of a lot more money than YOU do!

 

[Into the Night]

Kind of hard to be in a school of business when none existed...

Yet you understand business...far more than BidenWannabe ever could.

 

[Into the Night]

My point exactly. You are learning.

You aren't making a point, Sock.

 

[Into the Night]

A related question:

What happens for the other roughly 67% of people who aren't college material and will never get a degree?

That depends entirely on their own initiative. Some can be quite successful. Bill Gates, for example, was a college dropout.

 

[Into the Night]

They end up being Trump jerks like you. Uneducated.

Education comes from more than just a liberal arts school, Sock. It also comes from experience, far more valuable. Your own illiteracy has already been shown.

 

[Into the Night]

fuck off troll

Back to your childish insults again...

 

[Into the Night]

Getting a job and paying the mortgage hardly counts as authentically human life.

So you figure that being unemployed, on welfare, and living on the streets like an animal is the 'authentic human life', eh?

Art history, music appreciation, English literature are supposed to open one's imagination and rationality to values and truths one does not get from an accounting course.

Art history is pretty meaningless. It doesn't put food on the table.
Listening to your stereo won't either.
Reading fiction won't either.

Values and truths are talking about religion, not books.

I see you do not value accounting, or how much a CPA can make. Don't like being a millionaire, eh?

But I'm sure a lot of MAGA don't really aspire to anything beyond drawing a paycheck and going comfortably numb.

You are describing yourself again. BTW, you took Pink Floyd's song out of context. He is not singing about a paycheck. Guess your 'music appreciation' course kinda sucked.