The "Here's what I'm reading in grad school" thread.

The bolded may have been what you intended by what you wrote. But it is NOT the meaning of what you wrote. Strike two for you.

You then refer to a post of yours within the thread where you specify your rules of the game. Excellent. Except those rules are not consistent with how you titled the thread. You really had a simple solution to that inconsistency: correct the bloody title.

It was the title of the thread, not your posting within, that I was responding to. Nice sleight of hand, McCullough, in pretending otherwise; unless you are indeed sincere and it was simple incompetence on your part.

To make the point utterly clear [although I must respect your ability to play obtuse], if there is a BS thread on a match where recent/ongoing results are discussed it is not assumed that one should scan for posts to find a statement that such results are to be revealed. That information, for the sake of clarity of what may be found within the thread, is put directly in the title. You fail on that basic BS regard.
But you fail on a more essential point. Your title in no way restricts the thread to what Jacen McCullough is reading in graduate school. Another essential aspect of graduate studies in the humanities, and in any field of serious enquiry, is clarity of expression. Now that is ,apparently, hard for you to admit, never mind practice. Too much of play with quotations and that ol' ironic sensibility has done you wrong, mancrusher. Take your thread, press that ignore button, and go back to gawping at the mirror of your own tribalistic vanities.

 

I can only read what theLostShortBus wrote because you quoted it (the ignore list is made for attention junkies like him), but I did get a kick out of the irony.

He infests the thread originally by, in part, dissing the humanities, but he then proceeds to display a complete inability to read a pretty clear post, and in fact muddles the post deliberately in a manner that used to be employed by Assistant Professors of Literature trying to establish their credibility as Derridean deconstructionists. So in short, he professes superiority to the humanities while simultaneously enacting the rhetoric employed by the worst practitioners thereof. Unintentional humor of the highest order.

 

I was in a seminar taught by Susan Miller for about two weeks. She's batshit insane. Judging by the table of contents, though,

(http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail-contents.aspx?ID=13403)

...she put together a pretty solid introduction to the discipline. Not sure how Freire holds up. There are some interesting ideas in his book about community-based teaching of adult literacy in Brazil, but I was never convinced that those ideas were applicable to American universities, or most public schools even. I'm curious how you'll see it, given your background. Dewey and Harris are pretty interesting. It could be a lot drier than it is.

 

...
Soil Behaviour and Critical State Soil Mechanics by David Muir Wood

 

Good lord. Thanks for speaking up. I don't like to place judgement calls on other disciplines, but the ridiculous amount of effort and praise spent into reading and reinterpreting works of literature over an over again with no contribution to new knowledge is just astounding.

I don't see a problem with reading these works of art as a hobby - but to make a career out of it?

Here's a list of the some of the books I've read recently

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Cancer-Robert-Weinberg/dp/0815340788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275428387&sr=8-1"]The Biology of Cancer[/ame] by [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A.-Weinberg/e/B001HMUX2A/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1275428387&sr=8-1"]Robert A. Weinberg[/ame]

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275428556&sr=8-1"]The Selfish Gene[/ame] by [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Dawkins/e/B000AQ3RBI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1275428556&sr=8-1"]Richard Dawkins[/ame]

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0451529065/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275428591&sr=8-1"]The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition[/ame] by [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Darwin/e/B000AQ3LK0/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1275428591&sr=8-1"]Charles Darwin[/ame]

and a bit more technical
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Bioinformatics-Chapman-Computer-Analysis/dp/1420063677/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275428454&sr=8-19"]R Programming for Bioinformatics (Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer Science & Data Analysis)[/ame] by [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Gentleman/e/B001IODPFO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1275428454&sr=8-19"]Robert Gentleman[/ame]

 

Well, it definitely doesn't help the humanities when they start calling themselves.... political scientists. Scientists???

 

and yet...

Of course, the merits of this statement are pretty seriously undercut by the following post....

I know of no college or university that places political science in the humanities. It's in the social sciences pretty much every place I've ever been.

 

My apologies, I lump all those disciplines into the same bin - it's just a different end of the bullsh!!t spectrum from a hard sciences perspective.

But it's a free world and thank god not everyone is doing the same thing. We need art, literature and philosophy. But it really strikes me strange to spend of a lot time writing dissertations on yet another interpretation of <fill in some popular writer> work. Where's the novelty/creativity in that? How does this advance anything? Not everything needs to have a market value, but c'mon... are these really stepping stones to anything?

I'm just asking...

 

It's worth pointing out the etymology of the word "science." In modern English, "science" has become coterminus what you call "hard sciences." But the word originally means "knowledge," or "branch of knowledge" or "manner of knowledge." In the German universities, upon which American universities were originally modelled, there were the "natural sciences," the "social sciences" and the "human sciences." (Though I think German univerisities would put what we call "social sciences" in with the "Geisteswessinschaften" (sp?) as opposed to the "Naturwessinshchaften."

In any case, the universe is complex enough that no one means of trying to understand it is going to be the least bit adequate. Hence the need for a lot of approaches, not all of which are going to be quantifiable or useful to corporations.

Then don't do it.

Well, if nothing else, they can help prevent what William Blake called Newton's "single vision," which is basically the belief that if the hard sciences can't quantify it, it can only be bullsh!!t.

 

(It's also worth pointing out that, what with the extreme bureaucratic and corporate mentality that has come to dominate universities, humanities programs are every bit as prone to "single vision" as anything else.

 

Strange, I thought modern American universities were based on the English approach. My brief visit to Cambridge left me with the impression that my liberal arts college education was modeled on their system.

I took lots of non-science courses in Philosophy/Religion, Music, Creative Writing, Political "Science", Economics, two foreign languages, and of course sciences and mathematics. As you can see from my admittedly sub-par vocabulary and writing skills, creative writing was the hardest. I have respect for good novel, creative writing. It is not easy to be a good writer. What I don't have respect for is endless, pointless babble over minutae which many graduate students of literature indulge themselves. In fact, most of the theses I have seen are rather well - pointless. I don't see the value in it. In science, publications are made as stepping stones toward increasing knowledge. Spending time trying to find the hidden meaning behind an author's story, or drawing perceived influences in later works a bit far fetched. Just have a look at:

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Companion-J-D-Salingers-Catcher/dp/1603810005/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275611692&sr=8-5"]Amazon.com: A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (9781603810005):Â…[/ame]

I mean c'mon. What's wrong with just reading the damn book and enjoying the story for what it is??? Besides - it's just fiction afterall. Just imagine all the man hours spent reanalyzing the same book to death. And this isn't the only one out there.

The world would be a very sad place if science were the only way to understand the world. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't question the use of human resources for some approaches to human knowledge that are of questionable value. In science (and I mean experimental basic research), it is normal to toss out hypotheses and old ways of thinking. In literature, it seems to me that more and more just gets piled on to the point that its just a bunch of obscure navel gazing that very little value outside of a small clique of people.

Quite right and well put.

 

Once again, just because you don't see the value doesn't mean there's no value. Thank God people who don't see the value in paleontology or evolutionary biology have been beaten down in the courts over and over.

But you're exhibiting the same limited imagination that fundamentalists exhibit because they can't see the merits of teaching evolution in biology classes.

Well, if those publications which make previous work irrelevant are going to be, themselves, irrelevant some day in the future, why bother?

Wait, you think it's about "hidden meanings"? That's really not what's being done in Humanities programs. That's not even what's being done in high school English classes, though some of the less-well prepared college freshman seem to think that's what they were doing.

Storytelling is one of the primary ways by which human beings come to understand themselves. Salinger is pretty good at it, and his fiction provides a lot of insight into the lives of over-indulged adolescents at a particular time in history when adolescents were being over-indulged to a degree never before experienced. So you're right on one level, it is just a story. But there are a lot of things going on in that story, and that story participates in very interesting ways in the larger culture in which it (still) exists as well as in the personal lives of some readers who find it moving.

Furthermore, stories are a tremendous form of knowledge that are so embedded in our culture that we don't even pay close attention to how they work, and if we lose the capacity to pay close attention to how stories work in novels, we'll eventually lose the capacity to pay attention to a lot of other things that go on in our lives, too.

You're not thinking like a scientist here, you're thinking like a not particularly imaginative business man. Sadly, higher education is coming more and more under control of such people, and should that trend continue, the natural and physical sciences will be damaged just as much as the humanities.

It sounds here like you want to toss out those people who somehow, somewhere, have offended your sensibilities, rather than promote a diversity of intellectual approaches.

 

True. It is a very subjective opinion - but it based on some first hand experience. I am very thankful for my liberal arts education which exposed me to things outside of the sciences.

But I've got to admit, maybe I hold a bit of contempt for these areas of study. Most of the humanities courses (and I'm not talking 101 stuff) are much easier compared to the sciences. The grading is subjective (especially if you tend to match the professor's point of view) and doesn't give me the impression that anything gets accomplished, other than showing off how one can argue their way through something, no matter how convoluted the logic.

It's not limited imagination - its about overstating the significance of such work that I have a problem with. I enjoyed my Eastern Religions classes, I enjoyed my Spanish Literature and reading the works of Borges and Julio Cortazar (my favorite being The End of the Game short story). But I don't claim my literary criticism of their work is going to "change the world".

I would encourage you to read this from The Chronicle:

http://www.chroniclecareers.com/blogPost/The-Humanities-Have-No-Purpose/6738/

Just because something is beautiful doesn't mean it has far reaching usefullness beyond the pleasure it gives when read.

The question is, what are you doing to better humanity through, for example, literary criticism? Is it going to change the world, or is it really just a cover for you to just indulge in something that pleases only you and nobody else (ok, you and the other humanities students) ? There's nothing wrong with that - I just wish sometimes people from the humanities would admit this.

It's not like every scientist that collects and catalogs all those beetles can claim to help in the fight against cancer, right?

Yes but the goal is a bit different - it's to fill in pieces of missing knowledge about the natural world. Not to fill in and pile-on interpretations of a fictional world of some author.

Actually, you've made a very convincing argument here and I really appreciate that you've opened my mind a bit. I guess if you approach it as some sort of "archaeology" then I can appreciate it some more.

This is true. I don't like what I am seeing now with this trend of "everyone must go to college". College has replaced high school. People think it will be their ticket to a decent middle class life. But they also have to understand that some of these humanities studies were once the domain of the rich and idle. And they had the luxury to study these things and sit around and "discuss" the last book they read with their old college chums and country club pals.

I encourage you again to read that link above and let me know what you think.

Yes, actually I am annoyed when the humanities whine about how the sciences get better funding. These, the same people that need Lipitor, Xanax, and Gleevec and whatever else are now complaining that the people who do the basic research to make the foundation of understanding for the biomedical medicine that they benefit from are competing with them for education funding and how "unfair" it is. That we get paid for our PhDs, while they do not.

 

I don't have time today to respond to all of your points, and I might not until late next week. But first, here are a few things on which I agree with you:

1)

The only thing I might disagree about is the ticket to a middle class life: I think that, thanks in large part to a variety of forces often called "Globalization," those jobs aren't going to be there -ever again- for a huge segment of our population. The trend to see college as the new high school seems to be a political move to conceal that fact, and colleges are going to be blamed for their "failure" to solve those problems that are outside their domain (but scapegoating education is an American tradition). And frankly, I think it might be more accurate to say that NOW college is the new high school, but in the near future it might be more accurate to say "College in the New Vocational School."

2)

Grade inflation is a huge problem (though from what I can tell, it's as much of a problem in undergraduate business programs as it is in Humanities). I don't think grading in the Humanities it's always and everywhere entirely subjective, and even if it is, the same thing occurs in natural and physical sciences when fields are undergoing what used to be called paradigm shifts. To which I'd say, so what? A huge part of life is dealing with questions and issues that have undefined parameters, and these occur in every discipline. And for every professor who demands students agree with him or her, I know several who actually welcome well-thought out dissenting opinions: the problem is we've raised a few generations of students who think their opinion is valuable, whether they can support it in a rational and compelling manner or not.


3)

I agree. You do

Along these lines, this ad hominem is a bit extreme

Come on.

And as for funding, I got paid for every semester of my education. Well, I got some fellowships: I also got paid for teaching. Anyone I know who even thinks of grad school in the humanities should be advised to avoid it if they have to take out loans.

And in terms of funding for programs right now, I don't mind sciences getting more money because of their greater utilitarian value, and that seems to be the dominant paradigm for trustees and legislators, and will be for the foreseeable future. What I object to, though, is only things that are perceived as immediately profitable IN THE SCIENCES get funding. I have a cousin with a Ph.D. in physics who was a great teacher and researcher, but his program got cut because it had no military application. That utilitarianism will, in the long run, hurt the sciences as much as it already has the humanities, and it's why I think the universities in the future will be closer to Voc-Ed programs than high schools.

I remember reading that when it came out. I may have commented on it, but if so, I can't directly recall what I said. Probably something about how she mis-characterized Henry Adams, who did in fact criticize his Harvard education for not preparing him for the future, while all throughout the book he very quietly demonstrates an ability to adapt to changes and understand his era far better than nearly anyone else on the planet. In short, what passed for a humanistic education in his day did, ironically, prepare him very well for the future that no one could've foreseen in his undergraduate days.

Bettering humanity is a lot to ask anyone. My wife has over 150 letters in a file from former students, though, very few of them English majors, who wrote a few (or several) years into their adult lives to thank her for pushing them so hard through things like Paradise Lost or the novels of Willa Cather. When she mentioned the latest at a faculty meeting at her college, she was astonished to see that other professors were surprised (a marketing prof and an engineering prof were most surprised) that students contacted her about anything but a recommendation (btw, the engineering prof in question is learning Chinese for professional purposes but also so he will eventually be able to read Li Po and Han Shan. The bastard). So there's some value there, but you'd never convince the sort of people that get elected to state legislatures that that means anything.

In terms of scholarship, this is a more complex question than I think you realize: I personally don't think the current model for promotion and tenure at universities has very much merit outside of the natural and physical sciences, but it's not something that the humanities chose for themselves. Rather, it was forced upon them when Universities, following the lead of Johns Hopkins in the late 19th century, decided that the model useful for scientific research was to be the model for every other discipline. Needless to say, I don't think it's a very good one. Perhaps we can add this to the things we agree on.

Again, we don't know. But so what? Beetles can possibly tell us things about our environment that we have no other way of knowing. But if we cut funding to entymology on utilitarian grounds, we will close off several possible avenues of knowledge.

 

Gaucho leaves a LOT to be commented, but I haven't the time nor the energy to address them all. I'm taking a break from the "easy" task of researching sexuality in Western Europe as it is tied in with (Bolshevik) revolutionary rhetoric in the 1920's...

1. Humanities are "easy". I was a straight A student as an undergrad and I studied just as much if not more than my science cohorts. I collected a pretty decent library as an undergrad, and I read all those books in their entirety, except for a few excessively long 19th century Realist novels and early 20th century works (looking at you, Proust), mainly b/c in class we read excerpts.

Now as a prof, my content courses that are "easy" are the bridge courses that, frankly, we have to dumb down b/c we don't want to scare away students. Oh, and the ones who complain most vociferously about having to have a firm grasp of history and theories of cultural production and then apply it to cultural analysis? Science majors. Everything has to be broken down for them b/c heaven forbid they ... you know... have to think critically.

My upper division advanced courses require so much reading that they can hardly be categorized as easy. The difference is that we get to talk about beautiful works of literature and art, or seminal films and how these works were so important that they have influenced videos and films that our students enjoy today outside of class. It's kind of fun.

How fun is it to talk about chemical components of parasite colonies in seaweed and slight shifts in ph balance affects the gestation period of mollusks in a remote island off Newfoundland?

2. The overemphasis on and excessive respect of the sciences leads to pure stupidity when it comes to the financial management of a university. Here's the reality:

The sciences have massive overhead when it comes to equipment, space and salaries (b/c they compete w/ the private sector). Humanities doesn't. The sciences are the football of the academic world, the humanities are the futbol. One is prohibitively expensive. The other is the cheapest form of entertainment in town.

When you look at what classes we require students to take in order to get a more complete education, you'll see that they're not taking too many science courses. And yet, universities fund the sciences w/o even blinking an eye, and cut cut cut the humanities.

Here's a fact: Humanities are CASH COWS. That's the dirty little secret that they keep from us all.

Sciences are parasites of the humanities, not vice versa.

 

Just to chime in on the grading aspect of humanities classes...

I'm a junior Poli Sci/History student and all of my tests are always 1-2 essays plus 5-7 identification terms (who, what, where, when, why, significance) that are sort of "mini-essays," if you will. I'll concede -- to a degree -- that grading in these sorts of tests can be subjective. Really, though, is that so bad? If I write a horrible essay that is anything but coherent, I deserve to get points knocked off. A student should be able to craft a well-argued thesis and support it with examples. In this regard, grading is a bit subjective.

However, there is most definitely a part of these tests that is not subjective in the least bit. Even if I were to write a free-flowing, wonderfully argued/constructed essay, it would be completely worthless if it had no content or information of any merit. This is especially true with identification terms. You can't BS your way through explaining the Rush-Bagot Treat of 1817 if you don't know a thing about it.

Humanities, in my opinion, are a mix of knowledge over the subject and ability to display that knowledge effectively.

My 2¢.

 

I don't think college is enough anymore. I think the general populace overwhelmingly *thinks* that it will be a ticket, but as you said it will not be the case. The speaker at my brother's college graduation made an excellent point to the graduates: think about careers that cannot be outsourced!

Completely agree.

Business majors are a joke. Just a step above Communications majors.

True, but in many "humanities" courses, particularly history and politics, I found many professors to push personal agendas and dismiss opposing opinions. Most annoying to me were the Latin American Studies professors who thought that they knew it all because they visited South America at least once a year and wrote some papers/books on a narrow subject. Yeah OK, whatever Mr. Expert.

I 100% agree - the people taking on loans are just crazy if you ask me.

Look, I'm not against learning for the sake of learning. Heck, a great deal of my classes were just learning for the sake of it, and have absolutely little utilitarian use. College should be about broadening the mind, learning to think in different ways, and beginning to learn a bit about being critical and analytical about information given to you.

What I am against is the selling of the humanities as having utilitarian value equal to that of the sciences. What changes more lives? Creating the drug cocktail to maintain millions of HIV-infected Africans alive, or writing yet another political science theory of the Congo by some Prof. Smug who did Peace Corps for 1 year in Africa who now has tenure at Swarthmore College ? That's not to say Prof. Smug literary work is supposed to change the world, but it's really hard to quantify how that contribution has benefits for future generations. Of course, plenty of science is not found to be useful until years later (Mendel is an example).

This is true - the impact on an individual student is underrated. I owe a lot to my mentors and teachers. They can make all the difference for a lot of students.

Tenure is a topic that gets my blood boiling. In fact, I don't even think it merits to be in the sciences anymore. Humanities graduates have long suffered taking adjunct positions, teaching for barely nothing, while all the tenured professors sit pretty getting to do their research and throw their teaching load onto graduate students and adjuncts. In science we are now seeing a huge problem with this system - young scientists are getting taken advantage of left and right. It's no wonder Americans are not pursuing sciences anymore - the career prospects are terrible if you want to stay in academia. Meanwhile the tenured professors want to keep importing foreigners and extend the length of postdocs. Now that their 401Ks have gone to crap, we'll have to wait until they die before positions are freed up.

 

Most annoying to me are students who have no background in the study of race, gender and culture dismissing the years of study on the subject b/c they are from X country and/or their family -- w/ a cumulative total of 0 years of study on these issues -- perpetuate centuries of injustice and lack of critical self-analysis of the nation.

For example:

"It's ridiculous to say that Blacks are treated differently in Venezuela / Colombia / Ecuador / PickYourCountry. Everybody is poor. Even whites are poor. And Blacks do not see themselves as being different. This is all just the in invention of US academics at places like Swarthmore who have nothing better to do."

And in the same breath they'll say how much they like the (Afro-Cuban) poet Nicolas Guillen. (Think, "What happens to a Dream Deferred" and multiply the anger by ... oh... 1000.)



The thing is... when you talk to Blacks in Latin America in front of whites, they'll say exactly the above. "We're all Panamanians. Of course."

But isolated, they tell a sharply different story.

This is just one of the accusations I get. From intro classes. Once a student takes another 3+ classes in the major, they have a lot more nuanced understanding of things and the less these accusations come up.

Another one of my favorite accusations of my ignorance, "Did the poet/novelist/painter really mean to do X?"

No. The poet who has spent 60 hours a week over the last 25 years reading and writing poetry had absolutely no intention of using a literary device. No. A painter who has spent his entire life painting had no idea that he was creating a perfect triangle to frame the major theme in his painting. You're absolutely right. I'm totally wrong. I must have misread the hundreds of thousands of pages that I've read on literature and art. Hey. Congrats! I heard you finished reading your first complete book of poetry this morning before class!

So I ask you: is it b/c they've visited Latin America a dozen times or is it bc they've read thousands of books and articles and have published in peer reviewed journals and in scholarly presses on the subject?

Can you not read what you wrote?

You just wrote that part of the beauty of education is that it teaches you to think critically, to think in different ways. I'll add that it teaches you to read and write at a high level. (Psssst. Something you scientists need so that you can get grants to carry out your all important research.)

Obviously, we in the humanities have failed you.

Let me spell it out: poli sci related to the Congo is to 1.) teach you how to think critically and hopefully 2.) give a sense of awareness so that you can be a more informed citizen.

I don't use the info that I learned about amoebas, but it trained me to think like a scientist, which is good for the brain.

 

Unfortunately, many science majors think science is just about learning facts. It is not. Yes you must understand what has been already achieved and memorize all the terminology associated with the background of science. But in the end, critical thinking is at the core of science, and none of them will get very far if they do not learn that. I personally think it takes more critical thinking to solve the problems of, for example. human genome sequencing than it does to argue if some artist/writer/film director got his influence from some other artist/write/film director. Because in the end, it's all about dealing in opinions over human behavior rather than empirical facts of nature.

Let's admit, we've all got scholars in our respective fields that study some boring ass sh!!t.

Reality check for you: Professors in biology, chemistry, physics, math, medicine and engineering at big schools are required to get major grants (eg, NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, Howard Hughes) to get tenure. No grant, no tenure. The university then takes ~50% cut right off the top from these grants to pay for administration.

Over 5 years, my grad advisor acquired ~$800K in grants. Her university salary was ~$55K, and she taught 1-3 courses a year. My current advisor typically gets $3-4 mill every five years and probably gets a $125-150K salary. He also teaches 1-3 courses a year. Both are now tenured and have remained productive. Both financially support grad students and postdocs, which comes *after* the 50% cut. They also both use facilities which they pay for *on top of* the 50% cut. Furthermore, their research is drawing undergrads to their schools, students who pay tuition. I think both universities are getting a great deal.

Academic scientists are teaching and doing research, while contributing to the operating costs of the university. How many religion professors can say that?

 

Put in like terms, it's like saying that calculus is more difficult than long division.

Tracing influences is something taught in lower division. Yeah, it's used in higher level aesthetic analysis, much like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are used in advanced math.

If you wish to study human behavior, stick to psychology for the individual, sociology for the group.

Art and lit are about the phenomenon of human aesthetic production, about human creativity and what that reveals about society and individuals.

Aesthetic creativity is a fact of life. Language use is a fact of life. As such, there are indeed empirical facts of nature to be studied. The difficulty is that things aren't as cut and dry like they are in science.

Which, by the way, is quite dynamic. Today's "empirical fact" is tomorrow's cute relic of times past...

True.

But at least in the humanities we can actually ... you know ... show interest and respect for our colleagues in the sciences.

Not necessarily the case at non-PhD granting schools.

And reality check for you: most students in this country do NOT go to those big schools.

Probably a lot more than the sciences.

Tuition from humanities contributes more money to general funds and receives the least amount of economic return on that money. Across the board. Private. Public. You name it.

The reality is that bang for your buck: investing in humanities is thee best way for a university to make a name for itself. That's how Duke and NYU were able to skyrocket to the top w/in the last 20-25 years.

 

Students With Humanities Background Do Equally Well in Med School

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100261811