The Liberal Arts Major - Valuable or Parasite?

Do Philosophy or History or Literature majors have any role to play in society? Are these essentially luxury goods whose consumption is detracting from other, more "serious" majors like Physics or Mathematics? There is an increasing push to tailor education for commercial purposes. University after university has dropped or slashed liberal arts majors because they are not thought to be marketable. At the same time, the economy has become increasingly technical with a correspondingly higher demand for technically trained people.

This is not simply an academic debate. This is a debate for the heart and soul of a society. Economic growth depends on increasing technological skills. Thus universities which prepare future workers should concentrate on technical subjects. The problem lies in the increasing technological skills part. As the overall knowledge base in any field increases, it becomes more and more difficult for an individual to have an overall command of the subject. So perforce, individuals have to go for specialization. Even in this narrower area, developments are so rapid that there is a constant struggle to remain up to date.

Along with this rapid pace of technological change, a convergence of different technologies is simultaneously occurring. All of this is lauded as being unquestionably positive. However, these technologies are also having a major impact in the way in which we interact with each other. For example, social media has made possible connections with people whom an individual would not otherwise meet. There is greater and easier access to different types of information. It is possible to link up with friends using apps. Romances have blossomed and marriages have occurred because the protagonists met through Facebook or Twitter or email.

It is not just technological change that is occurring. There is rapid and massive societal change also occurring due to this technological change but which is also simultaneously feeding the latter. Social mores and values are being affected. The question is how do we determine whether these changes are positive or negative? Infact what do we mean by a positive or negative social change is a question that needs to be debated. So who is going to do that? The technically trained major? This person is taught a narrow subject. He/she is largely unaware of developments outside their area of expertise. However, this is an area where the "soft skill" majors do well. Liberal arts tends to train individuals to think, question, analyse and recommend. So the question actually should be can we as a society afford not to have liberal arts majors?

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Devaluing Education - III

It is impossible to predict in advance what type of education will be most useful later in life. That however has not prevented people from doing exactly this. The result as I have discussed before has been a narrowly focused educational system that excels at producing technocrats. What is the problem with that? This after all is the current requirement. All the market incentives are geared towards pushing people into a technically oriented education. Anything else is devalued with the consequence that potential students do not opt for such courses. The result is that increasingly higher educational institutions are closing down entire departments due to a lack of demand and increasing costs in providing the education to a shrinking pool of students.

This has several consequences. One consequence (that I highlighted earlier) is a gradual loss of innovation. This is perhaps a surprising conclusion. On the one hand, innovations build on previous ones. As knowledge progresses across many fields, ideas germinating in one area can fertilize another (sometimes completely different) area. As the body of innovation increases over time, such cross fertilizations become increasingly common. The result is an exponential increase in innovation which is exactly what we have seen in the last 10 years. However, for this process to work, ideas have to germinate across many fields. If there are barren patches amongst the productive ones, the potential for cross fertilization decreases. Furthermore, this tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Over time the barren patches become more so and effectively increase in size whilst the opposite happens to the productive patches. The result is that these latter become more and more isolated from each other. The scope for cross fertilization which is a necessary ingredient for innovation to occur deteriorates and the rate of innovation can actually slow down.

Another consequence of note is that technical innovation tends to run amok if there is no restraining influence. This influence is exerted by people trained in the humanities and arts that are currently being denigrated. Consider an example. The 19th century saw a series of amazing inventions. I would like to mention just two: the birth of the chemical industry and the invention of the machine gun. The former gave rise to amazing new products while the latter conferred an overwhelming military advantage to the Europeans over the rest of the world. Needless to say, there was quick and widespread adoption of both amongst the developed nations of the time. Nobody pondered over the full ramifications of both. These were highlighted by the horrors of chemical warfare and the mindless slaughter of millions on the battlefields of World War 1. Once a technology is invented or an innovation unveiled, it will be used. Sooner or later, it will be used for baleful purposes. If people end up being mere technocrats, they will be surprised when it is used for such purposes.

I read a lovely short story (called Profession) by Isaac Asimov that explores similar themes. The story posits a world whereby knowledge relevant to a person's career is literally downloaded into the brain. No need to tediously study for 18+ years. This was instant knowledge at the push of a button! Yet the question remained: where will the new innovations and inventions come from in such a scenario? Treating knowledge only as a means of acquiring material things or earning a salary results in such a scenario. We thus end up with an impoverishment of the soul that ultimately reflects back on our economy and material things. Small minds can conceive of small things not soaring projects.

Devaluing Education - II

The whole purpose of education is to make a better person. More caring, more empathetic, better able to socialize. This implies a clear emphasis on the non-technical side along with the technical side. What has actually happened is that the technical side has been strongly focused on while the non-technical side - the Humanities if you will - has been degraded. This is to a large extent a function of the reward system whereby people with a narrow technical degree reap large, if not insane, financial rewards and are lauded in the popular media as visionaries.

As mentioned earlier, this results in a stampede of students entering the flavor-of-the-month degree program. This has resulted in boom and bust cycles. When a large number of graduates in a particular area enter the work force, there are usually not enough jobs for them so students entering universities avoid that area. Four years later, there is a resultant bust as companies scramble to hire talent and the whole cycle starts all over again.

Apart from this, there is a major damaging aspect to this inordinate focus on a narrow technically oriented education. It encourages a narrow mindedness that discourages innovation. Every field develops a particular "way" of doing things; an orthodoxy. This orthodoxy encourages speculation and research in particular areas while ignoring others. For most purposes, this is actually a good thing since it focuses people. Unfortunately over time, the orthodoxy becomes stultifying generally without the participants realization. At some point, this will prevent people from exploring areas which may be promising but of which there is certainly no guarantee that they may be useful later on. Innovation thrives on the ability to ask questions and to go into areas that are currently considered silly. Orthodoxy on the other hand demands a focus on the safe. With innovation, we get radically new products, services and ideas that can have the ability to enrich our lives in unexpected ways. With orthodoxy, we get at best incremental improvements.

Why did Sony not come out with something like the iPod? The company had a major lock on the portable music industry thanks to the then ubiquitous Walkman. Why did it take a total outsider to shake up this industry dramatically? The same question can be asked about the mobile handset market. Apple was not the first one to introduce a smartphone. The device was actually pioneered by Palm. Why was an outsider able to shake up the industry to such an extent that the dominant mobile set manufacturer found itself having to dive off a burning platform into a cold, dark sea?

I set these examples to illustrate a point. A wide education (as opposed to a narrow, technical one) exposes people to alternate points of view and alternate ways of thinking. This exposure will result in a greater sophistication in personal mindset. It will enable a deeper, more holistic thinking. Instead of blindly accepting the current orthodoxy in a particular field, there will atleast be the ability to probe and ask questions. Who can tell what fruits may be reaped at a later stage from exploring an area that may seem irrelevant at that time. Steve Jobs, for example, audited a calligraphy course in Reed College. He later credited that course for introducing multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in the Mac. Today we take these for granted but these were revolutionary things at that time. An apparently useless course resulted in major dividends down the road. Indeed the Mac gave birth to the desktop publishing industry so we can say that that course gave rise to a major new industry.

The point is that it is impossible to determine in advance what may be useful at a later stage. Casting a wide net will undoubtedly catch much dross. There will however be a few gems whose value will be realized later.

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Devaluing Education

What is the value of an education in humanities? Nowadays, the answer is not very much. People are far more inclined towards technocratic degrees. Thus we have a large number of people interested in getting a degree in business or a degree in computer science but relatively few people interested in getting a degree in say philosophy. Why is this?

Mainly this is a factor of economics. The jobs market simply does not value a philosopher as highly as it does a banker. The reward system thus transmitted is very clear. Get a (strictly) technical education and reap the benefits. Do something else and you will be flipping burgers for the rest of your life. So students flock to whatever is the degree flavor of the month. In the late 1990s, the internet boom and its associated hype was at its peak so everyone flocked to obtain a computer science degree. A few years later, the boom collapsed and finance became the flavor of the month. So there was a general stampede for the exits and into finance. Earlier still, an MBA had become the flavor of the month. Consequently, there was a uptake in business administration programs. At one point medicine and engineering were hot and whoever you talked to wanted to become a doctor or an engineer.

However, there is a rather large fly in this particular jar of honey. As mentioned above, potential students get a clear cut message: get a technical education and reap the rewards. What is left unstated is that the rewards will depend on demand and supply. The problem is that as the herd of potential students stampedes into a particular discipline, the supply of graduates in that discipline increases dramatically. Unfortunately, in most cases the demand for such graduates does not increase commensurately. This happens even if there is a bubble in that particular area. As a result, potential employers are in a position to pick and choose. This reinforces the hold of the elite institutes like the Ivy Leagues as their graduates tend to be strongly preferred over graduates of other less exalted institutes even if the latter have greater knowledge than the former.

So we have a problem of a large number of highly qualified (if in a relatively technical sense) individuals looking for work. The kind and level of jobs which previously a Bachelor graduate would get are now getting Master's graduates. So the Bachelors degree has become in a sense useless; simply a stepping stone towards getting the Master's degree that will get the sought after job. As the number of such graduates has increased, this devaluation of the Bachelor's degree has started to affect even the top tertiary institutes. The end result of this rather skewed incentive system is that students are being pushed into certain areas at the expense of others.

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The Purpose of Education

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What is the point of education? What purpose does it serve to an individual, to the community and to the state?

In its barest essence, education is the ability to read and write in a particular language. By this narrow definition, I am literate in English but a total illiterate in virtually all other languages. Whenever there is talk about the importance of education and statistics are being bandied around regarding literacy levels, it is this narrow definition that most people have in mind. I believe this is unfortunate since education is or should be a much richer picture on a much larger canvas.

At an individual level, education does more than give someone just the ability to read and write. It gives them the ability to think for themselves and not be influenced by the opinion of others. It also teaches how to interact with others socially without causing harm or stress. When viewed like this, education elevates a person to someone who can think things through on their own and in addition gives them analytical tools and abilities. The classic liberal arts education sought to do just this: develop analytical skills while also honing social ones. It is however this characteristic of education that makes it dangerous for elite interests.

A modern economy requires an educated populace. As development proceeds apace and new ways of socializing and working become possible, this requirement only increases. An educated populace is also required to provide a pool of people who can do the R&D that further development of the economy requires. But an educated population is a dangerous one specially if it is also young. Since education gives an individual analytical skills, it also enables them to start questioning the status-quo. Educated people demand a greater say in the ordering of their affairs. Such people are not passive; neither are they likely to be lulled by promises of a better future at the cost of a painful present. If left unchecked, these expectations and passions come out into the open and then become difficult to control. So here is the conundrum. The demands of a modern economy requires an educated population but an educated population demands a greater say in its affairs. Often, elite interests in an economy want the former without the latter. As the events of the last 30 years have shown, elite interests are often different from popular interests.

The solution that seems to have worked so far is to re-define education on a technocratic basis. Emphasize technical aspects while de-emphasizing broader goals. The result is a populace that is largely technically literate but functionally illiterate. Such people can fulfill the demands of the economy while remaining boxed in. At the same time make the box gilded. They beauty of the system is that by and large people will not even realize that they are essentially in a golden cage.

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