> the majority of humanities students I've interacted with have been uninspired and unmotivated. I took a good deal of humanities classes and more often than not comments were uninformed and presentations poor quality.
> These students come in at 18 years old, straight out of high school. You put them in college and they want to do the least work possible.
> Most of the time a degree is just a necessity to go into the workforce for whatever field
I don't think your critique of undergraduate education is limited to the humanities. In my experience (I graduated two years ago from a top 10 school where I double majored in CS and history), students were there to have a good time and get a degree by the end of their four years. And, to be fair, I had a good time and didn't have to work nearly as hard as I do now.
However, I saw little difference between the character of history students and CS students overall. There were exceptional people in both departments (top ~5%), a larger percentage of people who generally worked hard and were competent (~60%), and a population that didn't take it seriously and sometimes wasn't above cheating (there was a non-zero population of CS majors who graduated with next to no programming skills).
My school's history department was relatively renowned, though the assignments didn't take nearly as long as CS/math labs. Still, many history profs were doing their best to fight grade inflation and had reasonable minimum standards.
At the end of my spring history seminar, I asked my professor (_the_ expert in a relatively large field) what he thought about going to grad school and strongly advised against it, saying it was a bad idea except for maybe one or two students every year: it is just too competitive to get a good job. So, a ton of history majors went into consulting and will probably go back to school for their MBAs; a smaller group is going (or planning on going) to law school if they can get into a top school; others are grinding in the entertainment industry trying to get their foot in the door. I don't think this is evidence of "uninspired" or "unmotivated" humanities students.
Nor do I think the fact that many history students go on to work in unrelated fields reflects poorly on the discipline: they learned about things they were interested in, improved their writing skills, critical thinking skills, etc.
The fact that their [liberal arts] education was a bad value -- in terms of both time and money -- is less endemic to their chosen major, but to the educational system as a whole.
You are right about there not being opportunities for work in some of these fields, but I just don't think the humanities foster creativity or critical thinking more than CS and I didn't see much interest from the students at a same tier school. If the interest was there it was not reflected in the effort exerted.
> These students come in at 18 years old, straight out of high school. You put them in college and they want to do the least work possible.
> Most of the time a degree is just a necessity to go into the workforce for whatever field
I don't think your critique of undergraduate education is limited to the humanities. In my experience (I graduated two years ago from a top 10 school where I double majored in CS and history), students were there to have a good time and get a degree by the end of their four years. And, to be fair, I had a good time and didn't have to work nearly as hard as I do now.
However, I saw little difference between the character of history students and CS students overall. There were exceptional people in both departments (top ~5%), a larger percentage of people who generally worked hard and were competent (~60%), and a population that didn't take it seriously and sometimes wasn't above cheating (there was a non-zero population of CS majors who graduated with next to no programming skills).
My school's history department was relatively renowned, though the assignments didn't take nearly as long as CS/math labs. Still, many history profs were doing their best to fight grade inflation and had reasonable minimum standards.
At the end of my spring history seminar, I asked my professor (_the_ expert in a relatively large field) what he thought about going to grad school and strongly advised against it, saying it was a bad idea except for maybe one or two students every year: it is just too competitive to get a good job. So, a ton of history majors went into consulting and will probably go back to school for their MBAs; a smaller group is going (or planning on going) to law school if they can get into a top school; others are grinding in the entertainment industry trying to get their foot in the door. I don't think this is evidence of "uninspired" or "unmotivated" humanities students.
Nor do I think the fact that many history students go on to work in unrelated fields reflects poorly on the discipline: they learned about things they were interested in, improved their writing skills, critical thinking skills, etc.
The fact that their [liberal arts] education was a bad value -- in terms of both time and money -- is less endemic to their chosen major, but to the educational system as a whole.