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<p>Yet I think you would agree (and in fact you already had), that certain majors simply assign far more work than do others. Why? </p>
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<p>I’m afraid I don’t buy it, simply because the differences have been shown to be cross-national. For example, in many Asian countries the primary educational system is extremely rigorous, particularly in the sciences and in math, yet a distinct difference in difficulty still exists among the college technical vs. non-technical majors in those countries. For example, in Taiwan, the engineering majors (especially EE) are generally viewed as the harshest courses of study available in colleges in Taiwan, and the non-technical, humanities-style majors are generally derided as ‘soft’ majors for the lazy and incompetent, in which you don’t really have to work that hard or know that much in order to complete the program. Similarly, in the universities in Hong Kong, those students who end up majoring in the humanities (like Chinese) are viewed as the weaker students who simply weren’t good enough to major in a technical subject. Whether that view is fair or not fair, that is what happens in those countries. </p>
<p>But again, the question is why? Why should this divide exist worldwide? Or, perhaps even more importantly, even if the divide does exist worldwide, why does it need to exist at Berkeley too? After all, just because somebody else does something wrong doesn’t mean that you should also do something wrong. </p>
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<p>I profoundly disagree that certain majors are simply less time-intensive “by nature”. It has nothing to do with ‘their nature’, it is simply a matter of the arbitrarily low expectations that have been placed upon them by their administrators. They could easily demand far far more work from the students. They just don’t.</p>
<p>As a case in point, just consider how hard it is to get a humanities PhD. You have to complete a tremendous amount of work. You can’t just throw together some half-assed dissertation and then expect to graduate. People spend years, sometimes over a decade, writing their dissertation, and even then, a significant chunk of them will never successfully complete it. Nor are they simply lolly-gagging around while they’re writing it; they have to work like dogs in order to get it done.</p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the humanities undergrads should be required to work as hard as the PhD students. I’m not a sadist. I am simply saying that the humanities undergrads can be required to work far harder than they do now, and that there is nothing inherently less time-consuming about a humanities discipline, as the PhD students can surely attest to. If these disciplines can demand a fiendish amount of work from the PhD students, they can surely demand more work from the undergrads than what they are demanding now. That they currently don’t is simply an arbitrary choice.</p>