What are the easiest majors here?

[sakky]

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To say that academics worldwide “arbitrarily chose” to assign more work to its science students seems silly to me. Admittedly a meticulous reader, I felt my philosophy class demanded far more work than my physics class last semester.</p>

<p>But physics was more stressful, given the grading curve. I’m inclined to believe this is why most students think the hard sciences are more difficult.

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<p>I think you answered your concern in the first paragraph with your second paragraph. You said it yourself - the physics grade curve was harsher. But what that means is that philosophy probably was easier than physics. After all, the point is not simply about how much work is assigned. That doesn’t really matter. What really matters is what happens to you if you don’t do the assigned work. A class can assign all the work in the world, but if you can get a good grade (or at least pass) even if you do very little of the work, then the class isn’t really that hard. In other words, what really counts isn’t how much work is assigned, but rather how much work is necessary to pass. I would contend that the technical majors are harder in this regard.</p>

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Why aren’t humanities students graded as harshly as science students? My theory is, it’s a lot easier to come up with wrong answers in math and science, which generally arise whenever improper methods are used. But in the humanities, especially at the college level, truth and falsity are vague concepts. Who’s to say an interpretation or argument, as outlandish as it may be, is necessarily wrong? How does one properly evaluate a literary or artistic piece?

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<p>I’ve heard this argument before, and I’m afraid I don’t buy it, and I will again invoke the example of the humanities PhD’s. </p>

<p>Let’s walk through an example. Let’s say that you want to get a PhD in one of the humanities. Well, you can’t just dash off any old piece of literary or artistic work and then simply expect to be handed your PhD. If your dissertation committee doesn’t think that your work isn’t of the highest quality (according to their definition of ‘quality’) then they are simply not going to pass you. You can argue to them all you want about how one can’t say that your literary work is ‘wrong’, and they’re not going to hear it. If you don’t meet their standard of quality, you are not going to graduate. That is why people take years, sometimes over a decade, to complete a humanities PhD. Many of them never manage to pass.</p>

<p>What that shows is that you can evaluate artistic/literary works. Humanities professors do it all the time in the way that they judge their PhD students. So if they can do that, why can’t they do it with their undergrads too? Again, don’t get me wrong, I am obviously not saying that undergrads should be held to the same standards as the PhD students are. I am simply saying that they can be held to higher standards than they are today.</p>