What is the ultimate 21st Century degree?

b_r_um
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:26:43 +0000

Since when are humanities degrees teaching reasoning or inter-cultural skills?

The average science major at my college, who interacts with foreign students and foreign faculty on a daily basis, seems to have more intercultural skills than the average humanities major, who might have read 5 Russian novels or studied the Ancient Greek. (About 1/4 of our science majors are international students, but very few of the humanities majors.)

Science majors outperform humanities majors on the LSAT, which is designed to measure critical reading and reasoning skills. Humanities majors are trained to produce 20 pages of fancy-sounding exposition on demand, sometimes with very little substance.