Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Humanities on Trial






In previous posts I discussed the situation of the humanities and the challenge faced by those in these fields to justify their value in face of their lack of any utilitarian benefits. The comic strip PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) has taken this concept quite literally and for the past few strips has put their humanities student on trial to justify his continued presence in the strip in light of the economic downturn.




























1 comment:

Miss S. said...

Pretty funny. Although my own collegiate studies have been more technical in nature (electronics/business), the lack of serious study in the humanities yeild a society that has underdeveloped critical reasoning skills. How can we expect business school graduates to be ethical when they have no (or very little) formal study in the liberal arts? There is more to our humanity than making money.

I also blame employers too. Too many hiring managers assume that just because you majored in philosophy, that you have no job skills. If college is suppossed to be job training, then I want a refund. It was very pricey and I did not even learn how to do a mail merge from MS Access to MS Word (community colleges offer courses like that, but many times they do not count for a degree program). I had to learn that all by myself.