As an example of the failure of the educational system that produces such fools.

Are these people representative of arts graduates? Where are the scientists, engineers and business people in the Dail?

Yes but some arts course are merely years long sessions of intellectual masturbation but it is science that truly benefits an arts graduate in that it gives it the ability to go procreate with itself.

Regards...jmcc

And these people are meant to support your argument?

It was traditionally a dumping ground for the spawn of the middle classes who aren't bright enough to do anything else.

Perhaps because they couldn't get any jobs in the Arts?

I would agree with this to some extent. The 'graduates' of these courses generally end up as PR flacks though with the recent economic downturn, there isn't much work for these people.

Regards...jmcc

Didn't Tony Gregory do a BA?

I think this shopws that you fundamentally misunderstand what and Arts course actually is. It is *not* a course which teaches you to become an artist or "work in the arts", it is an extremely broad course ranging from subjects like philosophy and political science to mathematics and geography (yes you can do maths as part of an Arts degree in UCD!).

People with Arts degrees go on to do work in a large variety of jobs. I would also imagine that people who do such degrees go on to earn more than those who don't go to college at all and if that is the case then there is some benefit to funding these courses.

That is not to say that many Arts students are not semi-retarded posho twats.

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Good synopsis from Evercloserunion above. Arts is of course not a course, but a faculty which general contains the social sciences and humanities. If you wish to learn about geology in UCD, something vital for the energy industry, you will likely have many interactions with the Faculty of Arts. If you wish to study mathematics either as a discipline in itself which is highly relevant to all sorts or things or as part of another subject, you will have had many interactions with the Faculty of Arts. Just taking UCD as an example, the Faculty of Arts contains seven distinct schools, each containing multiple departments ranging from music and drama, to history and philosophy, politics and international relations, linguistics, languages, economics, mathematics. The spectrum is so broad that to distill it down to a simplistic notion of something which is "unnecessary" merely demonstrates the lack of knowledge on the part of those who make such suggestions. Both the social sciences and the humanities cross into many other faculties in a university, business and law being prime examples but also life sciences where issues regarding ethics are central.

Perhaps.

You make it sound like some kind of four year continuation Leaving Cert.

And, perhaps, some of these course become dumping grounds for such people to keep them off the streets until they can be absorbed into the business system.

Regards...jmcc

Perhaps some of what passes as the Arts these days are hobbies that have been dignified by age.

Regards...jmcc

There has recently risen to the top of the media pool a type of commentator who, along with hating the public sector, reserves his deepest loathing for the Humanities, and how much this "nonsense" is costing the taxpayer.

True education---as opposed to the more specific, but necessary "training", usually in the narrow certainties of Corporate Capitalism and its spin-offs----has always been a function of the Humanities departments.

In Yeats's day ,when he excoriated the Phillistines, at least people saw his point. Now falling over yourself to declare yourself a Phillistine---with no time for all that "nonsense"----is all the rage.

In a world where unthinking anti-intellectualism is celebrated (as in Bertie's mangling of the English language, and McCreevy's corporate-speak, and "plain man" persona), and where everyone has a shoddy bag of goods to sell,
rigorously taught Humanities programmes may be all that stand between us and barbarism

By all means let us teach people to discuss "driving change in a new, consumer-focused and dynamic....etc etc". And let us train computer technicians. We need all these skills. But we need rigorously educated thinkers in philisophy, great literature....we hold these things in trust, and they will outlive us.

Perhaps the more important point is that the Irish third level education system has been focused largely on an Arts output while the global economy has shifted towards being more technological and industrially based one.

That's a mere rationalisation that Humanities lecturers use to justify their salaries.

In Yeats' day, most people did not go on to second level education let alone third. As a member of the "great and the good" he could make such claims without fear of analysis - primarily because people hadn't a clue about what he was talking about. The Phillistines, as we now know from archeology, were an advanced civilisation relative to the others in the region and had an Iron Age culture while the Israelites still had a Bronze Age culture. Yet the term 'Phillistine' is used as one of disdain by people who are often quite ignorant of its history.

More bloody wafflers that nobody will remember and few will care about. It has to be balanced with an educational system that is adapted for the 21st Century rather than the 11th.

Regards...jmcc

I appreciate your treatment of my original post. The question is what level of support the humanities need, is 25% of intake really necessary to sustain humanities? I'm not sure that business courses provide much economic benefit btw, hence my inclusion of them in the OP.

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The question is not whether these people are contributing to the economy, rather whether their education is contributing to the economy. The soft benefits of humanities and business education to society are a separate matter.

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