Exchequer cost of Arts & Business degrees in downturn

[jmcc]

Why do you look to Dáil Éireann as indicative of the quality of arts graduates?

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

Do you think it's representative of where arts graduates end up working?

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

Reproduction requires finding a partner and having sex with them, and that's where engineering and science graduates run into trouble.

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

[jmcc]

Brian Lenihan - degree in law
Brian Cowen - degree in law
Brendan Smith - degree in politics and economics
Eamonn Ryan - degree in commerce
Willie O'Dea - degree in law
Dermot Ahern - law

And these people are meant to support your argument?

As for the others, I don't really see what's wrong with a social sciences degree.

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

A lot of graduates of Arts become teachers.

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

The only courses of which there are too many in this country are Media Studies/Journalism degrees.

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

[evercloserunion]

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

Didn't Tony Gregory do a BA?

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

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.

[johnfás]

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.

[jmcc]

Didn't Tony Gregory do a BA?

Perhaps.

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!).

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

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

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

[jmcc]

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

Regards...jmcc

[gatsbygirl20]

So we really need more useless fools with sociology degrees (Coughlan) and other assorted idiots with arts degrees (various cabinet members) to working in a banking system that no longer exists?

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

In Yeats's day ,when he excoriated the Phillistines, at least people saw his point.

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.

But we need rigorously educated thinkers in philisophy, great literature....we hold these things in trust, and they will outlive us.

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

[HanleyS]

"Humanities" is a better term that "Arts", which is either too narrow or too broad a term, depending on context.

Humanities courses don't train participants for high-paying jobs. But can people please step away from their moralistic engineering/science grad snobbery for a moment and consider the implications of this fact for the forward-looking student? The original question was quite simple and not morally judgemental, so let's focus on that. Without government support, humanities courses would not survive, as students would find it difficult to finance their study, reducing numbers below critical mass. As the arts courses go, so do the arts departments. The next generations would lose a certain critical attitude to their culture - this enriches society in a way that GDP doesn't measure.

I rarely hear medicine or business graduates condemning the humanities, but I often heard computer scientists or engineers engage in such sniping while in university, so maybe this is a status resentment thing?

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.

[HanleyS]

I think a lot of these kinds of attitudes stem from the false notion that people who study Arts degrees or the like go on to write poetry of make amateur films for the rest of their lives. In fact many people who study such subjects go on to work in high paying jobs or start successful businesses. Add to this the non-monetary benefit which society derives from teaching people to think critically and it is not difficult to justify the retention of Arts and Business courses within the government fees scheme.

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.