Exchequer cost of Arts & Business degrees in downturn

[stringjack]

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.

See here, for example.

[charley]

the fact that these courses are still available to us is something to be thankful for,to have a well rounded society we need arts ,culture, comerce,medicine ,and skilled manual labour, the notion that we should all be doing science orientated study would leave us with a very dull country

[Panopticon]

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.

I think the best approach would be to confine the humanities and perhaps business courses to the top universities. It would be OK if 25% of intake at top unis was to the humanities - maybe even more than that, depending on how broadly you define the humanities - but the problem is that you must add to that total the parallel graduate output of every third-level institution in the state. If I were designing the system, there would be no more business studies or legal studies in County Town IT.

Does their education contribute to the economy? It may actually do so. It's a reasonably cheap signalling device. Say 12-15 thousand euro is the total cost of teaching. It could be worth this for a firm to be able to differentiate between a graduate with a I/II.1 and a graduate with a III or a pass degree. Since our education system doesn't really test critical thinking outside humanities courses, there is a definite benefit at the margin - the firm can choose the broadly intelligent person over a more narrow counterpart. Summary: The Spence model, cited above. The other economic concept is fixed costs - we are paying the lecturer anyway for research and administration as well as lecturing; shrinking her First Year Arts class from 300 to 200 doesn't mean we can legitimately cut her salary by 1/3, and it won't save a whole 1/3 of the cost to run that class. The marginal cost of training one extra Geography student is low.

[jmcc]

If I were designing the system, there would be no more business studies or legal studies in County Town IT.

Then perhaps it is best that you are not. ITs tend to be more focused on the demands of local industry and business. Therefore if the IT's hinterland requires business and legal graduates, then the IT should be fulfilling that need.

Since our education system doesn't really test critical thinking outside humanities courses,

Bullsh!t.

Regards...jmcc

[JCR]

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

Or lawyers trying to run a finance department, or 'accountants' trying to be taoiseach, 'business people' trying to run banks, 'developers' and 'architects' and 'engineers' developing shoddy valueless crap on flood plains or wherever else they could scab a few bob, ah yes useless fools indeed. the assortment of idiots goes across the boardn this country and perhaps we should keep our lawyers bankers engineers and so on in college for the rest of their lives considering the ruin they have caused to this country. Perhaps if some of them had managed to read never mind understand the odd book they might not be so utterly ignorant.

[JCR]

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

Regards...jmcc

You don't appear to understand what a degree in the humanities actually is. Are you a builder? Or what in Ireland used to be known as a 'businessman'

[jmcc]

You don't appear to understand what a degree in the humanities actually is.

So enlighten us.

Regards...jmcc

[JCR]

So enlighten us.

Regards...jmcc

We both know you were on a rant, you got called is all

[greengoose2]

We both know you were on a rant, you got called is all

Not being college educated I would also love to know! Maybe such a degree would suit me. I could sit on the corner of the bar at 10.30 in the morning and amuse the barmen as they set up shop for the day. :mrgreen:

[jmcc]

We both know you were on a rant, you got called is all

I may well have been on a rant but it was justified. So what does constitute an Arts degree?

As for anti-intellectualism, I find that the term "intellectual" and that other phrase "an interest in the Arts" are often used by some very dull people to pretend that they are smarter or better than others. A degree isn't the end of education but rather the beginning.

Regards...jmcc