[ExI] Greener Urban Environment

[Dave Sill]

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 5:14 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> adrian wrote:  Typical engineering starting salaries are far higher than
> typical humanities stating salaries.
>
> Let's have some perspective here.  An engineering graduate has the
> ability, I am assuming, to help some company make money right out of
> college.  An English graduate has the ability to manage a fast food place,
> sell cars, and do many other things that a person without a college degree
> can do just as swell.  I dunno enough about business majors to make any
> statement.
>

Business majors have immediately useful skills, too: accounting, marketing,
etc. Just because tech jobs like engineering have higher starting salaries
doesn't mean that graduates will find jobs. And those higher-paying jobs
will likely be early targets for replacement by AI, so starting an
education in those fields now may be a bit of a gamble.

The point of the humanities is not to make money but to preserve and pass
> along our cultural heritage.  Thus the graduates are prepared to teach
> their subjects and no more.  They have not pretended otherwise.  If you
> find an English major driving a cab, or managing a McDonald's, then
> probably the colleges are graduating too many English majors, and the
> graduate should have looked at the job market and maybe picked up a
> teaching certificate along the way.
>

Not everyone in the humanities wants to teach. They're also qualified to
pursue advanced degrees and presumably have some of the skills, if not the
talent, necessary to create new content--something that AIs won't be doing
any time soon.

Putting a price of the contribution of the humanities is looking at it the
> wrong way.  If you don't understand these contributions without an
> explanation, you won't understand them with an explanation.
>

 Agreed.

-Dave
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