Hacker News Reader

Comment by bloaf | Hacker News Reader

You don't need a humanities degree to document your local coal mine's history or contribute to your local art culture. You do need a STEM degree if you are going to serve your local community as e.g. a doctor or an engineer.

I'm not commenting on the relative value of the endeavors, just pointing out that there are opportunity costs associated with choosing a humanities degree over a STEM degree in our current environment.

View on HN

> You don't need a humanities degree to document your local coal mine's history or contribute to your local art culture.

Well you don’t need a CS degree to contribute to your town’s tech sector, but it sure helps.

I think you significantly underestimate the skills required when constructing history from primary sources. Unleashing someone on an archive without some library science education is very likely to result in a disorganized mess of documents. You need formal organization skills, some knowledge of document forensics and an understanding of standard document practices from the time you are studying.

Also, in order to write clearly you need a lot of years reading and writing practice. You can get that on your own but a humanities degree is going to get most people there faster.

Amateur historians are good to have around but you don't want to run the entire front line of primary source history gathering off them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com