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Comment by arctangent | Hacker News Reader

I can't comment on the methodology used to rank the universities, but I think it's interesting that a specialised (as opposed to "fully comprehensive") university has come out on top. MIT would probably not be a great choice of university for someone looking to take an arts degree :-)

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MIT certainly doesn't have the humanities breadth of Harvard, for instance, but the humanities that MIT does have are remarkably good. Some of my fellow MIT students at the time went to MIT because they thought the extra-curricular music programs were better at MIT than at Harvard. I got my SB from MIT in Philosophy. MIT's Philosophy program is considered to be in the top few in the country, as is its Linguistics. I was taught creative writing by Joe Haldeman, photography in dark rooms that had been built by Minor White, psychology by Susan Carey, etc. Every MIT student is also required to take 8 classes in humanities, complete a humanities concentration in a particular field, and take a certain number of humanities that have a very significant writing requirement. MIT's business school is in the top few in the world.

Also, I'm not sure that it is correct to say that science and engineering are more "specialized" in their entirety than liberal arts are. All of Harvard's engineering, for instance, is contained in a single department. Doesn't that make Harvard more "specialized" towards liberal arts?

Thank you for providing me with this info.

Edit: This goes equally to the other responses to my comment.

I 100% will take your word for it on the quality of some elements of MIT's humanities faculty (not being ironic).

But few of the MIT grads I've known (wonderful people, all) appear to have benefited that much from this opportunity. They're nerds through and through.

Maybe the technical course load precludes exploring non-technical subjects. Or maybe the experience of 4 years almost exclusively around young scientists and engineers tends to alter one's perspective. Maybe it's that I've only been around conventional technical MIT grads (EECS, Physics, not Philosophy).

I'm a nerd through and through too. Being a nerd doesn't mean that you can't have an appreciation for some kinds of humanities, though, especially if you take a very analytical approach to it. E.g., Psychology at MIT is rather scientific, and Philosophy is rather logical. And for creative writing, I, of course, wrote Science Fiction.

I like your formulation. There are many parts of culture that the analytical mindset cannot approach, alas. I spent a few years hanging around fine arts grad students and let's say that is a whole different ball game.

Not entirely true. MIT students are required to take, on average, at least one humanities course a semester even if they are doing a purely tech degree. I was a comparative media studies major there and the faculty was incredible. A lot of the professors are poached or borrowed from Ivy league schools. The linguistics department in particular is amazing. You can also cross register for courses at Harvard or Wellesley, which is awesome. About a quarter of the folks in my dorm were music majors (along with something else of course.) Humanities majors are common, humanities-only majors are rare, but I don't think any of us felt like the humanities education there was anything but world class.

If the ranking is by perceived quality, then I guess this makes sense: it's much harder for an institution to be best in the world at many diverse subjects.

While it's certainly not their focus, MIT does have some surprisingly good humanities programs.

Agreed. If you want to learn to pronounce Spanish really well, take a class from this guy: http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/harris/

Indeed, Imperial College London is similar in this respect.

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