Just curious, Humanities and social sciences are some of the more 'useless' courses, considering that it does not equip one with pragmatic and technical skills when joining the workforce. But why are these uni courses getting more and more popular?
Why humanities and social sciences getting so popular?
- Thread starter aaa123
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"It does not equip one with pragmatic..."
You're very wrong there. Yes, it may not equip one with technical skills, but technical skills are only required for specialised jobs (Engineers, Programmers, etc).
If you exclude these, then for most of the corporate world, you will actually do fine with most degrees. I also think that recently, more and more people are realising that the once extremely popular Business degree contains alot of 'fluff', and are hence opting to go for other degrees more in-line with their interests instead.
About pragmatism, I honestly think that the social sciences are much more pragmatic in the long-run. Not because of the content per se, but rather, its about how alot of social sciences develop the analytical thinking ability of the student (especially Political Science, Economics, etc). I personally find that these analytical thinking and processing skills are more important in the working world than simply the content of what you're studying, especially since students forget most of what they study anyways.
SevenSeals
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cuz cool what. im arts shudent sho cool
firehippo
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here we go again. However, what do you guys think of such courses? Are they leading to a shortage of skills in our economy? Yes indeed, they train critical thinking skills and processing skills, however, what is the true value of such skills? And in light of the advancement in technology,will they be be replaced in the future?
Actually considering Singapore's shift to a knowledge intensive industry, the training provided may prepare them well for the jobs available. What you mean by replaced? Like Artificial intelligence that will replace the human brains?
If you're talking about advancement of technology affecting jobs, then don't you think other sectors such as engineering and IT would be harder hit? Certainly not arts and social sciences.. for example, there was a paper released by Oxford researchers detailing the probability that specific jobs would be computerised. It found that Accountants, one of the most sought after sectors/jobs nowadays, has a probability of computerisation of 94%.
Hmm... I am not sure if social sciences are considered useless and doesn't have "technical" skills.
Take for example sociology, graduates will be able to identify social trends and issues, at the same time, they can also handle huge amount of social data to form complex graphs, questions and answers.
You may have assume that social science students only learn history & grand theories from the past but these students also do learn math formulas and use technological programs to help them handle today's big data.
These efforts will assist them to draw more accurate research papers, commentaries that will help shape impactful policies.
The problem is whether these social science graduates do practice what they learn by entering the field they are trained for. Or are they attracted by other fields, say business, finance, tourism etc.
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