Hyperion
Posts: 31
Joined: June 2005
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Most importantly, the original argument suffers from an important fallacy: In determining that there is little economic value in English and other humanities degrees, the original poster ignores the fact that at present, many people do pay tens of thousands of dollars from their own pockets for such degrees. Clearly this demonstrates an economic value for such degrees.
The market determines the value of any commodity. Whether such value makes sense to an individual observer is irrelevent, such a judgement involves a personal or emotional judgement, whereas the only economic judgement is the free market.
Therefore, the fact that the free market offers these degrees at the same cost as any other degree, and the fact that consumers pay the same price, indicates that clearly the market as a whole has found this particular subject to have value.
Now, obviously I'm discussing undergrad degrees. At the graduate level, we might see differences in cost between, say, a medical degree and a masters or PhD in the humanities. But again, in this situation, we do recognize that a particular expert degree might be more valuable to society than another.
At the undergrad level, however, what we usually see is that most baccalaureate degrees carry similar economic value.
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