![explain[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/DRRiQc9.png "explain[1].png")
Why do you need a PhD, or even a Masters, to do historical research or even teach college classes on history?
Why are the standards so high for who gets to become a historian? There are people making lots of money with only bachelors in STEM fields, doing more than just the most entry-level STEM jobs, who remain in the field for life without needing more credentials. Though obviously you need to at least have a Masters to get some of the higher level engineering jobs.
Still, you really only need a Masters to get a high level engineering job, not a PhD.
So why are the standards to become a historian so incredibly high? If the STEM people can let people in the door with just a bachelors, why can't the humanities do the same?
Let people research and teach with a bachelor's, and if they want to teach at an elite university or be a part of the administration end of some archaeological dig or other form of historical research, then they would need a Masters or a PhD.
>>499214
Engineering is a higly technical job and most of its science was actually done in the industry Its an experimental endeavour buitd by people who were trying to achieve practical goals History is a field built by academics who rely on the academia to support and verify their research
STEAM jobs can be trained while in the middle of doing the job. They can be given simple tasks today while in mid-training. You can't do that with history.
>>499214
They're disenfranchising us, anon.
Philosophers suggest that humans can do more than simply exist. Philosophy encourages humans to do something with their life. It encourages action in life. To prove that this is possible, one can easily turn to the great figures of history who risked everything and worked painstakingly hard to make change as they saw fit. Is this not the perfect way to inspire one to make change?
Academia realizes this. They don't want people thinking for themselves when it comes to the world. They don't want people striving for change. As such, academia supports the sciences.
After all, what better way is there to discourage change than to say that humanity is a mere result of a cosmic accident and that humans are simply automatons who act on the impulses caused by chemicals in the brain? Then when one denies this, those who disagree with he/she can just say that such denial is hampering scientific progress and then ask for a peer review. This makes scientists unquestionable beings, who can never be wrong about their dull, literal outlook on life.
The Humanities are being killed so that questioning existence will be discouraged.
>>499239
Drop the A. STEAM is retarded, STEM is actually practical.
I certainly wasn't taught much research method except writing essays in undergrad history courses. Pretty sure with grad programs they teach you how to actually do history and mentor you into becoming an academic.
I sure as hell would not like to be taught college level history or read history by someone with a bachelor's, that shit could be just as terrible as amateur historians, except they have a diploma to wave around.
Most undergrad courses seem to teach you basic history, not how to do it, just giving you knowledge curated by others.
>>499316
I would think if they have enough time to teach the science of engineering and the theory behind it, as well as practical training for a job, all in one undergrad engineering degree, they could do that with any discipline.
I guess it'd be easiest if they only combined history content and teacher training for those who only wanted to be teachers, not researchers.
So, college teachers could get by with just a bachelors, and researchers could get a Masters.
But not a PhD. It just doesn't make sense why you would need so much training just to analyze sources and come to an opinion on what happened during some ancient period. Sure, you CAN get that much training, and be thought of as a better historian because you got that extra training, and get a more prestigious job within the history field compared to someone with just a Masters.
But you shouldn't need a higher level of education than most STEM workers just to publish a couple articles about Ancient Egypt or World War 2 or dig up some pottery and analyze it.
Teaching, researching and being a museum curator are really the only jobs you can get that actually involve history, and two of those for some reason require the highest level of education anyone can possibly get
STEM people have various different jobs they can do with various levels of training and credentials needed. We don't have that kind of variety, so we should let people get their foot in the door easier with teaching and research jobs.
>>499214
>Why do you need a PhD, or even a Masters, to do historical research
No, you need a PhD. Masters don't count.
>or even teach college classes on history?
Because the humanities are underfunded, and because we don't "teach" rote, we inculcate.
>Why are the standards so high for who gets to become a historian?
Because the humanities are 10 times underfunded, at a minimum.
>So why are the standards to become a historian so incredibly high? If the STEM people can let people in the door with just a bachelors, why can't the humanities do the same?
Because someone like me can't hire a research assistant to read archives all day long. If I were in a STEM team I'd be part of a team run by a Professor (E), along with three other Lecturers or Associate Professors, 10 post-docs, and 30 or so degree'd research assistants.
>>499239
>You can't do that with history.
You can. But we need more funding, at least 10x more, maybe 100x.
>>499283
>STEAM is retarded
Yeah, but the Winter Sale has been pretty good.
>>500746
ayy
>buying games
>>499421
It shouldn't matter to you if there's a difference between masters and PHD, because you'll already be working on your graduate thesis. Grad programs are a mentorship to start you off on research. You don't have to wait until after you get your degree to do research. It's just your research while in a grad program will have a faculty adviser.
>>500721
Why give the humanities more money? They don't produce jobs or goods or services.
All they do is sit around and think about stuff and read about things that already happened.
>>499421
>But you shouldn't need a higher level of education than most STEM workers just to publish a couple articles about Ancient Egypt or World War 2 or dig up some pottery and analyze it.
The thing is, "partial" or unskilled analyses are tainted by the lack of "higher" analysis. Fundamentally tainted. "useless for further work" tainted.
Which means your publication has to go through someone with higher reading.
>>499214
Yes, any ol fucker can open the internet and research History.
But someone also has to write all those sources that ol fucker researches, and vet the fuck out of them.
These are the keepers of truth that everyone else relies on, thus, they must be vet the fuck out of.
>>500778
>all Masters work this way
>PHD
Ph.D or PhD.
>Grad programs are a mentorship to start you off on research.
Nope, there are plenty of masters by coursework programmes out there.
>>500779
>They don't produce jobs or goods or services.
Jobs aren't "produced." Historians produce papers and monographs, these are "goods," they also produce research services, these are "services." Perhaps what you're trying to say is that the price of these goods and services is, to your normative judgements, too high right now.
>Why give the humanities more money?
The last time the US humanities were decently funded was 1945-1975. They were upfunded largely by the CIA / black budget in order to figure out how the soviet union and third world worked.
>>500796
The point is that humanities don't give any benefits to 99% of the population, so obviously they'd get less funding than fields related to things the population needs.
>>500801
>The point is that humanities don't give any benefits to 99% of the population, so obviously they'd get less funding than fields related to things the population needs.
Pure science has a couple of factors of 10 on humanities, and they "don't give any benefits to 99% of the population" either.
Fucking mong.
>>500811
Ideas created by sciences are applied in other STEM fields.
Ideas created by the humanities are used by the humanities or leftist idiots on the internet.
Fucking mong.
>>500816
You forgot the state.
>>500796
The point is the extra years spent on a PhD aren't wasted, it's not like you are prevented from doing research while in PhD training. It's just guided research where someone holds your hand.
>>500845
You might know that some systems have a 3 year PhD. But from your posts you only really know the US system.
It is a rare humanities student who publishes a paper at all during their doctoral training.
Past high school teaching history isn't about teach events or periods of time. It is about interpretation of history and reflection on modern times.
It is also to keep the supply of those that teach history low.
>>500851
>living in a yuropoor shithole
I am sorry for your loss
>>500885
No, that'd be Bologna. Or the weird French system. Or the German Ph.D / Hab. system.
>>500892
Don't all European countries fall into Bologna system?
>>500903
Last time I checked being able to teach in University in France required bizarre dances. And the German Hab. system hasn't been gotten rid of.
>>500785
But if certain history writers are particularly good, then they'll be noticed , and their work'll be promoted more, and it'll be used and cited more.
I don't see how anything would change if we let Masters holders or PhDs submit monographs to journals. The bad monographs would be not cited as much or not accepted at all, and the good ones would be recognized as good.
I know it's not an absolute rule that no one that has less than a Masters can submit to a journal, but it's such a widespread practice it might as well be one, and it doesn't make sense.
I've read some stunning essays on economics, history, philosophy, etc, by people with only a bachelors and plenty from people with no college education, that they wrote in their free time. Why shouldn't they be published in journals?
>>500992
Because shitty people with shitty training will just be referencing pop history in their pophistory circlejerk. Your view on stunning essays proves the point. Rather than write academically rigorous essays, they write essays that are easy to understand and appeal to people, usually with bias or simplistic arguments.
>>500992
>I don't see how anything would change if we let Masters holders or PhDs submit monographs to journals.
Well, Journals normally don't post 300+ page single author books.
And anyone can submit to any journal, right now.
>Why shouldn't they be published in journals?
They already are. You just don't get paid for journal articles.
>>499214
Simply put, there are already too many humanities PhDs than there are tenure track positions for them. In all honesty, this is actually true for all PhDs across all of academia. We simply mint too many PhDs than the current market demands, though this may change when aging Baby Boomer faculty begin to retire more in earnest. Also, unlike STEM, humanities degrees do not frequently provide options for employment in the private sector, as you note. This makes job scarcity even worse.
By opening up these few positions to the many humanities BA-holding college graduates, you would make a terrible job market even worse. Wages and benefits that are already highly embattled would only become more so. I would also suggest you read up on adjunct professorship, which is intimately linked to all these issues. Your argument does not even begin to touch on the material differences in education, training, and pedagogy afforded by a graduate program versus an undergraduate program, which has real importance for ensuring the quality, scope, and rigour of the material presented to one's students.
>>501047
>though this may change when aging Baby Boomer faculty begin to retire more in earnest.
It won't.
I don't know why US PhDs don't set up coop universities themselves.
>>501057
I don't see how that could ever be even self-sustainable. Via patronage? To many strings held in the hands of wealthy elites. Via crowd- funded donation? People will never pay for a bunch of intellectuals to mentally masturbate in the metaphorical corner of society. They never have. Patronage and funding of intellectuals has always been motivated by desire for self aggrandizement or fear of an autonomous, unaccountable, educated body of potential insurrectionists.
>>501134
>I don't see how that could ever be even self-sustainable.
You charge for teaching.
>>499278
damn well said
>>501147
To what end? Would you simply educate those with the disposable income (the wealthy, the children of the wealthy) required to take courses in material unrelated to finding and maintaining stable employment? Forgive me if I resent the idea of supervising adult daycare for cadre of stoned, 18-22 year-old trust fund hipsters. No thank you and way to be merely an apparatus of shallow leisure for the elite. How common.
>>501224
>To what end? Would you simply educate those with the disposable income (the wealthy, the children of the wealthy) required to take courses in material unrelated to finding and maintaining stable employment?
You offer it at discount rates, and matriculate them through a Teaching MA / MSc ala Bologna.
>Forgive me if I resent the idea of supervising adult daycare for cadre of stoned, 18-22 year-old trust fund hipsters.
That's the ONLY job going for a historian at the moment.
A cooperative university would mean you'd be teaching proles how to teach proles.
>>499214
The simple fact which none of the faggots ITT wish to admit, is that it is incredibly difficult to get a STEM bachelors, yet alone a Masters/PhD, whereas it is laughably easy to get a humanities BA/MA. Hence PhD is the minimum entry qualification needed for useless feeders who study the Humanities.
Most of those posting in here fancy themselves intellectuals, and are buttblasted that they are not accorded similar treatment to STEM graduates who already have large amounts of hands-on and industrial experience before leaving school, compared to a dirty little humanities graduate who likely only produced a single dissertation.
They are also bitter at the massive differentials in pay and employment opportunities offered to STEM field, compared to humanities. Thus you have whining posts like >>499278 and >>499239 and >>500721
>>501292
>whereas it is laughably easy to get a humanities BA/MA
We aren't allowed to fail students.
>>501292
This anon speaks the truth. The great Enlightenment philosophers did not shy away for STEM subjects for lack of aptitude, but lack of hours in the day. I'm not sure I can say the same for most recent humanities grads at the undergraduate level. Some of them, such as Spinoza, even acknowledged the practical benefits of skilled, technological employment, working as a lens grinder to finance his philosophical studies.
>>501302
Well, whose fault is that, now? Grow a backbone and refuse to be the dumping ground for unofficial minority quota admits, student athletes, and braindead rich kids able to pay full tuition indefinitely.
>>501354
>Well, whose fault is that, now?
Tends to be the Vice Chancellor's fault because since the 1980s he's stripped curriculum control from democratic bodies of staff.
>Grow a backbone and refuse to be the dumping ground for unofficial minority quota admits, student athletes, and braindead rich kids able to pay full tuition indefinitely.
You don't have any idea how university governance works, do you? Academics do not control their own work.
Teaching any subject at the college level is about more than simply being a master of your subject. Plenty of brilliant people aren't cut out for the academy. For better or for worse, being a professor is about handling the politics of the system and showing that you are dedicated to the university. There's more to getting a Ph.D than just showing your expertise. It's also about weeding out candidates who might not fit well within the system. Whether this is a good or bad thing is obviously debatable, but I think it speaks to your question
>>501378
That's unfortunate. My department at least tends to do at least a halfway decent job of drawing firm lines with the office of the academic dean, at least regarding tenure-track faculty and their coursework. Our faculty are all highly competitive though, and I realize that different faculties have different hiring practices/priorities.
>>501396
If the UK and Australia and New Zealand are any indication of international management strategy in Higher Education (and they are) whatever you have going won't last long.
Given the quality of students I've seen, the failure rate should be somewhere around 70%. Which would give us lots of tasty "repeat" course funding.
>>501408
And I'm talking about a world top 50 university btw.
