The Proper Study of Man is Man (and Math)

A few months ago, at the launch of a new program for high school students and undergrads, the admin in charge of the program declared that we needed to get more kids interested in going to grad school in STEM (science, tech, eng, math) subjects and interested in pursuing tenure-track faculty jobs. And I thought that was just about the silliest thing ever, because if anything we have a massive oversupply of grad students fighting for faculty positions. Instead, the real solution is that we should be using STEM education as a foundation for students who go on to pursue careers in other areas.

Public policy is a field that comes to mind as crying out for attention from some rational, scientific thinkers. Decisions about our society are increasingly affected by problems that have technical roots, and of course technology in the form of massive amounts of data and statistical processing are giving policymakers better tools to help make their decisions. Global warming, health care, education: all these issues have problems and solutions that deeply intertwine both social and technological issues. But while most policy-makers are great people-persons, they often don't have any sort of technical background.

Proponents of liberal arts educations are certain that such an education creates great leaders, and certainly the ranks of our elite are strongly represented by folks with degrees in poly sci, international relations, history, etc. One of the reasons that people give for the strength of a liberal arts education is that students are taught to think deeply and analytically about a number of subjects. They're taught to ask questions and reason about the answers, to not accept what they're told but to use skepticism and a rational mind as tools.

That's the popular point, but I should point out that this also applies to a scientific education. Deep thought and constant questioning are (or should be) the hallmarks of the PhD process in engineering as well as in English Lit. The difference is the material. I think one of the strengths of a classical liberal arts education is that subject matter: whether it's art, literature, philosophy, history, or what have you, the ultimate subject of study for a liberal arts education is just one thing: humanity.

A liberal arts education, fundamentally, is the application of deep, penetrating thought to the study of how humans communicate, behave, and relate to each other. It's the study of how human institutions are created, how they function, how they succeed, and how they fail. And I think this is one of the reasons that such an education is immensely beneficial to the leaders of any sort of society.

To create good leaders, we need both pieces. Technological progress holds a lot of potential to address some really big social problems, and mathematical and statistical tools are giving us new ways of understanding and seeing how people behave. But to really be able to make good decisions around these things we need leaders who understand them, understand both the potential and limits of technology. Quantitative models revolutionized finance, but they also did a lot of damage, because people used them without understanding their limitations. The same pitfalls await in society at large.

There needs to be a dedicated effort to make technical educations a basis for people who won't go on to work in strictly technical fields. Just like studying economics doesn't imply you'll spend your life counting money, so a degree in engineering shouldn't imply that you'll spend your life building things. Instead, such an education should give you the tools to make rational decisions about scientific subjects throughout your life.

The other piece of the puzzle is that STEM folks who are on this path need better exposure to the humanities. And I don't mean in the old "oh chuck the nerds in the English classes for a bit of polish" type thing, but rationally and forcefully present to the students a clear vision for why such classes, and why that kind of thinking, matters.

Obama probably never took a math class past his freshman year, and almost certainly didn't have to take much physics. Likewise, many engineers I know, especially at big state schools, will never take a humanities class after freshman English. Either direction is a tragedy.