[jkingsbery]

Not everything that we learn has to be learned in college. Not sure if 100% accurate, but a quick google search shows WVU tuition is about $9k for in-state, $25k out of state... does it really make sense for someone to spend $100k (or $36k, for West Virginia residents) to learn puppetry? If that's your thing, great, why not go apprentice yourself somewhere to learn that skill instead?

Or offer a class or two in puppetry, that someone as a theater major can take. Not everything that isn't STEM is "liberal arts" - as this article says, puppetry by itself is pretty niche, and the point of liberal arts is to be more broad.

[NickC25]

>Not everything that we learn has to be learned in college.

This honestly is the crux of the issue with higher education. In fact, most things we learn outside of STEM in academia can be learned elsewhere - literature, languages, arts, etc.

I'm 100% for the humanities, and majored in them myself. But they shouldn't cost a fortune to study, nor should they really be in a narrow results-focused academic environment. Now, are they worth learning? Of course they are, and I think they make us better human beings. But spending dumb money to learn something niche that can be learned and practiced on one's own time is probably not a great use of time nor money.

I studied multiple languages, and while they are incredibly useful and absolutely worth learning, academia is not the place to do it. While I did do the Middlebury intensive program (which is hard, and the results were great), I improved the most when I actually went and lived in a country that spoke the language I wanted to improve at. Some of the best speakers of a foreign language that I know got so good by having a girlfriend who was native to the language that they wanted to learn. No formal education needed.

If I wanted to learn puppetry, I'd use YouTube to learn the basics, and then perhaps even document my progress through making videos of my own. I'd probably make a few bucks on it too. People do the same thing for learning animation, acting, music production, video production, etc.. why can't puppetry be the same?

[SketchySeaBeast]

> In fact, most things we learn outside of STEM in academia can be learned elsewhere - literature, languages, arts, etc.

Why specify STEM as being an exception to that rule? Are people unable to learn programming or math outside of academia? It's a shame the arts aren't seen as valid jobs and so are unworthy of investment.

[lumost]

The advantage and disadvantage of an apprentice system is that practitioners cannot massively scale up their pupil count (at least normally).

This implicitly aligns incentives to a static arrangement where apprentices are training to replace their masters. It is immediately obvious to everyone which fields either can’t afford to pay their apprentices - or which fields have exceptionally long times until the apprentice can work independently. Practitioners are also strongly incentivized to only accept strong pupils who they expect to work with for many years.

The con of this model is that a great master can only teach a small number of apprentices - a great master may also be a terrible teacher.

Undoubtedly, there are some industries that should follow the apprenticeship model - however these industries also massively benefit from a university system which transfers the cost of training to the student/government. There likely should be some alignment between university costs and educational outcomes on a per major basis.

[dsr_]

Your argument is not "this is a thing which should not be taught" but rather "the economic model of teaching this is bad".

And I agree. But I would also say that the economic model for teaching everything is terrible. So, improving that model will make everything better.

Attempting to special-case a field does not improve things.

[mdip]

   > the economic model of teaching *this* is bad.

I tend to agree with this statement over "the economic model for teaching everything is terrible". Bear with me as I'm trying not to be petty by taking issue with the word "everything"[0] and I agree that this statement would be true about the majority of how traditional in-person education is done in the United States, especially at the (public) school and college/university level, however, I believe that issue lies more with the system, itself, than the idea that it's impossible to optimize an economic model involving education.

Looking at it "from a step back" -- from the perspective of any other product -- the cost is the teacher/facility/equipment and environment to support a touchy activity (learning) and multiple human beings attempting to do so at the same time. It's probably the most expensive way to transfer knowledge available to us and it's the default way most of us are taught.

In-person hands-on teaching falls victim to the basic problems of scale. Profits increase as the number of students per teacher increases but -- in most cases -- this negatively impacts the quality of the delivered education.

I don't think it's a "wild guess" to say that a lot of us meandering in the comments are self-taught. Sure, we went to college. Some of us even have advanced degrees[1]. But if you write software -- daily -- you've largely learned the details from somewhere other than a classroom. Most of the time it's been "for free" by reading others' code, online tutorials, actual documentation, etc. These are extremely efficient ways of both teaching and learning -- the single effort put into teaching is able to be consumed by limitless numbers of people.

There are many modalities to teaching/learning that are more efficient/provide for a better "economic model for teaching" than "traditional in-person education". One that we seem to have stepped further away from is apprenticeships. Puppetry -- though I have no experience in it -- is probably something that deeply benefits from in-person knowledge transfer and it seems like the kind of work that has probably only been taught via apprenticeship in the past.

[0] Love it when my kids do that ... "oh yeah, but what if ...?"

[1] That's not meant to imply anything negative about such degrees.

[nvahalik]

> why not go apprentice yourself somewhere

There has been a big push in the last 20 years or so to make sure that everyone makes a "living wage". This, in turn, makes it nearly impossible for people who want to learn a trade while making something (anything) from actually doing so. Their work and time is basically worthless. They can't be paid accordingly, so they just don't...

Unless you want to volunteer, but most organizations don't value volunteer time because it isn't "real work".

[crow_t_robot]

If you can take out a $100k loan and 4 years off work to get a degree then you should be able to do the same to apprentice somewhere. I get what you are saying, though.

[idiotsecant]

Skilled trades apprenticeships in states with a sane labor culture are well paid and sought after positions.

[bsder]

> There has been a big push in the last 20 years or so to make sure that everyone makes a "living wage". This, in turn, makes it nearly impossible for people who want to learn a trade while making something (anything) from actually doing so.

Checking Austin IBEW, it goes from starting apprentice at about $17/hr+benefits and goes up every year guaranteed until hitting about $34/hr+benefits at base rate for a journeyman. "Living wage" isn't going to impinge on that except at the very bottom.

However, people don't want to do trades because it's really hard work.

[ghaff]

Many people object to unpaid or minimally paid internships but that's pretty much the only option for many types of apprenticeships where the apprentice is learning but isn't really doing anything very useful.

[rhaway84773]

The problem ultimately boils down to the 710% increase in tuition.

If college education had retained the same tuition costs as it did 30 odd years ago (increasing at the rate of inflation only), that puppetry major would have cost something like $20k over 4 years, probably been paid off by the student doing part time work at the library, etc. and the student would have graduated debt free with some party time work experience and taken a few years to see if they could parlay their experience into the next Muppets. If rent hadn’t blown up the way it has either, they would have supported themselves by doing a bartender’s job or server’s job, and as the thing wasn’t working out could have started doing some courses on the side, and a few years later either leveraged all their work experience or these side courses into a real job, or taken up a master’s and made a career switch while having given something really interesting and different a go, for which the entire world would be better off.

However, massive increase in tuition costs and rent with no corresponding increase in the safety net means risk taking has to pretty much been eliminated at the individual level which will cost society overall.

[drewcoo]

> does it really make sense for someone to spend $100k (or $36k, for West Virginia residents) to learn puppetry?

No. School should be free.

> why not go apprentice yourself somewhere to learn that skill instead?

Because schools should help set those internships and apprenticeships up.

> puppetry by itself is pretty niche, and the point of liberal arts is to be more broad

You have that strangely inverted. Because liberal arts are so broad as to include the arts and because the arts are so broad as to include puppetry, the point of liberal arts is to offer niche studies like puppetry.