Humanities And STEM In Competition

A Rising Call to Promote STEM Education and Cut Liberal Arts Funding

Patricia Cohen | February 21, 2016

When the Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, suggested last month that students majoring in French literature should not receive state funding for their college education, he joined a growing number of elected officials who want to nudge students away from the humanities and toward more job-friendly subjects like electrical engineering.
Frustrated by soaring tuition costs, crushing student loan debt and a lack of skilled workers, particularly in science and technology, more and more states have adopted the idea of rewarding public colleges and universities for churning out students educated in fields seen as important to the economy.

Thirty-two states—Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—have a funding formula or policy in place to allocate a portion of funding based on performance indicators such as course completion, time to degree, transfer rates, the number of degrees awarded, or the number of low-income and minority graduates.  Five states—Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, South Dakota, and Vermont—are currently transitioning to some type of performance funding, meaning the Legislature or governing board has approved a performance funding program and the details are currently being worked out. Source: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/performance-funding.aspx

<more at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/a-rising-call-to-promote-stem-education-and-cut-liberal-arts-funding.html; related articles and links: http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2016-01-29/in-kentucky-a-push-for-engineers-over-french-lit-scholars (Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin wants state colleges and universities to produce more electrical engineers and less French literature scholars. January 29, 2016) and http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/performance-funding.aspx (Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education. July 31, 2015)>