Ask HN: Which university degree is most conducive to personal growth and wisdom? Setting aside proclivities to particular fields, eg. interested in computers, so study computer science. I'm wondering which degrees develop well-balanced, clear thinking, and satisfied students? Which degrees equip one to live a good life? Or is this an unrealistic expectation from institutions of education? |
Physics IMHO. It's weight lifting for the mind, teaches you judgement, precision, and abstraction while insisting results be grounded in physical reality. What better skills for the acquisition of wisdom?
Get in some classical philosophy if you can, as Aristotle answered the question beneath your question - how does one become wise? One becomes wise by imitating the actions of a wise person.
Physics and Aristotle provide the escape from modern philosophy which emasculated itself with the phrase "normative statements cannot be derived from empirical observations". More commonly stated as "you cannot derive an ought from an is".
For me it all led to a study and practice of the oldest Buddhist material in the Pali Canon. This is quite different from the semi-digested pap offered up as "mindfulness" these days. Fascinating stuff, sharing the qualities listed above for Physics.
Best of luck and don't forget to enjoy it all.
* Income, outdoor lifestyle, opportunities for travel. Good phd topics across economics, law, environment and civil engineering. And, you make (some, admittedly very poor dress sense, I mean those shoes...) people happy.
Look, it's bizarre but even actuarial studies can be immensely rewarding. Who knew statistics on when and how people die was so fascinating? It's impossible to say a priori which field of study "is the best one" because taken seriously, they all are. It depends who you are, what drives you, and your capabilities latent and overt.
Now law. That's where great minds go to die.
When I was at uni I thought it was arts. That was the 80s. I've had a great life, fruitful, fun, fulfilling and well renumerated for over 40 years from studying computer science in a tiny British post 1950s redbrick university.
I am not sure I'd recommend that now.
The student debt crisis is economically stupid and an attack on the young.
I think which degree program one chooses has little to do with the criteria you listed. "Personal growth," "wisdom," "well-balanced," "clear thinking," "a good life" all describe vague and subjective states or measures. And those states change according to one's situation and over time -- "wisdom" and "good life" don't describe objective static features, only how one subjectively feels at the moment. Choices you make at typical college age -- 18 to 25 -- will affect the rest of your life but in ways you can't predict, and you can't ever know you made the "best" choices. And what makes you happy at 20 years old may not seem like a good decision at 40 years old.
The purpose of a university degree program mainly comes down to profit for the institution, with any education transmitted almost incidental. You have to get an "education" yourself. A school or university can, at best, give you access to resources you otherwise wouldn't have access to, and a credential that intends to prove participation and accomplishment according to a defined curriculum, relative to your classmates. It may also communicate wealthy parents or decades of loan payments.
I can't give you any answers, but maybe I can help you flesh out some questions.
How do you want to change the world? Maybe pass laws that make it easier to trade green credits? Or build financial systems that reduce debt peonage in the (so called) third world. Maybe you want to build a machine that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere efficiently? Or do you want to ponder the inner depths of the psyche and emerge so fundamentally whole the rest of the world has to put down what they're doing and listen to YOUR wisdom.
Find a PERSON who is doing what you want to do (in academia or in the real world) and ask them how they got where they were and what they could have done to make their journey easier. Take the glossy recruitment pamphlets some universities produce with a grain of salt. Unless you're doing specialized science or engineering, it's the instructors that matter more than the facilities. Finding a professor who will invite you to participate in his research (even as an undergrad) is far more important than the college's reputation.
Maybe learn a skill you can fall back on if all your plans go south.
There's no shame in joining the military for 3 or 4 years if you really don't know what you want to do. But make sure you save the money you earn and don't let them cheat you out your educational benefits. Don't volunteer for anything and stay away from 55 gallon drums of chemicals.
Clear thinking is not all it's cracked up to be. A fuzzy misapprehension may lead to a hidden underlying truth. If something is obvious, ask yourself how the world would have to change so it appears ridiculous. If something is ridiculous ask yourself how the world would have to change for it to be obvious.
Try to limit college debt.
Does it develop satisfied students? Probably a lot less than something with high-paying clear cut job-outcomes.