The Importance of Humanities Studies for STEM Students

U. of Illinois physicists' Covid model fails badly because they did not account for undergraduate behavior

Last week, the University of Illinois re-opened their campus and called 40000 students back, with their safety being assured based on models prepared by their physicists. This failed because the students refused to behave according to the model, and instead lived together and partied, and now they’ve had to announce a lockdown. And people are pointing out that the scientists would not have made this error if they had shown more respect for non-STEM fields. Basically, STEM experts tend to think in terms of spherical cows, and to solve new problems of a new world, you need to have exposure to non-spherical cows, which the humanities subjects do.

In an earlier update, I wrote about the importance of learning without boundaries. This is especially true when the established world order is upset and the rules change, as happens when, for example, a global pandemic changes everything (or later when AI starts taking over tasks).

STEM fields (that is, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) tend to do extremely well for well-defined problems and are great at solving problems efficiently and optimally. But when the problems are fuzzier, you need exposure to other areas. This is why people have been talking about STEAM education (where A=Arts is inserted).

For Teachers’ Day, let’s remember what Dr. Radhakrishnan said in 1963. He worried that our colleges seem to be "getting mechanized minds ... with routine reactions to the challenges presented to us." Sounds like a STEM graduate?

If you don’t want mechanized minds with routine reactions to routine challenges, start looking at including humanities subjects in your education.