Why are the humanities not as celebrated as STEM subjects by the general public?

Imagine walking into a room and being asked to choose between two boxes: one contains a blueprint for a smartphone that will net you a million dollars, and the other contains a poem that might console you when you lose a loved one. Which one does society scream at you to pick? We live in an era where the value of **STEM** (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is instantly visible. When a software engineer writes code, a new app appears on your phone. When a biochemist develops a vaccine, lives are saved. But the **humanities**—fields like philosophy, history, literature, and art that study how humans process and document the human experience—deal in a currency that is much harder to calculate on a spreadsheet. ## The Tangibility Trap and the "RoI" Obsession The primary reason the general public sidelines the humanities is what we can call the *tangibility trap*. STEM fields produce concrete, scalable, and economically measurable outputs. Society has become obsessed with a narrow definition of **Return on Investment (RoI)**. If you cannot easily link a college major to a specific starting salary, we tend to label it as a luxury or a dead end. In his book *The Fuzzy and the Techie*, venture capitalist [Scott Hartley](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-fuzzy-and-the-techie-scott-hartley) argues that this division is a false dichotomy. Yet, the public perception remains: STEM builds the world, while the humanities just talk about it. Furthermore, the humanities often demand comfort with ambiguity, whereas the public craves certainty. Science is perceived as a march toward objective truth, while a literature seminar asks you to accept multiple conflicting interpretations of a single novel. In a fast-paced world, people prefer the comfort of "correct" answers over the slow burn of deep questioning. The educational philosopher [Martha Nussbaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum), in her book *Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities*, warns of the dangers of this shift: > "Distracted by the pursuit of wealth, we increasingly treat education as if its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens." When we measure the worth of education purely by its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the humanities will always look like the losing side, even though they teach the very empathy and critical thinking required to keep democratic societies functioning. ## Sparking the Next Inquiry To explore this tension further, consider these questions: 1. **The AI Paradox:** As artificial intelligence increasingly automates coding and technical tasks, will the "human-only" skills of the humanities (like ethics, storytelling, and empathy) actually become the most valuable job skills of the future? 2. **The Historical Flip:** Why is it that in ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy, the study of philosophy and art was considered the ultimate pursuit of the ruling class, while practical crafts (the ancestors of STEM) were often left to laborers? 3. **The Empathy Crisis:** If we stop funding the humanities, does a society lose its ability to understand perspectives different from its own?