We all know there’s an imbalance between degrees in humanities and degrees in sciences. You only have to count the ratio of medics to historians at Bridge on a Thursday night to appreciate the difference between the two.
Yet, although I would much rather spend my hungover afternoon reading about Soviet industrialisation in postwar Russia than I would dissecting a human body, it seems unfair that degrees which burn the same size whole in our pockets are weighted so unequally in terms of resources and contact hours.
Scientific equipment and resources are considerably more expensive than what, for most arts students, amounts to a library subscription. And if Biochemists can pay £9,000 knowing they will see a don at least four times a week, as well as benefitting from many more hours of lectures, shouldn’t a geographer be able to do the same?
But it’s not just a question of money. While scientists may get a greater return on their educational investment it’s much harder to make friends that aren’t on their course. With nine-to-fives most days, finding the time to invest energy in socialising is inevitably going to be more tricky than for someone who spends their day sitting in the Rad Cam pretending to work. Humanities and sciences are different. But are they made more different than they have to be?
