College

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Ditto an undergraduate degree on the way to practicing law or medicine. Last I checked, a typical doctor or lawyer could expect to make somewhere on the order of $300,000 to $500,000 a year. Granted, that's after even more expensive education. The ones who really seem to suffer from this are professional academics: a tenured professor only makes somewhere in the area of $100,000 to $150,000. This isn't exactly below the poverty line, but that's after roughly a decade of costly post-secondary education, at least a few years at a lower salary, and that's if you get tenure and a full professorship at all.

[Niemand]

Quote:

The ones who really seem to suffer from this are professional academics: a tenured professor only makes somewhere in the area of $100,000 to $150,000. This isn't exactly below the poverty line, but that's after roughly a decade of costly post-secondary education, at least a few years at a lower salary, and that's if you get tenure and a full professorship at all.

This isn't exactly the case (the 'roughly a decade part'): I'm not sure how it goes in other fields, but from what I've seen students in the sciences get a (modest) salary while in graduate school, and their tuitions come out of their advisors' budgets. So, while one isn't exactly accumulating wealth, one isn't going further into debt, either. In my case, now that I've been saving for a few years, I have enough that I'll be able to pay off my student loans from undergrad before any interest accrues.

[Kelandon]

Originally Posted By: Darth RuPaula

Ditto an undergraduate degree on the way to practicing law or medicine. Last I checked, a typical doctor or lawyer could expect to make somewhere on the order of $300,000 to $500,000 a year. Granted, that's after even more expensive education.

And a lot of people who want to become lawyers or doctors don't make it. At least the doctors usually get screened out before medical school; the lawyers mostly get screened out after law school.*

* Only a small percentage of premeds get into medical school, but virtually everyone who gets into medical school becomes a doctor. I forget the percentage of people who go to law school who become practicing lawyers, but I don't think it's even a majority. And even of those practicing lawyers, only a small percentage become partners at big law firms and make oodles of dollars.

EDIT: Oh, and funded Ph. D. programs are standard at reputable programs regardless of discipline, I think. Unfunded Masters programs are common, too, though, so you can end up with a lot of debt from graduate school even so.

[Randomizer]

But most graduate schools hire their graduate students as teaching assistants (slave labor) so they have a funding source above minimum wage by a little bit. Most science and engineering programs have research positions for grad students too.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

The whole 'not everyone makes it' thing is pretty common among professional academics, as well. There just aren't that many jobs in the social sciences and humanities (since science, engineering, and sometimes business departments tend to get the big bucks). It's apparently easier to get some sort of professorship in the natural sciences and math, but even there the competition for tenure is cutthroat. It has to be pretty nasty to be in one's mid-thirties to forties, no longer a rising star, denied tenure, shuttling from school to school just hoping to keep some kind of employment, maybe with a family to take care of by this point...

 

It's still not working two minimum wage jobs just to make rent and put food on the table, but man that does not sound like any kind of way to live.

[Alorael at Large]

Most doctors don't make $300,000, although it of course depends on specialty. Primary care requires very long hours to make enough to live on after paying off medical loans. But again, that's better than lawyers: it's now quite possible to graduate successfully and then not be able to get a job.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think America needs more lawyers. It does need more doctors, but as mentioned the bottleneck is school, not employment.

[Kendroxide]

Wow, all this make me grateful that I live in Canada. My university expense is about $6500 a year (just tuition) and I go to a respectful university (actually, probably the best western Canadian university for business).

[Aran]

... wow. My fees (public school) are about €600 per year; most of that pays for public transport. I know I live in a den of old European socialism, but I didn't realize I had it this good.

[Enraged Slith]

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ(you think you're so fancy with all of your special characters, well you're not, they don't even work)

... wow. My fees (public school) are about €600 per year; most of that pays for public transport. I know I live in a den of old European socialism, but I didn't realize I had it this good.

It really depends on the school in the states. I paid about that much per semester while getting my associates degree at a community college.

Honestly, for the price I paid, the quality of education was phenomenal. I'm surprised that more students don't take care of their basic core classes this way before going to a more specialized school for their degree.

[Thousand]

Hearing that people have to pay for school always just sounds so weird. I don't mean that as a joke; I know things work differently in other countries, but it's not a thing I actively remember. It always makes me slightly puzzled at first. And then a little bit sad, I guess.

 

Not that it's perfectly free of course. You're still going to need money for books or various accompanying items depending on the studies. And they can be expensive. If I remember correctly you need to be at least 17 before you can apply for student benefits, and you enter lukio at 16, so... Before that someone has to pay for you. And every student ever has always complained that the benefit is too small. (it is) Also, there's probably a lot of travelling. Maybe even living expanses, if you don't live at home anymore! (but then the benefit should be bigger.)

 

Oh this is probably not that useful knowledge to anyone here. :|

[Niemand]

I think one could see an analogy between health care and higher education in the U.S.: In both cases that quality of what is available is generally quite good, there's a lot of it, and we've also come to expect to pay a lot for it. One could go on to hypothesize a mentality with a built-in assumption that for something important to be happening a lot of money has to be moving around too.

[Alorael at Large]

If I recall right, a decade ago or so, maybe a bit more, there were demonstrations in Germany over students having to pay at all for schooling. There were concerns about the perpetual student class. There was anger about having to pay for something as essential as education.

 

Now, in the US, there's pressure to go back to school, or stay in school, because the economy is still a mess and it's hard to find work. And this is while school costs are going up!

 

—Alorael, who will just say that he understands going into the kinds of graduate schooling that pay a stipend and cover your tuition. It's a job, more or less, hopefully doing the kind of thing you enjoy and enabling you to either move into a good academic position later or jump into consulting, industry, or the sundry other jobs available to the highly skilled labor pool. But humanities grad school without a fellowship? That's a very expensive delaying tactic unless you're either very sure you're going into academia or very sure you're in a school with a great placement rate after graduation, or both.

[Student of Trinity]

Germany takes the 'knowledge economy' idea really seriously. Not only is the doctorate such a coveted and respected title that most politicians and CEOs find it necessary to acquire one; there are also formal training and qualification programs for every conceivable activity. Education is viewed as basic social infrastructure, like administering justice and maintaining the roads. Most if not all teachers at every level, from professors to day care workers, are government employees.

 

In response to recent economic troubles, though, a lot of German states have in fact introduced token levels of tuition over the past few years. Far from needing loans to cover these fees, you can pretty much pay them by cutting back on your beer budget. This tuition money is generally used only for things that directly and visibly benefit the students who pay them, like upgrading undergraduate labs, lecture halls, and student housing.

 

Germans do nonetheless also expect to pay a lot for good education, just like Americans. Germans just pay for it with taxes, so that everybody pays for it, all the time, not just the people who are currently using the service.

 

I think this makes sense. Education is an individual benefit, that can make you as an individual rich. But education is usually not a benefit like a cheeseburger, that you simply consume for yourself. The way you normally enjoy the benefit of the skills you have learned is that other people pay you to practice your skills. If they pay you, it must be because they think your skilled work is worth more than its price, since otherwise they'd have kept their money for something better. So the only way for you to benefit from your skill is for other people to benefit from it, too.

 

By the very logic of free market capitalism, education is something that makes sense to run communistically. It's in everybody's interest for everybody to be educated.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

By the very logic of free market capitalism, education is something that makes sense to run communistically. It's in everybody's interest for everybody to be educated.

+10^10.

Originally Posted By: Alorael

If I recall right, a decade ago or so, maybe a bit more, there were demonstrations in Germany over students having to pay at all for schooling. There were concerns about the perpetual student class. There was anger about having to pay for something as essential as education.

Well, in 2005, a federal law against public school tuition fees was defeated in court. Since then it's determined by each state. It's also in flux, and a very current topic. Hesse, where I live now, had no tuition costs at all from about 1949 to 2007. Then they introduced fees in the range of ~1000-3000€ per year (depending on study time). It led to the biggest student protests in over a decade. They got rid of it less than a year later.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@SoT: Well said. If there's one thing that fills me with rage about American-style capitalism (and the economic libertarianism that informs it/is informed by it), it's that it seems predicated on a complete lack of understanding of the concept of a public good. And, by extension, the notion that one might want to promote or not despoil said public goods.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Now everyone, hold on just a minute. The US has a huge number of college/graduate students, and the cost to the colleges and universities is pretty large. It would take quite a bit of money from the federal government even to eliminate tuition just at public institutions. Money on the order of magnitude of a few whole percentage points of the military budget!*

 

That said, the Constitution does place the onus of educating the public on the states, not the central government. From this standpoint, I understand why Ron Paul would eliminate the US DoE. I understand it, but I don't like it. Education is important, and if it requires a Constitutional Amendment to justify federal assistance, then I'm all for the 28th Amendment.

 

 

*(I have no math to back that up)

[The Ratt]

I think the biggest hurdle to college education becoming subsidized by the government more than it is are the people whose mindset is "I don't give a <censored> what the benefits are, you aren't raising my taxes." I also think that even if they weren't against increased taxes, you would still be hard pressed to convince them having an english, history, art, music, or dance degree would be worth their money.

[A less presumptuous name.]

I think you'd also have a hard time convincing the government that those majors would be worth the money. Yes, STEM degrees are important and will help develop the nation and all that jazz. No one is arguing against that point. We have to keep in mind, though, that those aren't the only important things.

[Callie]

The government should take care of the terrible, terrible primary education system first.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Master1

I think you'd also have a hard time convincing the government that those majors would be worth the money. Yes, STEM degrees are important and will help develop the nation and all that jazz. No one is arguing against that point. We have to keep in mind, though, that those aren't the only important things.

No, but there's a fairly good argument that those are the only degrees that should be subsidized by the government, as that would incentivize more people to take them, whereas if every degree were subsidized, more people would flock to Art History than Materials Science simply because it would be substantially easier, and so the government gets stuck with the tab for someone who will, in all likelihood, have a low ROI for society.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@The Ratt: I agree that math and science majors would be the easiest sell (and this is already evident from the fact that they get the lion's share of funding in most universities), and HSS probably wouldn't do too badly, but even the 'softer' disciplines in the humanities have clear societal benefits. For instance, English feeds heavily into journalism, especially at institutions that don't have a specific journalism major. I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy.

 

The hardest programs to sell would probably be creative departments like music, creative writing, and fine art. This is both because there are far more brilliant artists with little or no formal training than, say, brilliant scientists or historians with a similar dearth of credentials, and because it's easy to see these disciplines as primarily creating entertainment rather than the various ostensibly more necessary forms of social utility that other departments produce.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy.

Professional standards in the media? What kind of chicanery is this?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy.

Professional standards in the media? What kind of chicanery is this?

The Economist, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal*...

[Callie]

People who read those are generally more educated to begin with (I don't like the New York Times, though). But that's only a relatively small segment of the media. The problem is those network news organizations like CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc.

[Alorael at Large]

Even when majors aren't clearly useful, I think running the numbers on college grads shows that despite the stereotype of English majors flipping burgers, any degree leads to better employment and more income than lack of a degree. Regardless of the education people want, it would be better for everyone to make it happen. A rising tide does lift all ships, if you don't put strings on the biggest ships, haul them up with winches, and call it a tide and a very stretched metaphor.

 

—Alorael, who also once again notes the statistics from China, with large amounts of good education, mediocre education, vocational training, and lack of any formal education at all. Ten years out of school, even those with college educations from the lower tier schools do better than anyone with vocational training except in the handful of professions that really absolutely require specific training and nothing else. It may not be obvious why fine arts makes better office drones, but it seems to work.

[Kelandon]

Learning critical thinking and writing skills (as you should in an English major) is useful for a large number of things. An English major is eminently practical. The difficulty is that it doesn't lead to anything in particular (unlike, say, a degree in accounting); it's of fairly general application. This makes it harder to explain to anyone.

[Dantius]

"Critical thinking and writing skills" are learned by pretty much every college major, when you think about it. It's hardly something you need an English major to prove you can do, the way you would need an accounting or engineering degree.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

"Critical thinking and writing skills" are learned by pretty much every college major, when you think about it.

would that it were true

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Dantius: On the critical thinking skills, I agree with you. Acquiring those is more a matter of studying hard in college than of choosing any particular academic program. On writing skills, I'll have to differ. While a scientific education teaches skills in certain specialized writing forms, and I don't doubt that the average bio major writes a better lab report than the average English major, the fact remains that said education leaves out a lot of the basic tutelage in academic writing that people in more verbose majors receive. I say this on the basis of proofreading papers by various science major friends of mine, and reading various bits from more serious science journals (as opposed to popular science periodicals, which are generally the province of science writers rather than scientists): there is a lot of really bad writing in the natural sciences. I don't just mean blunt and unembellished writing, which is unfashionable but actually fine. I mean writing featuring various typos and stylistic errors that make it genuinely hard to follow.

 

Obviously, this is not to say that there are no scientists and science students with writing skills; rather, that their scientific education had little or nothing to with their acquisition of said skills.

[Alorael at Large]

It's something any major should teach you, and it's one of the reasons a college degree should be generally useful for success in many fields.

 

—Alorael, who knows plenty of people who seem to have graduated without learning much. It's bad for them, but it's also bad for everyone else whose degree's value drops because it's no longer clear whether a diploma means anything.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy.

Professional standards in the media? What kind of chicanery is this?

And since when did the media have standards at all?

[Student of Trinity]

Higher education in science hardly ever includes any training in writing. I don't know how we got that way, but it's a bad problem.

 

I'm honestly not so sure about the critical thinking part, either. Sure, the brightest science students learn to think very carefully. But these are people who would be learning that even from basket weaving. Further down the grade curve, there's a lot of rote learning in science, and a heck of a lot of it in engineering. You learn how to do things, because that's how they are done.

 

On the one hand that's a shame, because science is a great place to learn critical thinking, because it's so dreadfully hard. You can learn so many more ways of being wrong than you ever thought possible. You begin to appreciate that humans are just jumped-up little monkeys stumbling around in a universe much too complicated for us. Your default judgement on any product of human intelligence is that it is crap. That makes you pretty critical. But I think it is much too often the case that people learn technical disciplines without ever getting that far, because they only learn what works.

 

I think that maybe writing more would help with this. Too much of science education consists of nodding your head when some textbook or professor tells you something. It's immediately alarming to have to write something yourself, and have to stand behind every sentence. You suddenly realize how sketchy your understanding is.

 

But writing also deepens your understanding in a more subtle way. Physics homework problems can involve nothing but a mass sliding on a plane, but it's hard to write any kind of paper without introducing some sort of broader context. At the least you have to put in some words at the beginning of your piece to tell the reader why they should bother reading further. This forces you to judge the importance of the different things you've learned, and relate them all to other things. Science does too little of this, to the point where people can have successful research careers without ever doing anything more than looking where the crowd seems to be heading, and pushing towards the front of it.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@SoT: That's a very interesting perspective on the subject. I never got further than introductory undergraduate science and math, so most of my knowledge of didactic methods in these disciplines is secondhand. My experience of introductory classes was that students were pretty much expected to take the facts of the discipline on fiat; there was some proof by experimentation, but even then we were generally spoon-fed the experimental design. This doesn't seem unreasonable for a 100-level class, but I expected that things got more involved for upperclassmen in those divisions.

 

I think your statement also provides a strong defense of the practice of requiring undergraduates to write senior theses (as my school did). I can't say for certain that the thesis process promoted a more critical engagement with the subject matter as a whole among science majors, but it definitely required them to think more about the context of their work, and to engage critically with the literature in their field. My flatmate was a physics major who wrote his thesis on fracture mechanics, and he certainly had a lot to say about the foundational work in the field by the end of that year. Much of it not very good. This seems to have been typical of thesis students in general. I don't have the knowledge base necessary to say whether his opinions on the subject had real merit, but the fact that he had begun to form his own opinions for and against the leading lights of the field strikes me as preferable to the type of pure rote learning you describe, especially in the more theoretical arms of the sciences.

[Student of Trinity]

Yes, I think something like a senior thesis is a great idea. The only trouble is that most science programs these days are really pressed for time. Students only have so much time, and they're expected to cover so much stuff. I took a particularly specialized degree in theoretical physics that left me only one elective per year, and I still had to make choices. I ended up graduating without ever having taken a course in statistical mechanics, which in retrospect was about as bizarre as becoming an Eagle Scout without being able to build a fire.

 

It would probably have been great for me to have written a physics thesis. But what course would I have given up in order to have done it? A very tough call. All my senior year courses were really interesting and important. So I don't really have a good answer for this.

 

The thing about explaining science clearly from first principles is not that it can't be done. We really do know how stuff works; we're not just being lucky. It's just that explaining properly is so extremely hard. We are stuck with these little monkey brains, and evidently God is not so limited. You know those annoying brain teasers that seem utterly impossible, until you learn the answer, and you just kick yourself because it should have been so obvious? Well, scientific research is like hitting those every day, for years on end. Maybe once in several years you hit a problem that doesn't make you feel stupid, because it really is profound. But the stupid problems, that are only problems at all because of your stupid little monkey brain, these just crop up constantly.

 

Like, how do airplanes stay up? Man, this bugs me. I've heard all kinds of stuff about streamlines and pressures, but see, I'm a hardened cynic, as well as a professional physicist. So I look through all that handwaving stuff, and realize that it is just begging the question. The real answer has to be that somehow the airplane wing shape and attack angle persuade more molecules to bounce harder off the bottom of the wing than off the top, yet without simply dragging like a kite (since that takes way too much thrust). But I want to know how this persuasion trick is pulled off. I know there's an answer. But I've never found it spelled out.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

The only trouble is that most science programs these days are really pressed for time. Students only have so much time, and they're expected to cover so much stuff.

This was definitely true at my school. Physics and biochem majors, in particular, have units or more (out of 30 required to graduate) taken up by classes in their department/division, and many of the rest are filled by group requirements (core classes across various divisions: humanities, HSS/psychology, natural sciences, and math/languages/linguistics). The latter offer a bit more leeway, but students in these disciplines only get the opportunity to take around two to six semesters' worth of true electives. Many of these will be additional classes in their majors, because those are the most clearly applicable to the student's course of study and future career path.

So the thesis is definitely a trade-off, but one that I think in sum is worth it. Even in the social sciences and humanities, which have give students much more opportunity to write papers, I think students are well served by the requirement to write something that at least approximates a genuine academic monograph. This is only amplified in the natural sciences, where so much of the work takes the form of exams and problem sets.

[Dintiradan]

I could post a hugemassive post with my own anecdotes, both as a student and as a TA, but your time is better spend rereading all of Student of Trinity's posts, because everything he says is the truth.

[Randomizer]

If I hadn't taken experimental physics lab courses I wouldn't have done any scientific writing. Even then only the upper levels ones required writing your experiment up as a research paper for one major paper at the end if you took more than one of them.

 

Writing ability is assumed because you have to take basic English classes as course requirements. When you get to graduate school you get a manual with the technical requirements but to understand what goes into a paper all you are told is to look at previous ones written by past students.

[Kelandon]

Every now and then, I think wistfully about how very close I came to applying to graduate programs in astronomy. My selling point would not have been my depth of knowledge of math or physics or something; I was fine, but nothing exceptional. It would have been that I can write. I would've been a theorist and a popularizer, a sort of wannabe Richard Feynman. It could've been fun. But it was not to be.

 

Frankly, the things that are most valuable to learn are the ones that are the hardest to teach, in any discipline. How do we teach core analytical skills? Law schools think that they know, and they think that they're doing it in the first-year curriculum. Most undergrad departments like to think (to the extent that they think about teaching at all) that they're doing it, too. Are they? Perhaps. That's why a lot of jobs want applicants to have a bachelor's degree in something, regardless of what.

 

Uh, more directly on the topic of writing, I grade essays from pre-meds from time to time. I'm inclined to think that bio students, at least, do not learn how to write in college. If they know how to write, they learned it in high school or before.

[A less presumptuous name.]

That's okay. This year, I'm taking AP English Literature. We are strictly told that we will *not* be learning how to write in this course. That was expected to be covered last year, in AP English Language. Of course, the only writing that we learned that year was 3 form essays to be written in 40 minutes or less. So no, I've never actually learned how to write a real paper, and I'll be in college within 6 months.

[ex post slarto]

I had, in retrospect, astonishingly good English teachers in middle and high school. And I learned a few things from them about how to write, but mostly I did not learn from them. I learned how to write from reading when I was young.

 

Given that by far the easiest and most common way to acquire native speaking ability in a language is to listen to it when you are young, I am inclined to think that that's the real answer. Teachers can provide depth of understanding, and they can refine the finer points, but I think that naive observation is really where people learn to write.

[Kelandon]

I think that my writing got better in college, but almost by accident. I learned Latin and Greek. That did it.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Kelandon

I think that my writing got better in college, but almost by accident. I learned Latin and Greek. That did it.

When I was young, I didn't think that there was any real importance in learning foreign languages. After all, everyone speaks English anyway. However, once I started studying French, it made me smarter in so many ways that I cannot see why learning a new language isn't mandatory. My only regret is that I took so long to start studying.

Anyway, though, studying a new language prompted a lot of philosophical thought about the nature of language and thought, which I am still working through. It opened my eyes far wider too different ways of thinking and acting than my own. Most practically, though, it made me learn English and understand it on a totally different level. I was a decent writer, for my age, before I started studying French, but now I'm one of the best writers in my graduating class. I attribute that in large part to all the thought about the English language I had to do as a result of studying French.

Bringing this back to college, I advocate studying a foreign language. It's never too late to learn, and the benefits are wonderful. Of course, like all things, you get out what you put in.

[Student of Trinity]

Linguists call this 'metalinguistic awareness'. Learning a second language makes you more aware of language in general.

 

I think it can work even within one language, if you explore enough different registers. Read some older English, like Shakespeare or Milton. Or the Preface to the King James Bible:

Originally Posted By: The Translators to the Reader (excerpt from first paragraph)

Zeale to promote the common good, whether it be by devising any thing our selves, or revising that which hath bene laboured by others, deserveth certainly much respect and esteeme, but yet findeth but cold intertainment in the world. It is welcommed with suspicion in stead of love, and with emulation in stead of thankes: and if there be any hole left for cavill to enter, (and cavill, if it doe not finde a hole, will make one) it is sure to bee misconstrued, and in danger to be condemned. This will easily be granted by as many as know story, or have any experience. For, was there ever any thing projected, that savoured any way of newnesse or renewing, but the same endured many a storme of gaine-saying, or opposition?

Or The French Revolution:

Originally Posted By: Thomas Carlyle, last two sentences of FR

Ill stands it with me if I have spoken falsely: thine also it was to hear truly. Farewell.

 

The words are almost all recognizable, but the sentence structure is often radically different. More like Latin, I think, and maybe also more like German.

 

I wouldn't recommend writing that way now, but I think it can somehow help to see how well it worked, when it worked.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

I learned how to write from reading when I was young.

I think that this holds true for me, too. Throughout school (right up until I started university, actually, by which time I had already taught myself to write (or maybe taught myself is wrong; I was capable, but it was a more organic process than sitting down and actively learning)), I can't remember anybody ever trying to teach us how to write. I can barely remember any lessons on any aspect of language really; the focus was always on analysing and interpreting literature, which was great fun for me, but kinda neglectful at the same time.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Goldenking, I really agree. I'm in my 5th year of studying French, and it's certainly helped me, not only in English but in critical thinking and general awareness. Even if you're not great at learning other languages, a few years of study will do you great good!

[Student of Trinity]

My father likes to quote the line, "Un homme qui parle deux langues, c'est deux hommes." He doesn't remember the source, and googling the phrase now turns up slightly different wordings, also unattributed, and which don't seem quite as good as his. I think there's something to the idea that learning another language adds a lot to a person.

 

It's annoying that the quote says nothing about femmes, who must be just as linguistically multipliable as men, but my own French is not good enough to produce a smooth-sounding gender-neutral version. Perhaps, "Qui parle deux langues, c'est deux personnes." But I guess I'm really only at 1.5 personnes or so.

[A less presumptuous name.]

The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively. If the gender is unknown, one simply uses masculine if there isn't a gender-neutral option. In fact, many words, like "il/ils" are listed as both masculine and neutral.

 

Also, you would start your own phrase off with Ce qui, not Qui. I can't think of anything better than "personnes," though.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Master1

The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively.

...That's true in English, too. "The student dropped his books" is perfectly correct if the gender of the student is unknown.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: DANTIUS

Originally Posted By: Master1

The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively.

...That's true in English, too. "The student dropped his books" is perfectly correct if the gender of the student is unknown.

This used to be the case, but many people consider it incorrect usage now. Language is a moving target.

Also, aren't these situations where on would be used in French?

[Harehunter]

@ Dintiradan

Curious, how do the Romance languages deal with gender neutral usage when every noun is gender specific?

 

'La Mesa', not 'El Mesa'. 'Estos vasos', not 'Estas vasos'.