Godless has a post over at Gene Expression that I largely agree with (though I would have some quibbles), that is accordingly certain to enrage vast swathes of academia, particularly the pomos. He ranks various academic fields by required intelligence. Gender/ethnic "studies" comes out dead last, under gym.

I'm more interested, though, in a comment by one of his readers, which I think provides at least a partial explanation.

I always point out that the humanities have been largely destroyed in the last 40 years. I think if you had to master greek, latin and old english and write very detailed papers it would be a much more challenging field.

I think that elimination of the language requirement in general may have softened things up quite a bit (I know that I'd certainly have had much more difficulty getting my engineering degrees if they hadn't done so--I perhaps might not even have made it).

But as other commenters point out, even the hard science curriculum has been dumbed down to some degree, particularly with the huge influx of computer "science" degrees in the desperate nineties. Several commenters point out the lack of familiarity with multi-variable calculus, even among the faculty.

I may have more thoughts on this later, but the comments are interesting even without any input from me.

I'd wonder where he'd rank a lot of the hard science research that I see on campus today. Ranking Biology as a "stamp-collecting science" does a disservice to the molecular and cell science research being done, and I don't see any mention of research chemistry at all- just chemical engineering.

I definately would agree that it's not as "hard" in a mathmatical sense as research physics or nuclear engineering, but below mathematical Psychology seems a little bit unfair to the life scientists among us. Then again, maybe I just don't like my discipline being ranked just above "non-politicized humanities".

That's one of the quibbles I'd have...

Have to repeat what I posted over there:

Speaking about the math weenies, surely you realize that the reason so many economists have space launch and other credentials is that the theoretical physicists that worked at NASA couldn't handle real math and they brought in economists.

Which is why in MBA programs the economics majors eat the lunch of the engineers in any of the math oriented classes.

Of course, the failure to truly understand what you are writing about is often a flaw of the under educated in the weaker fields.

Who can't even handle the core of their own specialties and have to call in economists to fix their problems.

(Did I hit the right tone of dismissiveness and arrogance to match the original post and the comments? Have I managed to leave a great hole for others to attack leftist economists as a bunch of soft minded math weak puny headed dweebs who belong in the sociology department? Enquiring minds want to know.)