re: Universities should scale back SJW curricula.

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First, Popper is one of my favorite political philosophers. The Open Society and Its Enemies had a huge impact on the development of my current socio-political views.

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I love Popper as well. The Logic of Scientific Discovery has been a very valuable book for me.

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To address your post however, while I agree with you in theory, I just don't think it's possible to squeeze all that in to a typical four year STEM degree. Most of my fraternity brothers were electrical/aerospace/optical engineers and their course load was BRUTAL to say the least.

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I completely understand how difficult it would be, but I think the last two years of high school and the first two years of college should be combined, as those are a wasteland of survey courses desperately trying to get students caught up to the vernacular of the subject. Then the last two to three years of all degree programs become more precarious, especially because of the lock-step nature of many of the classes, where students won't have another chance to take the class if they fail until two semesters later. I don't know how to streamline that process so that kids could maximize their learning time, and become fluent in both the concepts needed for their desired degree, and concepts that help them understand why things like philosophy, history, literature, etc., are valuable. What I fear the most is that our fantastic system of universities becomes nothing more than vocational training, and the humanities and arts are left to the children of the rich in private institutions built for the elite classes, as we would lose a tremendous amount of talent that way.

One suggestion I had for students when I taught was that if they could, try to pursue two majors, one technical and one theoretical. This would require, obviously, elongating the amount of time a student stays in school, but the long-term effects are amazing. I did this in school, and what it mainly taught me was that I had to be auto-didactic. While my technical degree (meaning degree meant to get a job) was not on the level of engineering, I think the value of an approach is apparent. Another way of doing this is adding either a philosophical, ethical, or technical component (for humanities majors) which requires combining disparate subjects together.

Ultimately, I don't want to sacrifice arts and humanities to the degree that it would hurt technical education. Most engineering degrees require at least some hours in the humanities, but I think we could maximize that time through changing some aspects of our schooling.