I'm kind of surprised at the responses in this thread. Seriously, if you are going to pay $60K a year to go to college, you damn well better be able to get a job when you graduate. I personally think it is a good thing that freshman are being practical and thinking about what they are spending their money on. If you have money to burn, sure, go to college and study whatever you want. But if you are taking out huge loans that you'll have to pay back when you graduate, good for them for actually thinking about how they'll repay it.
I personally think this is an issue of supply and demand. The demand is for people with a technical degree. There is an oversupply of liberal arts majors, hence high unemployment. The market is changing, so they are responding.
Signed: a very practical engineer who worked her ass off in college while my liberal arts roommates watched soap operas and partied.
The problem also is that we no longer value education for its own sake. We don't place any value on having an educated citizenry because that leads to better government, better decision making, etc. we value education only as far as its a means to an end. "Well what's the point of studying Roman history? You can't *use* that." And "why do I need to know how to analyze a novel, nobody is going to pay you to pick out themes in Great Expectations."
One, we can't seem to see beyond the immediate - that no, no one is going to hire someone to analyze novels, but being able to read something and see subtle clues and cues that mean something greater might, indeed, be an important skill for, say, a CIA analyst reading intelligence reports.
Two, we have this mindset that if it isn't directly and immediately valuable as a moneymaking skill, it's useless. We don't admire people who can recite Greek poetry and who can tell you about the primary causes of the French Revolution. That's nerdy. That's useless knowledge. Why aspire to that?
Sure, that's great. But how are you going to pay back your $60K per year tuition if you major in something that doesn't actually help you get a job? If education were free, yes, it would be wonderful. But college has become too expensive to just use it to pursue education as a purely intellectual endeavor.
I'm kind of surprised at the responses in this thread. Seriously, if you are going to pay $60K a year to go to college, you damn well better be able to get a job when you graduate. I personally think it is a good thing that freshman are being practical and thinking about what they are spending their money on. If you have money to burn, sure, go to college and study whatever you want. But if you are taking out huge loans that you'll have to pay back when you graduate, good for them for actually thinking about how they'll repay it.
I personally think this is an issue of supply and demand. The demand is for people with a technical degree. There is an oversupply of liberal arts majors, hence high unemployment. The market is changing, so they are responding.
Signed: a very practical engineer who worked her ass off in college while my liberal arts roommates watched soap operas and partied.
I'm kind of surprised anyone would post anything like this on this board. Did you get lost?
Why? Is this the liberal arts majors board? I missed the memo.
Last Edit: Jun 6, 2013 14:16:58 GMT -5 by pedanticwench
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
The problem also is that we no longer value education for its own sake. We don't place any value on having an educated citizenry because that leads to better government, better decision making, etc. we value education only as far as its a means to an end. "Well what's the point of studying Roman history? You can't *use* that." And "why do I need to know how to analyze a novel, nobody is going to pay you to pick out themes in Great Expectations."
One, we can't seem to see beyond the immediate - that no, no one is going to hire someone to analyze novels, but being able to read something and see subtle clues and cues that mean something greater might, indeed, be an important skill for, say, a CIA analyst reading intelligence reports.
Two, we have this mindset that if it isn't directly and immediately valuable as a moneymaking skill, it's useless. We don't admire people who can recite Greek poetry and who can tell you about the primary causes of the French Revolution. That's nerdy. That's useless knowledge. Why aspire to that?
Sure, that's great. But how are you going to pay back your $60K per year tuition if you major in something that doesn't actually help you get a job? If education were free, yes, it would be wonderful. But college has become too expensive to just use it to pursue education as a purely intellectual endeavor.
But why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't "marketable" degrees still include a well-rounded education? Why don't employers value those "soft skills?"
It's a worrying trend in our society that we're drawing this hard line between "things that will help you get a job" and "everything else." With really fucking important skills that would be taught in a humanities program being included under the everything else.
I'm kind of surprised at the responses in this thread. Seriously, if you are going to pay $60K a year to go to college, you damn well better be able to get a job when you graduate. I personally think it is a good thing that freshman are being practical and thinking about what they are spending their money on. If you have money to burn, sure, go to college and study whatever you want. But if you are taking out huge loans that you'll have to pay back when you graduate, good for them for actually thinking about how they'll repay it.
I personally think this is an issue of supply and demand. The demand is for people with a technical degree. There is an oversupply of liberal arts majors, hence high unemployment. The market is changing, so they are responding.
Signed: a very practical engineer who worked her ass off in college while my liberal arts roommates watched soap operas and partied.
I was with you until your last sentence. I'm not even going to touch that.
When the topic of student loans comes up on this board, and there's an article posted about someone with a history degree who's now in $100K of SL debt, isn't the general response pretty critical?
I totally agree that there's value in learning these things, even (especially) when it's outside your field of of study, but I don't blame students for being pragmatic about career opportunities after college. Maybe we'll see more students take these classes as electives, rather than major in them, as a safe way to hedge their bets.
Sure, that's great. But how are you going to pay back your $60K per year tuition if you major in something that doesn't actually help you get a job? If education were free, yes, it would be wonderful. But college has become too expensive to just use it to pursue education as a purely intellectual endeavor.
But why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't "marketable" degrees still include a well-rounded education? Why don't employers value those "soft skills?"
It's a worrying trend in our society that we're drawing this hard line between "things that will help you get a job" and "everything else." With really fucking important skills that would be taught in a humanities program being included under the everything else.
Isn't that what highschool is for? And also, as part of my engineering degree, we were required to take classes in English, writing and humanities. They were just a smaller part of the curriculum. And what "soft skills" are you talking about?
That response is exactly my point. Our society does not value education for its own sake. Which is why the burden is entirely on the student to "make an ROI" rather than society supporting the intellectual development for its citizens. Witness why virtually no other developed nation has massive numbers of people in massive student loan debt.
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
But why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't "marketable" degrees still include a well-rounded education? Why don't employers value those "soft skills?"
It's a worrying trend in our society that we're drawing this hard line between "things that will help you get a job" and "everything else." With really fucking important skills that would be taught in a humanities program being included under the everything else.
Isn't that what highschool is for? And also, as part of my engineering degree, we were required to take classes in English, writing and humanities. They were just a smaller part of the curriculum. And what "soft skills" are you talking about?
I'm seriously not even sure how to address this because I can't get past the bolded.
A good humanities program is a lot more than just some college rehash of high school history and english. the fact that you don't realize this is strange to me. Either you had some seriously shitty college professors for your humanities requirements or you went to an AMAZING high school.
I'm kind of surprised at the responses in this thread. Seriously, if you are going to pay $60K a year to go to college, you damn well better be able to get a job when you graduate. I personally think it is a good thing that freshman are being practical and thinking about what they are spending their money on. If you have money to burn, sure, go to college and study whatever you want. But if you are taking out huge loans that you'll have to pay back when you graduate, good for them for actually thinking about how they'll repay it.
I personally think this is an issue of supply and demand. The demand is for people with a technical degree. There is an oversupply of liberal arts majors, hence high unemployment. The market is changing, so they are responding.
Signed: a very practical engineer who worked her ass off in college while my liberal arts roommates watched soap operas and partied.
I was with you until your last sentence. I'm not even going to touch that.
When the topic of student loans comes up on this board, and there's an article posted about someone with a history degree who's now in $100K of SL debt, isn't the general response pretty critical?
I totally agree that there's value in learning these things, even (especially) when it's outside your field of of study, but I don't blame students for being pragmatic about career opportunities after college. Maybe we'll see more students take these classes as electives, rather than major in them, as a safe way to hedge their bets.
Sure, I get that. But the truth is, I worked my ASS off in school. I have many friends who got humanities degrees and the fact of the matter is, they didn't work as hard as I did. And I was jealous, they got to study things that were fun and had way less homework and had way more fun that I did. But, you see the payoff later on. My starting salary was at least twice theirs, plus my skills were in demand (multiple job offers) while many took almost a year to find a job. It is all about choices. I chose to sacrifice the "fun" college experience for the long term payoff.
But besides that, you are right. SLs are nuts and I normally post on MM and you see it all the time. SL debt is killing college graduates, especially in a tough job market/economy. I'm glad to see that students are realizing that if they are going to sing up for a very expensive college education, they better have a plan for how to pay it off.
Why? Is this the liberal arts majors board? I missed the memo.
No. But it's a board that sentiments like yours - that your university's job is to get you a job - in contempt. I mean, I think even the people on here who were not humanities majors are pretty hostile towards that notion. I find it personally offensive. It used to be the job of your university to give you and education, and that the completion of that education both signaled your ability to work hard and achieve, and ALSO signaled your ability to learn, synthesize information, and generally "be a smart person." Those things were traditionally considered valuable in the work force and provide to be valuable.
The focus on job-training majors has coincided with an increase in corporate influence in universities as seen through buildings being named after corporations rather than people, sports teams being sponsored and even some majors being sponsored. The movement is away from "thinking" towards creating people who are simply cogs, fungible, replaceable worker bees.
Humanities majors recognize this as problematic because they have read Kafka and Dickens.
Cultural renaissances have sprung forth out of science and literature, not "Business organizations" and "telecom."
It may be offensive to you, but it is reality. How exactly are humanities majors supposed to afford to pay for their college education? Your response is not practical. How are you going to change society so that the college education is free? Because most people can't just drop $240K on an "education" just for fun.
And regarding the commercialization of society, that's not just universities, that's pretty much everything.
ETA: I also think it is interesting that you think having a technical degree makes you a "cog or worker bee". Are you saying scientists and engineers etc don't know how to think?
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
I was with you until your last sentence. I'm not even going to touch that.
When the topic of student loans comes up on this board, and there's an article posted about someone with a history degree who's now in $100K of SL debt, isn't the general response pretty critical?
I totally agree that there's value in learning these things, even (especially) when it's outside your field of of study, but I don't blame students for being pragmatic about career opportunities after college. Maybe we'll see more students take these classes as electives, rather than major in them, as a safe way to hedge their bets.
Sure, I get that. But the truth is, I worked my ASS off in school. I have many friends who got humanities degrees and the fact of the matter is, they didn't work as hard as I did. And I was jealous, they got to study things that were fun and had way less homework and had way more fun that I did. But, you see the payoff later on. My starting salary was at least twice theirs, plus my skills were in demand (multiple job offers) while many took almost a year to find a job. It is all about choices. I chose to sacrifice the "fun" college experience for the long term payoff.
But besides that, you are right. SLs are nuts and I normally post on MM and you see it all the time. SL debt is killing college graduates, especially in a tough job market/economy. I'm glad to see that students are realizing that if they are going to sing up for a very expensive college education, they better have a plan for how to pay it off.
Well if you and your friends had that experience it must be true for everyone...
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
The problem is not that people are studying engineering, it's that no one is recognizing the end value of a degree in a humanities subject. Apparently employers want some linear/black & white route to determining whether someone can do a job, so the result is that people are choosing degrees that seem to reflect that even though (IMO) someone with a humanities degree would have a skill set that could do that job too, and maybe better. And as the humanities continue to be devalued, it's more likely that schools that do require a more well rounded education for their engineering majors will push out those requirements since a humanities degree is worthless - why would an English class be necessary for an engineering major?!
It's the pushing out of those degrees and seeing them as having no value in the workplace that is bringing doom (again, IMO). I also believe in education for the sake of education, but to me, the problem is more that because it's not "easy" to see the ways a humanities major can benefit a workplace/job, they choose the person who has a degree in business creation and development. It's like people want the career/job aspect to be spoon fed to them and unless it's titled appropriately, clearly that person doesn't have a worthwhile skill set.
It may be offensive to you, but it is reality. How exactly are humanities majors supposed to afford to pay for their college education? Your response is not practical. How are you going to change society so that the college education is free? Because most people can't just drop $240K on an "education" just for fun.
And regarding the commercialization of society, that's not just universities, that's pretty much everything.
Well, I took my humanities major to law school so that's how I paid for my major. And believe me, if anyone changes society to be more socialist, it's not going to be an engineering major (no offense wawa) and it sure as shit isn't going to be a job-training major. It will likely be a humanities major.
Haha, law school is your example? You should visit MM.
Isn't the market for new lawyers pretty terrible? So not only do they now have undergrad SLs, but then they have even bigger law school SLs and the market for lawyers is flooded and the pay has dropped, so they are pretty much screwed unless they are in like the top 10% of their class.
Also: just because it worked for you means it must be true for everybody?
Post by ChillyMcFreeze on Jun 6, 2013 14:44:34 GMT -5
I wish all the humanities majors on this board would just get a job already to pay off those student loans. You hear that, you good for nothing leeches? Get a damned job, you... lawyers.. and teachers.. and college professors... oh.
I haven't read all the responses but I think part of the issue with the decline in humanities majors is that the jobs for which those majors would be the most beneficial are also the jobs that happen to be declining (in numbers) right now. Journalism, academia, editing/publishing, etc. Of course humanities majors aren't limited to these jobs. I'm just speaking to why more people may be dissuaded from those majors. Sorry if this was previously discussed.
I'm not implying engineers don't know how to think...especially if they are engineers at liberal arts colleges
but not every career requires a technical degree so forcing kids who could happily major in English and be successful into "communications" seems short sighted.
HAHAHA. Yeah, you are right, I skipped the beginning of the thread. The fact that someone thinks communications is a technical degree is really funny.
Any major can be shitty at any school. If you go to Purdue and major in engineering, it's probably going to be a lot more rigorous than if you went to, I don't know, the University of Down the Street. In law school, I found that manor of the science/technology majors were intimidated by the volume of reading required of a law student. As a Lit major, it was the same or less than what I'd had in college and the writing requirements were obviously considerably less demanding (and fewer and further between). Guess all my Biology classmates had an "easy" major.
And I think the whole hard v. easy major thing is so typical of a truly undeveloped intellect. Maybe your roommates were really really smart and didn't have to work very hard to understand the concepts in their classes. Maybe they were lazy and graduated with 2.01 GPAs. Maybe the "humanities" majors at your school are shit and its graduates couldn't name a single 20th Century American poet. The value of the discipline is not in how much effort it demands, but in what it provides to society. The humanities have been a vital part of the development of our society for 600 years. You think that's negligible because engineering was hard for you and English Lit was easy for your roommates?
I'm not implying engineers don't know how to think...especially if they are engineers at liberal arts colleges
but not every career requires a technical degree so forcing kids who could happily major in English and be successful into "communications" seems short sighted.
HAHAHA. Yeah, you are right, I skipped the beginning of the thread. The fact that someone thinks communications is a technical degree is really funny.
Are you not familiar with what "technical degree" means?
And believe me, if anyone changes society to be more socialist, it's not going to be an engineering major (no offense wawa) and it sure as shit isn't going to be a job-training major.
Look, noodleoo is being an ass and a half, but is this necessary? I think humanities are incredibly important (married a liberal arts major!), but I get tired of seeing this kind of attitude (along with "teach you how to think" and "the value of an education") in these posts. It's just as offensive as the "history majors work at starbucks" jokes.
I haven't read all the responses but I think part of the issue with the decline in humanities majors is that the jobs for which those majors would be the most beneficial are also the jobs that happen to be declining (in numbers) right now. Journalism, academia, editing/publishing, etc. Of course humanities majors aren't limited to these jobs. I'm just speaking to why more people may be dissuaded from those majors. Sorry if this was previously discussed.
I think the real issues is a lot of major corporations have done away with their management training programs over the last decade or severely reduced their class sizes.
It used to be companies like GE/Accenture/Investment banks, etc would hire lots of History, PoliSci, Econ majors etc and put them through rigorous in house training programs where they learned the business, became consultants, etc.
I'm kind of surprised at the responses in this thread. Seriously, if you are going to pay $60K a year to go to college, you damn well better be able to get a job when you graduate. I personally think it is a good thing that freshman are being practical and thinking about what they are spending their money on. If you have money to burn, sure, go to college and study whatever you want. But if you are taking out huge loans that you'll have to pay back when you graduate, good for them for actually thinking about how they'll repay it.
I personally think this is an issue of supply and demand. The demand is for people with a technical degree. There is an oversupply of liberal arts majors, hence high unemployment. The market is changing, so they are responding.
Signed: a very practical engineer who worked her ass off in college while my liberal arts roommates watched soap operas and partied.
I was with you until your last sentence. I'm not even going to touch that.
When the topic of student loans comes up on this board, and there's an article posted about someone with a history degree who's now in $100K of SL debt, isn't the general response pretty critical?
I totally agree that there's value in learning these things, even (especially) when it's outside your field of of study, but I don't blame students for being pragmatic about career opportunities after college. Maybe we'll see more students take these classes as electives, rather than major in them, as a safe way to hedge their bets.
Yeah, you have to weigh your debt load to your earning potential. But we're talking theoretical, here.
1) Not everyone needs to take out $100k in student loans. I hope to go my own kids don't, but I also expect college to be $150k/year when they go. I hope not having high loans will free them up to major in anything they'd like.
2) It's ridiculous that college costs that much and many of us think/hope that it's a bubble which will eventually collapse on itself when colleges, with tuition going up by 6-10% a year, can no longer draw people who can afford it, or get big enough loans, or WON'T succumb to the notion that they need to spend so much on a bachelor's degree.
3) If you take student loans out of the equation, no, not everyone cares about making an amazing starting salary. I will most likely never make 6 figures. I don't really care if I ever make 6 figures. I care much more about my job satisfaction and work/life balance, and contributions to society. So, great, a journalism major makes $25k to start out of college and a computer programmer makes $90k out of college. And? I would want to kill myself if I was writing code all day.
ETA: And if making money and having a super successful career IS your goal, well, people with that kind of personality will shine in any profession, because they're willing to put the work into their career and be in the office 80 hours a week or whatever. It doesn't appear Matt Lauer is suffering for money despite being *gasp!* a journalist.
Isn't that what highschool is for? And also, as part of my engineering degree, we were required to take classes in English, writing and humanities. They were just a smaller part of the curriculum. And what "soft skills" are you talking about?
I'm seriously not even sure how to address this because I can't get past the bolded.
A good humanities program is a lot more than just some college rehash of high school history and english. the fact that you don't realize this is strange to me. Either you had some seriously shitty college professors for your humanities requirements or you went to an AMAZING high school.
I also was side-eyeing that. I DID go to an amazing high school, but I didn't take classes like Contemporary British Literature, or an entire class on the Federalist Papers, or Broadcast Television Production. Why? Because I was in a high school of less than 500 students, and providing a highly specialized class that appealed to less than 5 of them would be a waste of resources. Not to mention that a 20 year old can get more from the class and is capable of more analytic work and interpretation than a 15 year old.
In fact, I remember one of our guidance counselors asking us (as juniors maybe) the reasons we had for wanting to go to college. And one person said that, basically, it was to study things more in depth. Things we did have in high school. Eastern Philosophy! Japanese! You study the basics that you HAVE to know to move forward in high school - English, American History, European History, Algebra, Trig, Biology - then you study what's FUN and what can be built off that in college. Not a hard concept.
I think all politicians should be required to have a humanities degree. I think it would address a lot of the broken shitty things in our system.
-signed an engineer who took all of 2 humanities types of classes and really, really wish I had the opportunity to take more of them at an higher university level.
And believe me, if anyone changes society to be more socialist, it's not going to be an engineering major (no offense wawa) and it sure as shit isn't going to be a job-training major.
Look, noodleoo is being an ass and a half, but is this necessary? I think humanities are incredibly important (married a liberal arts major!), but I get tired of seeing this kind of attitude (along with "teach you how to think" and "the value of an education") in these posts. It's just as offensive as the "history majors work at starbucks" jokes.
I see what you're saying, but I also could see the same complaint eventually among engineering majors. It just seems like a lot of education today is moving towards stripping things down to preparing you for a career, and the humanities are just the beginning. I think engineering degrees are fairly comparable to a liberal arts degree in that they do teach you how to think and not necessarily do a specific job. What you are taught can be applied to all different kinds of jobs/fields/etc. As my husband likes to say, "what can't you do with a mechanical engineering degree?" lol.
Now, on the one hand, I see why this is happening and some positives - not every job requires a college degree, college costs are out of control and technical type degrees do have their place and value. But the potential negative I see is that it stifles innovation and creativity by funneling too many people into degree paths that have a specific/specialized career result. I think what we're seeing is a lack of balance, I guess, or the risk of going too far down the career/degree path. I know when I was in high school/college/law school, I frequently heard that the more specialized you were with your studies/career goal, the likelier you were to get a job. I'm kind of rambling, so I'll just stop now.
Here's my question: what happens when the engineering market is flooded? When the nursing market is flooded (like it already is in a lot of places?)
If (as many university programs and administrators are pushing to do)we severely reduce or eliminate that "well rounded education" thing to include more specific job training courses and someone has pretty much ONLY taken classes in education or engineering or sociology or botany and then there are no more jobs for teachers or engineers or sociologists or botanists, what kinds of jobs skills will those folks have that will make them employable in other areas? None. Or, as happened to me once upon a time, they realize the absolutely hate the job they trained for. What other skills will they market? None.
Right now, a department at my university (say, basket weaving) is trying to make it so that their students take ONLY basket weaving classes- no arts, no English, no sciences, no anything else. So once every degree has turned into the 4-year equivalent of an HVAC certificate (that you can get just by watching a video online and answering an open book test, thanks to MOOCs) what will our society be like?
Here's my question: what happens when the engineering market is flooded? When the nursing market is flooded (like it already is in a lot of places?)
If (as many university programs and administrators are pushing to do)we severely reduce or eliminate that "well rounded education" thing to include more specific job training courses and someone has pretty much ONLY taken classes in education or engineering or sociology or botany and then there are no more jobs for teachers or engineers or sociologists or botanists, what kinds of jobs skills will those folks have that will make them employable in other areas? None. Or, as happened to me once upon a time, they realize the absolutely hate the job they trained for. What other skills will they market? None.
Right now, a department at my university (say, basket weaving) is trying to make it so that their students take ONLY basket weaving classes- no arts, no English, no sciences, no anything else. So once every degree has turned into the 4-year equivalent of an HVAC certificate (that you can get just by watching a video online and answering an open book test, thanks to MOOCs) what will our society be like?
Well, then they'll have to go back to school and pay thousands of dollars for *another* degree. Debt that cannot ever be discharged, ever, for virtually any reason at all except your own death.