The Revenge of the Liberal Arts Major

[msmerymac]

Journalism BA and History MA checking in. It's all about research and writing over here!

Also, I get the feeling journalism majors can get away with lower salaries than accounting majors. :/

It IS kind of amazing how many people I see on a daily basis who cannot write a coherent sentence. As in, no punctuation at all, improper word choice, verbs not agreeing with subjects. Basic English stuff.

[OscarQ]

May 16, 2012 11:59:05 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

May 16, 2012 11:51:36 GMT -5 terpsfan said:

Ditto, someone needs to be able to write technical requirements and test case scenarios that people can understand!

I'm torn on this issue personally. I nabbed my senior year summer internship with a former big 5 consultancy basically out of luck. They were only recruiting IT/comp sci majors and I happened to get my name in the pool despite not being in that bucket (I was business but wasn't "technical" think supply chain mgmt). Someone basically took a chance on me, so I can see taking that chance with a non-conventional major. BUT, now as part of the hiring/operations team, I hate new college hires that are so general that I literally have nothing I can do with them. Companies can invest only so much on on the job training...

I think there needs to be balance. The history major can't spend their whole day researching Tudor England and think they'll get a job because they have made research skills. Yeah, that's nice, but so does the student who did the same research AND took a class in web development.

The whole POINT of a liberal arts education is exposure to a wide variety of topics.

Ha! I was traveling in Germany while on a semester abroad with a fellow history major. It was Germany so I wanted to see at least one of the concentration camps. She was totally put out by the very idea that I'd want to examine this aspect of history - she only liked Tudor history. Thanks for reminding me of that gem. Haven't thought of her in nearly 20 years.

And I'm older than all of you so far. BA in Political Science '95!

Yeah, this kind of ties to the whole PHDs on welfare thing. Lots of blowback on "well shouldn't they have gotten degrees in something of value". We as a society need people who are experts in totally random things, it's what keeps us from becoming robots.

[caden]

I went to a liberal arts college and I see a LOT of value in that kind of curriculum. I really lament how most of our college education is geared toward specific jobs. Most people change careers multiple times, so I see no point in focusing so much on narrow fields. At the same time I don't think everyone, perhaps even most people need a liberal arts type of education. Voc-Tech schools have a valuable place in the economy. Engineering, computer science, etc has its place too. Those jobs and others do require a specialized education in addition to job training. But other jobs don't and a liberal arts education would work better. I was an international business major (liberal arts for first 2 years, business classes for the last 2), and with the exception of a few business classes learned almost nothing that I couldn't have learned on the job. I was involved in hiring my replacement and was absolutely appalled at the lack of writing skills most of the college grad applicants had. I honestly wouldn't have believed it was that bad had I not seen it with my own eyes.

[basilosaurus]

Anecdote time: My BIL had an English lit degree. He volunteered to be laid off at one point and spent his free time learning to code. He then started his own website business. Yay! Lit majors being all tech savvy. (he's old, though. Graduated college in 93 I think).

[msmerymac]

Actually, liberal arts seems to be much more common in the US. In Europe (at least the UK, but I think on the continent, too), they very much have their majors, and that's about it. Also, their masters degrees take 1 year and their PhDs take 3 years, which is unfuckingbelievable to me. However, I have heard in my field (mainly from my graduate school professors and other professionals in History) that American graduate degrees are more respected because they are more work. I know students who have been advised to not go to grad school in Europe unless they plan to work there - and others who have gotten MAs in Europe and can't get into PhD programs in the US.

My guess is that there are less "remedial" types of classes in European universities. You hit the ground running. On the flip side, you aren't required to have a minor, a language, or X number of classes outside of your school, like I was. I don't know how that pans out in the corporate world, though. Like SBP, I'm very big on education for the sake of education, but sometimes academia takes it too far. It can be such a circle jerk. That's one reason I decided against that type of career.

[Guest]

May 15, 2012 22:13:23 GMT -5 emilyj said:

Does this mean my 3 comm degrees are finally going to be worth dick? And that I'm not going to have to explain what they are??

We can hope! (I'm in the same boat.)

[5thofjuly]

May 16, 2012 11:44:06 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

May 16, 2012 11:34:49 GMT -5 5thofjuly said:

They want to turn our state univerisities into vo-tech schools with awesome football teams.

Mom, is that you? Just kidding. But this is the complaint I keep hearing from my mom, my dad, and my step father. Mom is still a professor, both dads are retired now.

Not to take this in a totally different direction, but my parents are starting to see the effects of all the standardized testing. Everyone wants to know "is this going to be on the test." And it's code for "Do I need to be listening to you right now?" The teaching to the test stuff going on in high school is divorcing kids from even the concept of education. They don't even know what the process of learning looks like anymore.

And yeah, the fact that the 100 level classes have had to become essentially "High school: what you should have learned and didn't" is an enormous problem.

I totally agree with...well, everything written here!

[wawa]

All of this science = art comments remind me of something my brother said to me once.
I was taking summer college classes in high school and my two classes were "Intro to Contemporary Moral Philosophy" and "Intro to Relativity and Cosmology"

My brother looks at me and says, "you're taking a philosophy class and an advanced physics class? You know those are the same thing, right?"

It was not innacurate.

I'm an engineer, so obviously I had a rather "vocational" college experience, but I think one of the reasons that my school has a kick ass reputation as is because they do still have a really rigourous bunch of core requirements for the techy kids, and including a lot of critical thinking and writing within our required tech-centered classes. (I had 4 big project classes that required huge final papers and presentations)

It gives me the sads that people don't see the value in those things. I can promise you that my employers see the value in my writing and communications skills.

p.s. apparently i can post but only with quick reply. I think it might just be a matter of time before that's blocked too though.

[sb]

May 16, 2012 11:30:20 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

May 16, 2012 10:59:55 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

I have a friend who majored in Japanese and Linguistics who works as a programmer. She's not starting from scratch, but she didn't start with a huge knowledge base either. She picked some stuff up at her previous gig where she was doing a lot of data entry and was hired at her new gig as a programmer. She's taking some CS classes at night to boost her abilities.

This is really, really weird. Around here, companies hiring programmers have them write some mock code during the interview and vet them that way.

I got an offer for a process automation position a few years ago, and I had zero code knowledge except a little bit in how to read it to troubleshoot plant issues. If someone told me to write code for something I would die and/or laugh.

I guess it depends on the employer, but they said they could teach me code, they wanted someone with knowledge of chemical processes and process safety. Obviously that's not the typical coding job.

Also, the assertion that all vocational degrees don't teach people how to think and are all about memorization is irking me. I mean, do we really think engineer undergrads are just doing rote memorization? Computer science majors? Broadcasting? I'm just trying to think of majors here.

I'm not saying arts and sciences aren't important. They are.

[5thofjuly]

May 16, 2012 15:47:14 GMT -5 sb said:

May 16, 2012 11:30:20 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

This is really, really weird. Around here, companies hiring programmers have them write some mock code during the interview and vet them that way.

I got an offer for a process automation position a few years ago, and I had zero code knowledge except a little bit in how to read it to troubleshoot plant issues. If someone told me to write code for something I would die and/or laugh.

I guess it depends on the employer, but they said they could teach me code, they wanted someone with knowledge of chemical processes and process safety. Obviously that's not the typical coding job.

Also, the assertion that all vocational degrees don't teach people how to think and are all about memorization is irking me. I mean, do we really think engineer undergrads are just doing rote memorization? Computer science majors? Broadcasting? I'm just trying to think of majors here.

I'm not saying arts and sciences aren't important. They are.

I don't think of those as vocational degrees. In fact, many of them require a gen ed background in humanities, liberal arts, and science. When I think "vo-tech" I think welding, phlebotomy, cosmotology, HVAC technician, etc. Most of those programs don't require "Intro to Western Civ." or "Comparative World Religions" or "Social Problems" as a part of the curriculum.

[sb]

I don't really think we're talking about cosmetology school here, though. More the shift away from general degrees like communication and towards more career focused degrees like broadcast journalism or public relations.

But I may have been reading it wrong.

And honestly, we need people who are willing to go to technical schools. There is nothing wrong with being a plumber if that's what you're good at and that's what you want.

[sbp not online]

May 16, 2012 16:19:51 GMT -5 sb said:

I don't really think we're talking about cosmetology school here, though. More the shift away from general degrees like communication and towards more career focused degrees like broadcast journalism or public relations.

But I may have been reading it wrong.

And honestly, we need people who are willing to go to technical schools. There is nothing wrong with being a plumber if that's what you're good at and that's what you want.

Yeah, this is my fault for using the word vocational. I didn't know what other word to use. The discussion about whether every one should go to college and the relative merits of going to CC aren't really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the rise of majors like, "corporate structuring," "archiving" or "media relations" that theoretically put you on the path to graduating into the corporate world with a very specific skill set, but the specific skill set isn't really an education. It's just "training" and it doesn't produce well rounded critical thinkers. It's a "drone" major.

[Melissa W.]

Although I have a bachelors and masters in accounting, I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Schools are teaching to the test. The result is that it is killing the writing, problem solving and critical thinking skills.

It is all well and good if I can do the technical debits/credits and prepare a financial statement but I have to be able to translate that into information my employer can use. They are counting on my team to help them make a decision with that information.