Re: #19
Of course, the student from the low income family probably needs any paid job (whether or not related to career development beyond being a job), so the luxury of volunteer work, informal internships, or accepting lower pay for career development may not be available.
UCB- absolutely true.
Oh, for heaven’s sake/eyeroll/are you serious? No, a degree in history is not worthless. You don’t even need to go for your master’s degree or teach, either. And you aren’t doomed to an unpaid internship or volunteering for Greenpeace, either. History majors are good writers and critical thinkers, skills that are useful in almost every field. A lot of CEOs have history degrees. But you don’t have to be a CEO if you don’t want to…
The main thing is to study something you actually enjoy, especially while you have access to such a wide array of disciplines. You will have plenty of time to hate your life’s work, so for now, do what you love! 
Really, our nation needs more trade schools to train those upon whom a liberal arts education is wasted. I’m serious.
Of course liberal arts have value, but Collegiate Learning Assessment is also telling me that some majors have greater “intrinsic” value than others. The best disciplines for improving critical thinking are sociology, multi- and interdisciplinary studies, foreign languages, physical education, math, and business, and in that order.
The Georgetown Hard Times report presented by @BrownParent shows that the lowest unemployment rate are found in healthcare, business, education, engineering and mathematics, but that, in general, healthcare, science, and business give the highest earning boost.
Looking for the intersect, I would have to give the nod to mathematics and business. They represent the biggest bang for the buck as far as I can see. Of the two, I think business is more doable for more students; math is simply too “g” loaded for most to handle.
Most college admissions officers have liberal arts degrees. If worse comes to worse, that job will always be available
The number of jobs available in which you actually use your knowledge of history or English lit or philosophy is limited. If you major in those hoping to get your PhD and teach, you should know that that job market is utterly saturated. If you major in them thinking you’ll teach high school, there are more openings.
But if you want to major in liberal arts in order to foster your critical thinking, writing and analytical skills, and you are content to get a job that will draw on those rather than on your knowledge of Renaissance theater construction, and (and this is key) you actually have critical thinking, etc, skills, you’ll do fine. Taking classes of whatever kind and getting Cs and sliding through won’t prepare anyone for “real life.” I think that is what is lost in some of these discussions–getting a degree in business doesn’t guarantee anything at all, and there are many schools at which a business degree is code for “I didn’t really know what I wanted out of college, but I knew I had to go to school” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=all). Too many kids think of college as a sort of grades 13-17, in which they continue to be passive recipients of education rather than active participants. To them, it is the teacher’s job to teach them, rather than their job to learn. Smart kids, and it sounds like OP is one, work hard, get a degree that represents a transformational experience, and emerge ready to get a job and build on it. For them, a degree isn’t a ticket someone has handed them, but a tool they’ve honed. For them, what their major is matters less than what they are ready to do.
Sure, but the assumption is that social science and humanities majors (which is really what we are talking about here) are going to take more time to find jobs after graduation, or that they will have to toil in unpaid internships or low-paying jobs for a few months or years while those natural/physical science and engineering majors go on to high-paying jobs immediately after college. But that’s not true - it all depends on what the student in question has done during college. I’ve spoken about it elsewhere, but I advised college students post-recession and saw college students in all kinds of social science and humanities majors (English, philosophy, psychology, history, music, French) go onto gainful employment at decent to above-average pay before graduating from college. I also watched a financial engineering major struggle to find a position and a biology major find one at the very, very last moment. But the truth is, most of the students I supervised were employed by graduation regardless of their major.
It is true that many people have misguided ideas about how majors relate to job prospects. The common example here is the belief that all STEM majors have good job prospects compared to other majors, but that is not true for the most popular STEM major (biology). However, it is likely that majoring in business or one of its subareas is the most common major for someone looking at college as a stepping stone to a job, although it may not necessarily be true that non-elite business majors have that much better job prospects than others.
^Very well said. A while ago I decided to compare the employment rate of students graduating from UPenn arts and sciences vs Wharton. There is a significant difference. I suspect the relationship would hold between IU and Kelley, ND and Mendoza etc. as well. For subpar students in subpar schools, I doubt it matter what they major in.
A Liberal Arts degree may not be worthless, but it is certainly not worth the same as a degree in the sciences.
I’d also hazard a guess you’re more likely to be laid off or just need to seek different employment due to hitting a ceiling at certain organizations. Also more likely to move when you don’t want to… when you kids are in middle school or high school. At least that’s the data from observing the lives of old high school friends over the decades.
I became an engineer and out-earn most of them. The ones I don’t are in the sciences as well. A couple BAs went into government work, moved up to a respectable management level, and if you include their future pension benefits will enjoy a similar retired quality of life, but not during their working lives.
But thank G-d for liberal arts majors!!! If everyone went into the sciences, it wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is for us. Now my son is becoming an engineer in my footsteps, so by all means, keep scooping up those BAs!
Sciences are liberal arts, and not all science majors give significantly better job prospects than non-science liberal arts majors. The most popular science is biology, and career surveys indicate that biology graduates’ job prospects are not particularly good.
^This. Plus economics majors outearn chemistry majors, political science majors outearn biology majors, and by the time we’re talking about graduate degrees, international relations majors make the same on average as civil engineering majors. The average starting research university professor in my field actually makes about the same amount as the average for a graduate-degree-holding civil engineer, and just a tad bit less than other engineers with graduate degrees.
Besides, it all matters what you do. An art history major could learn how to program in college and decide to go into software engineering. Or an engineering major could decide that he really wants to go into the ministry or be a science writer. It’s not about the major, it’s about the career that you choose to take.
On top of that…“worth” is really a subjective measure. Many of my classmates who were engineers or mathematicians may outearn me, perhaps forever. But what do I care? I don’t want to be an engineer; I don’t want to do what they do. Lots of people love that, and that’s awesome! And many more people would prefer to do something else for a living. I make enough money to feed myself comfortably, and to buy most of the things that I want - and I love my work, too. The outlook in my field, whether I choose academia or non-academic jobs, is pretty good and I can expect to be in the upper-middle-class income bracket if all goes well. No, I won’t be buying my own private jets or owning summer houses in Nantucket lol. But that’s okay.
I think more college students should approach this question that way: not which career is going to make them the most money (regardless of enjoyment), but which career do they enjoy that will make them enough money to support the kind of lifestyle that they want. I mean, yes, the average graduate-degree-holding computer science major makes $97,000 a year, but the average grad-degree-holding history major makes $76,000 a year and for psychology, it’s $61,000. Those are comfortable middle-class salaries! If your spouse makes about the same as you, that puts you in the top 15% of household incomes in the U.S. (top 10% if you are the history major).
When I worked as a database programmer, I had co-workers with degrees in Physics, Music, Political Science, Economics - I was an anomaly with my Math/CS degree. Now I work in a Marketing Services group - we produce all the collateral for our companies’ marketing folks, including web sites. The VP I work for has a History degree. I have three co-workers with English degrees, two with Journalism, one Spanish, again, the degrees are all over the place. This is in the corporate headquarters of a company with > 30,000 employees.
Companies aren’t coming on campus offering huge signing bonuses to English majors. Companies aren’t going to pay you so you can write the next Great American Novel. But if you have initiative, and can take advantage of opportunities when they arise, you can do quite well with a BA.
Engineering is great until it isn’t. Aerospace went belly up in the 90’s. EE went through the floor in 2002 when the entire tech sector went bust. Petroleum is in and then it’s out- I bet the prospects for this year’s graduating class in any energy sector is going to be terrible- hiring managers hate uncertainty, and the current price of oil means continuing uncertainty (and layoffs for sure).
So yeah, if you time it correctly it’s great. But when you’re the guy getting laid off at 45 because 3/4’s of the engineers in your industry are being let go… and you’re heading back to community college to get retrained as an ultrasound tech (yes, that’s what 45 year old engineers do when their unemployment runs out and they can’t get a job as an engineer) it’s not so great.
Just a heads up to the smug STEM grads out there. I had to layoff a ton of engineers in 2002- some of whom had barely unpacked their coffee mugs on their desks, some of whom still had their stuff on a moving truck heading to silicon valley. Not pretty.
The sciences are liberal arts? :-/ Seriously?
Here’s a nice explanation from the Lehigh site:
"B.A. vs. B.S. Degrees
The BA (Bachelor of Arts) degree is the principal liberal arts degree. All of our departments in the College of Arts and Sciences as well as several of our cross-disciplinary programs offer at least one BA program. At Lehigh, one earns a Bachelor of Arts in Arts and Sciences with a major in, for example, Music (not a BA in Music). Most BA programs require 30-some or 40-some credits, which leaves a lot of flexibility in the form of free electives. The student can use the free electives to sample widely from other course offerings or to earn an additional credential (a second major, a minor, or some combination of additional credentials).
The BS (Bachelor of Science) degree is offered in Computer Science, Mathematics, Psychology, Statistics, and each of the natural sciences. In contrast to the BA, one earns, for example, a BS in Astrophysics. The BS is best suited to the student who wants to focus more on courses in the major and on ‘collateral’ courses (like chemistry or mathematics for a major in Geological Sciences) and is willing to give up some of the flexibility of the BA in return for the greater focus. The BS programs still leave some free electives."
As a 55 year old engineer, I’ll tell you the busts discussed are blown way out of proportion. Aerospace was hit hard, yes, but anyone with half a brain saw that coming years before it happened. And if you were a good engineer, you didn’t have a problem moving into something else. And the tech bubble? That was scary, but short lived and I doubt anyone worth their salt had to become ultrasound techs. :-/
After more than three decades in the field I can safely say we STEM majors have lived fat and happy WAY more than we’ve suffered.
On the other hand, I’ve seen more than a fair share of BAs go from corporate positions to working at Home Depots… and not as a store manager. Others have weathered a year or more without a job. I don’t know of a single engineer who has had to suffer through that. I’m sure some have somewhere, but there are always exceptions.
BTW, I live on Long Island, one of the very hardest hit by the Aerospace meltdown. A few had to move. Most everyone else was absorbed into other engineering specialties. The thing about engineering is it’s not specialized the way you non-engineers think it is. Math is math. Physics is physics. It’s just a different application of incredibly similar skills.
And yeah… anyone can learn to program. Engineers make the platforms for them. They build the hardware, they write the drivers, invent the OS, create the protocols. Then some housewife learns to program on top of that well designed system, abstracted six ways to Sunday from the actual guts of the system, and says “What’s all the fuss about? This is easy!”
Yours truly,
A Smug STEM Major who tells it like it is, not how people want it to be.
Yes, seriously.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberal%20arts
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal+arts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
The use of the degree title BA versus BS depends on the school. For example, Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science awards BA degrees in all of its majors, including math, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and statistics. MIT awards SB (Bachelor of Science) degrees in all of its majors, including anthropology, history, linguistics and philosophy, and literature.
The dotcom bust in 2001-2003 was a big deal. CS people being unemployed for six to twenty four months was rather common then. The most recent downturn hit civil engineering hard because construction crashed during that time.
On the other hand, while CS eventually recovered and boomed, and civil engineering is on its way back, biology majors do not appear to be doing well in recent times, regardless of where the economic cycle is. “STEM” is too broad a category to make generalized assumptions about job prospects.
Most liberal arts degrees can be made useful, but you have to work with it. Get internships! Volunteer! Do research! All of this will help you. Even the engineering kids needs co-ops these days in order to secure a job at graduation.
Here’s what you need to know about liberal arts degrees.
Don’t pursue them unless you’re passionate about them.
That’s it.