@Shaaash I think your dad is confusing two unrelated things – whether a school is a university vs liberal arts college is one thing that has absolutely nothing to do with how useful a degree is, versus what kind of major you study and what your career path is. The two really have nothing to do with each other. Plenty of major research universities have liberal arts curriculums for their undergraduate educations. And many LAC’s have science-based majors with research opportunities as well as “pre-professional” programs designed to prepare graduates to apply for elite medical, law or business schools.
The fact that a school is Liberal Arts College has no direct impact on job prospects, post-graduate education or salary expectations one way or the other. What matters more, in terms of post-graduate job prospects and salary metrics, is what major you take and what career your pursue, and to a far, far lesser extent the reputation of the school or the strength of its alumni network. That’s why when you look at the average salaries of graduates you’ll always see schools with a heavy science and engineering focus at the top of the list. It has nothing to do with them being LAC’s or not. Most LAC’s have hard science degrees that are every bit as practical and marketable as the major research universities. And the major research universities have their share of American Studies degrees that in-and-off themselves offer no direct career opportunity (but paired with appropriate internships and job experience can).
There are two things that distinguish an LAC in general:
- They tend to be smaller and almost exclusively undergraduate-focused (more on that below)
- They tend not to offer “vocational” degrees, such as Accounting as an example.
The fact is many of the major universities with the best reputations have liberal arts curriculums so #2 applies to them too. I went to UCLA, a school with 60,000 students, faculty and staff. But it was a liberal arts curriculum. I believe a majority of the ivies are too. Etc.
As for #1, do you want undergraduate classes taught in large auditoriums for hundreds of students where you then break out into smaller discussion grounds taught by graduate student TA’s who grade all your assignments? Or do you want classes where the full tenured professor teaches small groups and personally grades and provides all the feedback? If you’re interest in science, do you want to go to a school where almost all the research opportunities is done by grad students or where it’s all done by undergrads? These are the typical difference between a major research university and an LAC. Among the better LAC’s, you will rarely see more spend by the college per-undergraduate-student anywhere else.
If you want to back it up with stats, just research the most productive feeders as a percentage of graduates to the top law schools, graduate programs, etc. And in terms of alumni networking, I would take being a Williams student over being a UCLA student any day – by a mile.
Which I did. Degrees from for-profit colleges tend to be pretty worthless. At the end of the day, it’s up to a student to find opportunities. And in the end, my degree has proven to be not so worthless, because I now have a job which wouldn’t be possible without that piece of paper. Education isn’t really worthless I guess, so I have just contradicted myself and hopefully made a point too.