<p>I think if you survey grads of any Top 50 level undergrad B school most are very happy with the decision and still work in the area or have started their own company 20 years later. While liberarl arts grads 20 years ago did have some chance to get into a training program those are now nearly extinct. Companies don’t want to train people for a year or two as many such programs were in 1980. I am excluding grads of a few highly selective schools which do have more chance at getting into a relative few highly selective firms mostly in NYC. And those are the ones that generated the financial shenanigans of the latest debacle–and the one before that.</p>
<p>True story.</p>
<p>Several years ago I interviewed a job candidate who had a BA from Princeton in English AND a Masters from Harvard in International Relations. He had been doing this kind of work for six years. He was very well spoken and most professional in both attitude and demeanor. He interviewed very well and his background checks were all fine, but the Dept. manager refused to even consider him. </p>
<p>“Something doesn’t add up with this guy.”" The manager said. </p>
<p>I felt bad for the candidate because I recognized the trap he was in. </p>
<p>The position he interviewed for was “Telemarketer”.</p>
<p>If one is Humanities minded and one’s skill set matches what is recommended? I’m not sure.</p>
<p>I got a BA in English because I couldn’t stop reading. And reading. And reading. Without the structure of the degree I doubt I would have had the steam to read THE FAERY QUEEN, and I believe it would be a shame to live in a world in which no one had read it.</p>
<p>I got a PhD in English for the same reason.</p>
<p>I have been employed as a county social worker in foster care; a community educator for a woman’s crisis center; a writer of technical manuals and a college professor.</p>
<p>I have edited the dissertations of folks in the sciences. Although they’re brilliant, many can’t write. </p>
<p>It takes a lifetime to master the relationship of ideas and feelings to language. I improve every day. I have had critical essays, poems, and short stories published. I have given readings and run workshops. I have written two unpublished novels and am still learning.</p>
<p>I have devoted my life to language, not because I’m perverse, and not because I’m not good at math or science. I am, though there are others much more skilled than I.</p>
<p>I did it out of sheer love, and I’d do again. Anytime. </p>
<p>I don’t think I could write as I do if I had pursued something else. It has taken me every single minute I have put into it to get here.</p>
<p>I am sure there are other people here on this board, but there really isn’t anyone I know outside of academia who has read every Virginia Woolf novel and all the plays of Shakespeare. Or three Dostoyevsky novels. Or all of Donne’s poems. Just for brief examples. (Yes, I <em>do</em> know I use fragments.)</p>
<p>I don’t feel superior to folks who pursue other things, but why is this interest inferior? Are we ready to give up on literacy? And I don’t mean the intelligent person who becomes an engineer. I mean the CC college student who can’t frame a coherent argument or write an English sentence.</p>
<p>I feel that my Humanities background satisfies a personal need and serves a social function, too. So what’s the problem?</p>
<p>What happened to the law of supply & demand? If the universities and colleges want more humanities majors, cut the price.</p>
<p>It seems like the universities are expanding capacity to produce degrees that are neither lucrative nor in demand. They have such luxuries since they are publicly-funded and are insulated from market forces. This insulation results in a lack of understanding of the basic economics surrounding a degree, i.e. that if I am going to be investing four years’ opportunity cost and tens of thousands of dollars, it bloody well better be producing a return.</p>
<p>If the tenured mandarins want to spin their wheels on the dime of private benefactors, good for them, but it is when the public bankrolls this folly that this nonsense needs to be addressed.</p>
<p>"What happened to the law of supply & demand? If the universities and colleges want more humanities majors, cut the price. "</p>
<p>Most of the elites have one price regardless of major. There would be all kinds of problems if they did not.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure about cutting the price, but I think some schools (primarily public) already charge extra fees for some majors (like engineering and business). Not sure it’s enough of a differential to affect the S-D. You’d probably have to look at the elasticity of demand for these majors.</p>
<p>I think the reason they do it is they claim higher costs for those majors.</p>
<p>
What’s sad in all of this is the “economics.” Any time we’re forced to quantify learning and education in terms of cost and earnings, it’s just sad. The more we must, the further backwards in time we go to the days when education was solely the folly of the wealthy elite.</p>
<p>^^^
I know you weren’t responding to me, but I agree. I didn’t mean for my post to reduce it to dollars and cents. I think there is inherent value in almost every area of study at the university, and wish I had the time and money (and in some cases possibly the aptitude) to study many of them myself.</p>
<p>
Amen. I’m acknowledging and lamenting the sad, sad reality. I truly don’t view various types of studies as superior to others. I love diversity, and believe the world thrives on it. But what I see happening is the diminishing ability of parents to say to their children what my parents were able to say to me: “Go, discover your interests, and pursue them.” I realize I was fortunate, that all families couldn’t do this even back then. But I had hoped by the time I had children MORE families would be able to, not FEWER. What I see is that we’ve digressed to FEWER and I don’t see any signs of this turning around!</p>
<p>As the parent of an accounting major, I get reallly peeved at times by some of you guys. Really, since when did business majors become your whipping boys? It’s all well and good when your kids want to study classics or philosophy, but let your kid choose accounting (and to a lesser extent, engineering) then they must be money-grubbing, or non-intellectual, or boring. Oh, and add non-creative and poor writers. Personally, I think it’s uncreative (and poor writing) to just assume that business majors are automatically and categorically “inferior” to other majors.</p>
<p>Harumph. Rant over. Sorry about that!</p>
<p>In many schools with limited slots in business, engineering and other high demand majors the business majors are among the best students at the school. Liberal arts becomes the dumping ground for those who can’t get into a more restricted major.</p>
<p>^^^
That’s true. And it’s really, really SAD.</p>
<p>actually an accounting major makes sense if you want to be an accountant. </p>
<p>I am more inclined to question majoring undergrad in general business, or marketing, as I suspect many of the jobs people get with those majors they could get with LA. Of course if you enjoy STUDYING marketing, well fine. Its choosing it for, well marketability, that I wonder about.</p>
<p>Engineering is practical and hands on,you need expensive equipment to master it so it pays to major in it,and industry rewards it.One needs a guide to understand Plato?I have read “The Republic” 24 times,for fun.That is something i would never have done if i majored in philosophy…</p>
<p>Honestly, unless you have a trust fund or you are terribly talented,its not rational to major in the arts.Its all good to do what you love,but one can always indulge a passion without endangering his/her financial health.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Haha, this reminds me of how I rediscovered reading for fun after I finally finished taking English classes in high school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do you hear that? It is the sound of the world’s smallest violin. Boo freakin’ hoo, that’s how the world works, so unless you are willing to pay me an engineer’s salary to sit on my butt for the rest of my life, do not disparage economics.</p>
<p>That said, learning and education outside of the university in the same subject has become much more accessible. It is not forbidden to purchase an older edition of a text to teach one’s self for one’s enjoyment, and there is plenty of material online.</p>
<p>As for this foolishness about pursuing one’s interest as a job, I do not know where to begin debunking that absurdity. If a liberal arts degree is so good at that, their interest must be waiting in the unemployment lines.</p>
<p>scout59 - my grandfather taught me about the purpose of investments, it has served me well. My younger brothers did not and they are starting to ask me for money since I have a job.</p>
<p>
FWIW, I become peeved at those who make whipping boys of students and grads of the liberal arts, “as if” they’re merely frivolous, spoiled, non-achieving trust fund babies or lazy good-for-nothings standing in bread lines. But here’s the thing… as a liberal arts grad myself, I’m quite happy to pay a tidy sum to my accountant. ;)</p>
<p>some parents who visit this website actually have kids in college. they have questions at hand here/now but are unlikely to benefit from a lofty discussion like this (college education time/money is it for subjects of passion -LA - or practicality - sci/tech/bus?). because it degenerates after 50 or so posts. if you are such a parent note that many here are telling their own stories, or of kids well past college years, as in “back in the day after i got my english/greek civ ba at smith hey no problem getting a job with the state dept and since then blah blah blah”. maybe things will be like this for your kid, but probably s/he’ll be back home. </p>
<p>the news i hear is that sooner than later fed and state govts will lose a few jobs. that we will have one lawyer for every 50 people. that tenured teachers/professors are being retired early. that the us has outsourced so much of its manufacturing that the economy is mainly about doing each other’s laundry and cooking burgers. so who knows what to do? the kids themselves. if they’re smart, or don’t come from a family that can support them well into their 20s, they’re avoiding academic, la degrees - which was the subject of the wsj article that started this thread in the first place. students are simply voting with their feet.</p>