<p>What do you mean by “pro-liberal arts”? We’re pro all kinds of education and learning. </p>
<p>It amuses me that some of the STEMmy and engineery types might think about the mathematics and engineering required to design, say, an art museum or a concert hall, and never once consider that that art museum wouldn’t be there if there weren’t experts in art history or talented musicians and performers. True inside-the-box thinking.</p>
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It’s simpler than that and was stated in the first 10 replies or so … while the info may be “facts” it is likely to be close to useless and misleading. If one looked at Cornell government majors at 40 I’m sure they are doing fine. However looking at government majors at 23 especially in “government” jobs is a worthless investigation. The lion’s share of those government majors will be headed to B-school, law school, med school, joining the Peace Corp, etc right after graduating … ignoring these people and their career paths leads to a poorly done and useless analysis of “facts”.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl posted --</p>
<p>* Aren’t you sending your kids to two of those elite private institutions? No one forced your kids to go there. *</p>
<p>Not really understanding your point. What does elite have to do with it? One of my kids went to Harvard and the other to Princeton and I guess they’re “elite” but they aren’t more expensive then a gazillion other private schools that are not that elite, or even that much more expensive than many publics at this point. </p>
<p>Oh, and we had saved and gotten to an income level at which we could and did send them without incurring debt.</p>
<p>The elite thing has nothing to do with the incredible inflation in the cost of college. It’s a bubble and it has come about through greed and irresponsibility – just like most bubbles. </p>
<p>I think you throw out the term “elite” in a rather offensive way to try to skew this discussion in a nonsensical direction. </p>
<p>And I think a great many folks with their sinecures in departments like sociology and art history that churn out negligibly marketable graduates are screaming with outrage over the movement afoot for our society to at least begin to pay attention to the fact that a college degree in many, many cases does not equip a kid for a college level job. This does not mean that fanatics who believe AIDS was sent by God to punish gays are going to take over our lives!</p>
<p>Are you ready to eliminate sociology and art history from the curriculum? Are you ready to eliminate all departments that you feel* churn out negligibly marketable graduates*? Would you like to see this happen at Princeton and Harvard?
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<p>I agree with post #382 and many others that this data will be meaningless. </p>
<p>A long time ago I read a post by Blossom (I think) that said it is difficult to really successfully plan for a job because new jobs are thought up all the time. (broad paraphrase) I am seeing this play out with my kids and their friends. I asked one young person what he was going to be doing and he explained to me it is a really new field that no one is actually formally trained in yet. He just happened to have developed the necessary skill set.</p>
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<p>If legislators are concerned about this issue, the government ought to stop subsidizing student debt. Student loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. This would make student loans incredibly hard to get, as banks would hardly ever lend to any 18-year-olds and the standards for co-signers would be a lot higher. College prices would fall overnight. Rafts of college administrators and staff would lose their jobs. Many tuition-dependent institutions would close. College would be restricted to the economically privileged and the top 10% cognitive elite (as is already the case in many countries). </p>
<p>The existence of art history and sociology departments did not create the problem. On the contrary, I would argue that worthless business degrees at third-rate colleges are a much bigger problem than humanities departments.</p>
<p>alh posted --</p>
<p>Are you ready to eliminate sociology and art history from the curriculum? Are you ready to eliminate all departments that you feel churn out negligibly marketable graduates? Would you like to see this happen at Princeton and Harvard?</p>
<p>Good grief. Who is saying eliminate the study of Art History or Sociology at colleges?? No one is saying that except some rather hysterical folks who seem to think the barbarians at the gates of the civilized world!! </p>
<p>Seriously, what is being proposed is information to parents and students of the actual economic viability of various fields of pursuit in college. Why does this terrify some people so much? </p>
<p>There will always be kids who are going to study the humanities and more esoteric social sciences because they are passionately drawn to those scholarly pursuits. And there will most certainly always be institutions of higher learning at which they can do this.</p>
<p>But it is quite obvious that far too many kids are majoring in extremely dubious fields in terms of ever hoping to make a living from them. </p>
<p>Sure, sure. There will be the Art History kid who works at hedge fund and so forth. Anecdotes are all over the place. The Face Book kid did Classics, etc.</p>
<p>But for every Zuckerberg there are thousands of kids who did Classics and then went on to law (ANOTHER field colleges really should not be ushering tons of kids into) and are now looking at gargantuan debt because there are no jobs in law . . . </p>
<p>This is something we most certainly need to start talking together about as a society. This denial is ridiculous.</p>
<p>NJSue – your post makes little sense to me. </p>
<p>I do think making student loans much harder to get will drive down tuition costs. I do not think it will force out of existence most colleges. I do think that if they are not receiving easy money loans to go to college, kids and their parents will stop and think more clearly about what exactly the kid is studying. </p>
<p>Are you defending our current situation with relatively easy loan money, perpetually rising college costs, and little incentive for kids and their families to carefully consider cost for college?</p>
<p>Finally, with all the sarcastic comments about “elite” this and that on this thread, I find this comment to be enormously elitist:</p>
<p>The existence of art history and sociology departments did not create the problem. On the contrary, I would argue that worthless business degrees at third-rate colleges are a much bigger problem than humanities departments.</p>
<p>Of course, those lowly business majors at lowly colleges are worthless and stupid and the source of the problem. Sheesh.</p>
<p>This is truly a case of doth protest too much . The hysterical call to arms to defend the intellectual freedom of Art Historians and Sociologists is ridiculous.</p>
<p>There will be the Art History kid who works at hedge fund and so forth.</p>
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<p>And there will also be Art History kids who go on to be exhibiting artists, scholars, museum curators … I don’t get the whole movement to somehow quantify what a certain degree will earn. It depends on so much more than the degree itself.</p>
<p>Are you defending our current situation with relatively easy loan money, perpetually rising college costs, and little incentive for kids and their families to carefully consider cost for college?</p>
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<p>There is plenty of incentive for kids and families to carefully consider cost of college. If they borrow, they must repay. The fact that they borrow so much money is their choice. Options do exist … CC, commuter school, working part time, working first & going to college later. Somewhere along the line, personal responsibility should come into play.</p>
<p>^ kelsmom, that is fine and perhaps your family has the level of wealth required to insulate your kids against concerns of one day earning a living.</p>
<p>It is absurd to think that the number of kids going into stuff like Art History will ever one day actually earn a living being Art Historians or curators or anything remotely to do with the world of art. Most will go to law school or graduate programs in things like library science. They will pile on more debt and they will quite possibly discover that they are like millions of others attempting the same educational second act with similarly disappointing roi.</p>
<p>My son did economics and premed and guess what? He also took government classes and art history and psychology and English and a foreign language. You don’t need to major in the humanities to be well rounded. Actually a lot of humanities concentrators AREN’T well rounded, they manage assiduously to avoid a physical science or higher mathematics course throughout college.</p>
<p>Again, more snobbery afoot here. It is offensive to insinuate only humanities or sociology majors have “broad” educations.</p>
<p>* I think we are probably better off with a population as broadly educated as possible.*</p>
<p>Though I didn’t express it very clearly, I meant people majoring in as many different fields as possible. I think most majors probably have value to society. I think art historians, classicists, sociologists have a value to society by virtue of their education even if they work in an entirely different field. Even if they work for minimum wage. Even if they spend a while on their parents couch. </p>
<p>The NC Governor doesn’t seem to think gender studies has enough value to the state that it remain at the state flagship. I think it is a huge problem when you have to go to a private school to study gender studies. I think it is an important course for many looking for a well rounded education - like your son. I understand many on this board find that view nonsense. It seems to me snobbery when students at a state flagships don’t have the opportunity to major in almost any course of study.</p>
<p>sewhappy: No, I’m not defending the current situation. I just don’t think this proposed legislation will help. I don’t think the problem is that we have too many Renaissance/Medieval Studies majors, Sociology majors, etc. I think the problem is that too many people are going to college, period. The real problem is that we don’t want to tell young people that they can’t/shouldn’t go to college. So they go and major in anything that strikes their fancy because they have a cargo-cult belief that a BA guarantees a middle class life. Many do not have the ability to become engineers or computer scientists or accountants. Telling them that these are the only marketable undergraduate degrees will not help them. Nursing? These programs have become incredibly competitive. </p>
<p>The easy availability of credit for higher education absolutely fuels tuition inflation. The colleges raise their prices because they can. There is no downside for them. They get their money and the government or the banks are stuck with the loans. Colleges are not evil in this regard; they are responding to the incentives the system provides. Easy credit fuels bubbles. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts this truth. If we tightened credit, a lot of lower-ranked marginal colleges would go out of business. There would be fewer seats. There would be less opportunity. This is in some ways good, and some ways bad. My point is that tightening credit would be more effective at keeping young people from ruining their lives with useless debt than the proposed legislation would be. </p>
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<p>You are misrepresenting my words. I am talking about bachelor’s degrees, not people. The business degrees in question are worthless because they are both intellectually empty and economically useless (a generic business major from a third-tier school is no more likely to result in good employment than a sociology degree). These students would be better off getting a vocational certificate at a community college or a trade school. They would be better able to support themselves in a dignified manner without the debt and the self-delusion. </p>
<p>What we should not do is dumb down our elite universities by eliminating programs that do not lead immediately to post-graduation employment. The proposed legislation is just a backdoor to provide a rationale for cutting state support of universities. We don’t want to tell anyone no, so we blame the university instead of the marketplace and demographics. </p>
<p>PS it’s not the fault of undergraduate institutions that lawyers can’t get jobs. Law is a graduate degree.</p>
<p>NJSue,</p>
<p>I think I agree with just about your whole last post.</p>
<p>Re: Law, I was trying to make the point that a lot of kids major in their “passion” that can be pretty impossible to get a job in with the assumption that they’ll go to law school and make a lot of money being an attorney. That was the sort of classic rationale of majoring in something “fun” vs practical. </p>
<p>I don’t really want to come off as against particular concentrations. I’m actually married to a social science PhD. His has been a long winding journey but he earns a good living. And I adore him and I generally find social scientists really interesting people. Also, many fields of social science can impart a lot in the way of computing and quantitative skills.</p>
<p>In terms of what I’d like to see in “reporting” – it would be institution specific on what majors in what recent years had jobs that were college grad appropriate upon graduation, or in six months, or in a year. Of course the numbers of kids going straight to grad school or on fellowships should factor in. Also, the kids who simply didn’t apply for jobs or grad school should be excluded from the numbers.</p>
<p>This doesn’t have to be “meaningless” and a waste of time and money. It could actually be useful to kids and their families.</p>
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<p>“Negligibly marketable”? Only in the sense that there aren’t specific jobs that call for those skills in the same way that a chemical engineering job calls for skills in chemical engineering, or an accounting job calls for skills in accounting.</p>
<p>Anecdotally enough, I just spent last week partnering with a young woman (around 25) on an ideation project for a client. As it so turns out, she was a sociology major at Princeton. She did some tutoring at first, and then wound up working for an innovation consultancy that puts on innovation workshops for Fortune 50 clients (including my client – we partnered in putting this together). This is just as much of a “real” job as doing balance sheets, but there’s a contingent on CC who doesn’t understand that. I don’t know if it’s because they haven’t been exposed or because they just can’t think creatively.</p>
<p>Many high schools are dismal failures. Factories with incompetent laborers assembling defective products. </p>
<p>We can blame schools. We can blame colleges for the hot mess many young people are graduating into but it goes back to the root, the core. Too many families have failed. We believe what we are taught and what we are taught are lies, deceptions and misrepresentations. We used to value what was real - love, family, faith, hard work, entrepreneurship, innovation, education and achievement. </p>
<p>Now our society values entertainment, made up rights, violence, self and grass is greener on the other side way of liking at life.</p>
<p>The problem is us. We are more savage and more ignorant. We each have our own truth and get angry when it proves to be wrong but never let go of the lie. The lie defines us. We are nothing without it. The lie? I am special.</p>
<h1>292 Agree. Thank you for writing.</h1>
<p>I don’t like the idea of the government having to get involved in so many phases of people’s personal lives. Choosing a path to study is a personal decision. So many factors go into it. It does pay for a young person to go out there and get all the advice they can and then FILTER that advice on their own. </p>
<p>I graduated from MIT in the 70’s and some of my classmates who make the highest salaries were philosophy majors!!! Why?? How can that be you ask. Well, MIT (at least in those days) had no pre-med program. A biology major required tough classes that weren’t required for med school. Same with a chemistry major. So, to max out your GPA for med school you became a philosophy major and just took the biology and chemistry classes you needed. Talk about blowing any statistics about philosphy majors out of the water. That sure did it.</p>
<p>I think it has been said many times in this thread that absolutely no one opposes having information of the type you just mentioned, sewhappy. But collecting that type of nuanced information (or doing the nuanced exclusions) is no piece of cake. Pretty much all of the information on jobs by major that I have seen have either been based on a tiny response rate, or have been very time-consuming and expensive to compile.</p>
<p>The stuff North Carolina was proposing to rely on was information it matched up from state tax returns filed by recent graduates. It didn’t filter out or adjust for people who were in graduate school but had part-time jobs (like being a TA) and taxable income. It didn’t include anyone who left the state and didn’t file a NC tax return, but it included plenty of people who may have filed an NC tax return showing only part-year income. It couldn’t match jobs with graduates, just W-2 income with graduates.</p>
<p>One thing that we should tell prospective college students: the liberal arts (which include the social sciences, arts and literature, pure math and science etc.) should not be the default option for those who lack intellectual curiosity, who washed out of engineering/CS/fill-in-the-blank, who are looking for a four-year party, or who are in college because someone told them to go. We should tell liberal arts majors that they will need to be more creative, more proactive, and more ambitious than the pre-professional majors, not less. The liberal arts are wonderful majors for the very best students, not the marginal or drifting students.</p>
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<p>Liberal arts degrees are actually a minority of bachelor’s degrees overall in the US.</p>
<p>[Fast</a> Facts](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37]Fast”>http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37)</p>
<p>In 2009-2010, 437,965 bachelor’s degrees were conferred in H/SS majors (26.5% of the total of 1,650,014). The non-H/SS liberal arts (sciences) made up 125,809 (7.6% of the total). This means that 1,086,240 bachelor’s degrees were in pre-professional majors (65.8% of the total). Of those, 358,293 (21.7% of the total) were in business.</p>
<p>Granted, not all pre-professional majors lead to good job markets (non-elite business majors are often questioned here). But it appears that most students are placing career direction at a high priority in their college choices. This appears to be more the case at less selective schools, based on looking at degrees conferred in their common data sets – majoring in liberal arts appears to be mainly the domain of the students who had better high school records and/or wealthier family backgrounds.</p>