<p>Just wanted to say that I think this is a fantastic thread with quality responses from all. Thanks for the enjoyable and educational read, everyone.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people always encourage breadth in your college education. I thought high school served that purpose. If you’re paying all that money in college tuition, it’d be ideal to at least come out with a valuable skill.</p>
<p>One of my sisters is a nurse in her fifties and makes low-six-figures in San Francisco. She does not have a graduate degree. It’s a good profession to be in right now. She has more than enough experience to work in hospital admin if she wants to. She has an incredible amount of work-hours flexibility which she takes full advantage of.</p>
<p>We just lost an engineer to a high-frequency trading company in NYC. He was thinking of going to medical school but I guess he wanted to make money instead of running up debt on school.</p>
<p>We have engineers working in other countries. One engineer works in the South during the Winter and in the North during the summer. If you have experience with the company, you only need a broadband connection, some computer hardware and a reliable phone.</p>
<p>This conversation is an excellent example of why other countries are surpassing the US in Engineering, Science, and Medical professions.</p>
<p>We, as a country put greater emphasis on reading Shakespeare than learning math, and it’s starting to cost us - big time.</p>
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<p>Let us not forget that’s a big reason why China fell from its superpower status in terms of technological advancement, influence and power - because all of their elite were educated only in, but educated extremely well and better than most people today, in the classics, history, writing, thinking, logic, and such. However, with scientific ‘research’, engineering and such looked down upon beginning with the Qing Dynasty, they lost their advantage to industrial nations that began to pursue such.</p>
<p>“Most published fiction isn’t even this imaginative!! It’s got to be penned by some HS or college kid that hasn’t spent a single day earning a paycheck.”</p>
<p>I won’t even try to dignify a response like that. Don’t attack me without knowing who I am, or what I do for a living. </p>
<p>@mikemac: Read my sentence carefully…I mentioned flexibility. I never said anything about finding another job in the same line of work.</p>
<p>Also, not everyone in China is an engineer.</p>
<p>Should we encourage students to study science and math and engineering? Of course. Should we pressure kids who clearly are not going to be great doctors into medicine? Probably not.</p>
<p>I appreciate science and all it does for us, but seriously people like BIGeastBEAST make me really dislike hard science majors (the people). I know I shouldn’t generalize, but there are others like him on here too. </p>
<p>Stop being elitist. Your field isn’t more important than another. We need liberal arts and we need hard science. People like you seem to be on the edge of advocating for a technocracy. That would not be good. Sure we’d have all these great technologies, but where would ethics be in our politics? Where would eloquence be in our writings?</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t think we should have an over abundance of doctors and engineers. It would cheapen the practice and have more incompetent people in the field. There are 180 million workers, having 80 million in math and science would be swell (though I don’t think that many people are smart enough), but what about the other 100? Should they just not get an education and work menial jobs?</p>
<p>What we need to do, in my opinion, is offer tuition based tax credits for students willing to major in certain subjects. This would be an excellent way to spur much needed innovation into our private sector, and begin to wean us off of our reliance on overseas students to move our tech industries forward.</p>
<p>Offer a $5,000 - $10,000 (or more, just throwing a number out) tuition based tax credit to any student majoring in certain specialties. If they drop out, don’t finish, or change majors, they will be required to pay the money back or hold the money until the date of graduation.</p>
<p>When I finished college 49 years ago, the statement about the liberal arts degree was standard. The only time I ever saw that it was easy for liberal arts majors to get a job was during almost full employment. That said, pick something you love and prepare to do that and pick something that will pay and prepare to do that too.</p>
<p>Or instead of spending money we don’t have, the private sector can get off its *** and stop trying to entice bright minds with money and let them be creative on their own. Money does not spur innovation, in this study done by MIT:</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded&related]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded&related)</p>
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<p>That was indeed the major problem of education in China during the late Qing. Add to that, a literary bureaucratic civil service that practically disdained anything not related to the four classics. The problem however, was not that people studied literature, but rather the balance was completely off. No properly functioning civilization should be without technical advances or artistic and humanistic creation. </p>
<p>If you think rising China is simply a churning mechanical/technological engine, think again. The Chinese gov, despite the heavy representation of technocrats in the upper echelons, are placing considerable resources and efforts on building cultural capital. They’re just doing in such a way that is under-reported by US media.</p>
<p>Cowman, if you took the time to read my posts you will see that I was a Liberal Arts major, Poli Sci to be exact. I hardly think that qualifies me as an elitist.</p>
<p>The truth (not your wimpering world view) is that our tech sectors are severely under manned with domestic labor. And the overall value of a college degree is becoming devalued due to drive-through schools like University of Phoenix and countless other colleges offering quick, cheap and “fast food” diplomas. There NEEDS to be a shift back to a stronger core curriculum and a develop our workforce for the challenges of modern society, and the challenges that we will be facing in the soon-to-be future.</p>
<p>With the Baby Boomer generation coming to retirement, we are going to be hit HARD by a medical care influx that we as a country aren’t prepared for. We need M.D.'s, nurses, biostaff, hospital technicians.</p>
<p>In our current socio-economic climate, we NEED new energy resources, home-grown, with domestic know-how and technical skills. So, we NEED an assortment of engineers here, from here, trained here. Our infrustucture is starting to decay, 25 years from now we will NEED more civil engineers than ever!</p>
<p>We have a political landscape that is spastic, with a lid ready to pop off at any second. We NEED technological know how to develop the next generation of war fighting systems, ones that can give us a competitive advantage of a country with superior numbers to us, say a country like - ummmm, China? </p>
<p>Several countries are becoming “tech hubs”, and America isn’t one of them. We need software engineers, IT developers and other computer savvy folks to start competing with other countries.</p>
<p>What we DON’T need is random majors that don’t prepare our workforce with practical tools.</p>
<p>Ok I will agree with you on pretty much all your points. The way your presented the same idea earlier just rubbed me the wrong way.</p>
<p>Yes some majors like woman’s studies and the like are pretty useless 99.99% of the time. However, not all liberal arts majors are useless. Political science isn’t useless, I will argue Philosophy isn’t (paired with something else, it certainly isn’t), astronomy isn’t useless, ect.</p>
<p>“Or instead of spending money we don’t have, the private sector can get off its *** and stop trying to entice bright minds with money and let them be creative on their own. Money does not spur innovation, in this study done by MIT:” ~cowman</p>
<p>Right, money doesn’t spur development.</p>
<p>So the $8,000 first time home owner tax credit hasn’t spurred home purchases?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you are talking about, we have lots of money. In fact, our President and Congress just passed a $1.6 TRILLION DOLLAR health care bill. A modest tax credit for college students surely wouldn’t break our pocket book.</p>
<p>What are you trying to say? That people shouldn’t be paid for their jobs? That the private sector shouldn’t pay it’s employees?</p>
<p>You Sir, are a Socialist.</p>
<p>P.S. The health care reference was in sarcasm.</p>
<p>Ok you didn’t watch the video, clearly. The study by MIT states that more and more financial incentive does not create the incentive to create better and new technologies. This is MIT, one of the top universities in the world saying this, along with researchers from Carnegie Melon and UMich Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>Stimulus spending is a lot different in my opinion to this. The 8k credit did help. </p>
<p>I am pretty leftist.</p>
<p>Technical major : Gives you a marketable skill set
Liberal Arts: Doesn’t tell you anything about yourself. Only that you have some level of general education. </p>
<p>The thing about a BA is that is doesn’t mean anything. It is just something you need so you don’t get weeded out. Employers only interview you if you have a BA… It is only that simple rule is why many people go to college. The system we have is horrible. </p>
<p>A technical major makes sense. When you apply a job employer already know you have a valuable skill set not just some general level of education.</p>
<p>I think we should get rid of this BA pre-req for a job thing. It doesn’t make sense. Why do I need to BA to be a secretary or a mail man? Does the BA mean anything? It is just used a free weeding out process employers can use. The only flaw is that we spend thousands of dollars and 4 years of our life to get.</p>
<p>I am not putting down higher education. I just think the idea of a BA doesn’t make sense. We should have a better system. Like a certificate system. A good example would be the CPA certificate for accounting. At least it means something. It at least gives a sense to the employers about yourself. It means a whole lot more than just having a BA. What does a BA tell the employer about you? Basically nothing.</p>
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And that’s not what I meant, either. It is just hysterical that you seriously suggest an engineer who is in their 30’s or 40’s who gets laid off can decide “well, enough of engineering, I think I’ll become a banker or consultant” and find employment. In any professional capacity, at a company that does banking, finance, or consulting. Pure fiction, imaginative fiction at that.</p>
<p>I’m an engineer and I feel that an engineering degree is much more flexible than a liberal arts degree.</p>
<p>One thing that always irks me is how people believe that an liberal arts major is better at critical thinking and communication than an engineer. Critical thinking and problem solving is all we engineers do. We systematically break down a problem into smaller manageable parts, propose solutions, and evaluate whether the solutions worked. This doesn’t just apply to technical problems, but organizational and everyday life problems as well.</p>
<p>And as for communications, any engineer worth their salt will have worked in teams constantly, both in school and in the real world. If they aren’t completely inept, they would have picked up effective communication skills. While it may not be as eloquent as some liberal arts majors, they’ll get the point across clearly and concisely, which is good enough.</p>
<p>Besides academia, where specific knowledge is required (liberal arts can’t teach engineering and vice versa), an engineering degree can do basically anything a liberal arts degree can do.</p>
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<p>True that. Although at the moment society is facing a shortage of engineers and such, we need all the fields of study. A society without political science, history and only engineering, science, and math would not be lacking in capability as would a vice-versa society, but has strong potential to be a nightmare world where human cultivation isn’t brought out and where such fields are heavily misused. I would rather live in a slightly slower-advancing society that is truly ‘human’ rather than a world that might as well get rid of the human race and replace it with a bunch of computers.</p>
<p>Ok you didn’t watch the video, clearly. The study by MIT states that more and more financial incentive does not create the incentive to create better and new technologies. This is MIT, one of the top universities in the world saying this, along with researchers from Carnegie Melon and UMich Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>Stimulus spending is a lot different in my opinion to this. The 8k credit did help. </p>
<p>I am pretty leftist. ~ Cowman</p>
<p>Yea, I’d say so.</p>
<p>However, what would YOU do to create incentives for new technology?</p>
<p>Apparently, you don’t think money would help, so what’s your solution?</p>
<p>The cold hard fact that you lefists don’t like to hear is that without funding, ideas can’t be brought into creation. </p>
<p>Regardless, my point (tuition tax credits for certain majors) was clearly a funding issue, and you’d have to be pretty insane to think it wouldn’t create an incentive for students to study certain programs.</p>
<p>I mean, as a poster stated in a different thread, “he gets lots of scholarship money cuz he’s black”, well if we can pass out scholarship money based on skin color, surely we could give out tax credits to promote the sciences, right?</p>