<p>I agree that students need to think about job and career implications ! I’ve got a nephew who is interested in the theater and I"m glad that he is working out a pragmatic plan for a ‘day job career’. It would also be foolish, for example, to take on a mucking huge debt to get a degree with very limited and/or low paying job potential.
The problem, I think, comes from a combination of factors - when our current basic system, with it’s emphasis on a rounded education, was being built, college really was only for a small percentage of the population. It was not the primary path to a job for the vast majority. It was expensive, but there were also no loan programs, so students might be broke and might work a lot , but there was no crushing debt as there can be today. Families might save, but they didn’t take out second mortgages. So, although the roundedness of education, although a luxury, was not a foolish one.
Now, things are different. College is far more commonly seen as a requirement for a ‘decent’ job. College costs are relatively higher. College loans exist. So, college is viewed, by some, in a far more pragmatic way. At the same time, many have an idealized view of college as a crucial ‘experience’. And, because there was a drop in the college-going population a couple of decades ago, a lot of colleges have improved their general appeal with luxuries once unheard-of.
It all adds up to a big problem. For those who can still afford it (a population probably like the college-going population of the turn of the century), the art history and language and such are still an affordable luxury. For the rest, such things may not be affordable or desirable.
I think there may be a coming split-off - some sort of more pragmatic degree which takes only three years and skips the luxuries (a bit like the English model) and the old ‘rounded’ four year degree.</p>