<p>^^^^ ROTLMAO</p>
<p>Easy major: A major that is very interesting to me.</p>
<p>Hard Major: A major that is very boring and fails to keep my attention.</p>
<p>“You do know why, don’t pretend otherwise.”</p>
<p>Oh I know that it offends people, but I don’t understand why. Imagine you have a group of people at a YMCA. Some are swimming, some are running, some are doing the stairmaster, some are weight training, some are playing ping pong, some are sitting in a sauna or jacuzzi, and some are doing aerobics. If I say “ping pong is easier than weight training” or “stairmaster is somewhat easier than running,” nobody gets mad. But different people having different majors at college, some are easier than others, you talk about this, and people get angry. I do not understand that.</p>
<p>Being a janitor is an underrated job. The world needs janitors. It’s called the division of labor, one of the underpinnings of a developed economy. For this reason I think it’s wrong to try to maximize the number of people attending and completing college. All you do is waste a lot of people’s time, and the people who are best suited for college would have attended anyway.</p>
<p>Decker - the purpose of college is not to entertain or amuse. It is to provide one with credentials in order to find a decent job. Are you perchance in liberal arts?</p>
<p>Here’s the reality: no major is inherently hard. Certain majors attract particular types of students. </p>
<p>Engineering majors, lauded for supposedly “hard” classes and grade deflation, attract students who work hard and think they’re intelligent. The softer majors, known more for gpa inflation and “open-minded curriculum” often attract slightly lazier students who aren’t concerned with supposedly maximizing their academic rigor in college.</p>
<p>Because of these trends, it turns out that engineering/math/science majors have more academically driven students who just sit on their ass and study. Many of these classes are curved, so the competitive students are all in the same types of classes battling it out for A’s. This continues the gpa deflation trend that engineering students always complain about.</p>
<p>But any layman could be an “average engineering student” or an “average humanities student.” If you actually think that one of these majors is hard, then in my not so humble opinion, you’re an idiot. Given four years, an average human could learn either of these topics by reading the same textbooks we study from.</p>
<p>The only reasonable thing we can say is that being a top engineering student requires more work than being a top humanities student. This is only true because the engineering stereotype perpetuates through college generations and discourages all except those who think they’re smart or think they can work hard from declaring an engineering major. But, in reality, neither learning organic chem nor learning about the Henry Stanley’s trip down the Congo is actually hard for anyone with half a brain. (Literally, half.)</p>
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Sure, you go to college to prepare yourself for the workforce, but in a field that you find interesting or are passionate about. If the sole purpose of college was to prepare yourself for a lucrative career, colleges would be flooded with engineering, computer science, and finance majors. There wouldn’t be any need for any other majors. </p>
<p>A person should consider future career possibilities when choosing a major, but they should also choose something that entertains and amuses them.</p>
<p>Vangandr: I think you misunderstood my post. I understand that college is not Disneyworld and its a lot of hard work. However, I see too many students pick “easy majors” because they believe the school work is easier. These kids are often the first students to skip the lectures and flunk the “easy test” because the classes is boring to them. I highly recommend new students take classes that keep them awake during the lectures because its so difficult to work like a dog for 16 weeks in a class that fails to interests you.I remember taking geology because everyone said “its so easy” and later dropped the class because I do not enjoy learning about rocks and dirt. I learned my lesson the hard way and I have the W on my record to prove it.</p>
<p>Maybe you attended college to get a job but that is not my plan. I want to create an advertising agency so college for me is a place to learn artistic and marketing skills so I can create jobs for others. I see college as a journey in my life that needs to by savored and enjoyed. This is not a stepping stone for me to get a job working for a boss in corporate America.</p>
<p>Yes, I do have a liberal arts degree but that doesn’t mean its easy. I am getting my BFA in graphic design which is a major that is easy to me but requires a lot of my time. Only 10% of the applicants in my department are accepted into the BFA program each year and many straight A students are denied entry multiple time. It is different from most liberal arts degree because I am working with classes that only deal with my major and not general education classes. My degree is a professional’s degree and it takes a lot of time and effort to get a BFA. In fact, most of us do not graduate in four years because the work is intense and some of the students do not pass their portfolio reviews in my department. Students who get A’s in this program often double up their work and do extra projects outside of the curriculum while C/D students follow the syllabus to the letter. Graphic design is not like finger painting kids learned in kindergarten class. It is a cut-throat industry that will gobble up your time and play with your emotions if you are not serious about it.</p>
<p>Oxymoron - some people cannot hack engineering et. al. despite its rich reward. To each their own, it is up to one’s self to maximise one’s own revenue potential.</p>
<p>Decker - if students are not paying attention in class, it is a result of their own deficient character. Again, class was not made to entertain. That said, if the diploma will allow one to make money, go nuts.</p>
<p>Vanagandr: Okay, you are entitled to your own opinion. We will just have to agree to disagree. Okay? :)</p>
<p>Sure; you get your money and I’ll get mine.</p>
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<p>LOL. What’s this major of yours that makes you so confident in your future earnings potential? Your earning potential has clearly come at the expense of your maturity and humility.</p>
<p>I am 100% confident that my majors, coupled with my attitude, will provide me greater earning potential than your major(s), coupled with your attitude.</p>
<p>Though I can’t speak for Deker’s future earnings, it certainly seems that his potential to live a satisfying life is far greater than yours given the limited impressions discernible from this thread. I hope you don’t treat people like this in person, because it will hold back your career and your life.</p>
<p>You better be a pretty damn impressive person considering your snobbery.</p>
<p>What is so immature or snobbish about wanting to make sure that their degree will be the best investment possible? It is an investment of two things - tuition and opportunity cost. The return is the higher salary. The higher the return, the better the investment, point, period, paragraph. </p>
<p>It is nothing unlike searching for a good mutual fund or equity in which to invest, and it is not such a complicated process either.</p>
<p>That’s my attitude, and if you don’t like it, tough luck.</p>
<p>Who cares.</p>
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<p>That’s right. Opportunity cost here is not just foregone salary. It is 4 years of a short life. If deker likes his major more than you like your major, you can add that to your opportunity cost of obtaining a high future salary. Call it “foregone happiness.”</p>
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<p>The return is a happy, fulfilling life, however you and society collectively define it. Someone who chose to go to college made the assessment that their life would improve due to college. </p>
<p>You focus on the easily measured costs and returns of college. Maximizing earning potential is not maximizing utility. Nothing new here–this is common sense.</p>
<p>Who are you to say:
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<p>That’s your purpose of college. We’ll see if you’re still satisfied with that purpose when you’re 60 years old.</p>
<p>Financial means and material wealth aren’t the only limited resources in life. Another rather important one is time–your mortality gives rise to many opportunity costs that finances don’t measure.</p>
<p>justtotalk, I’m sorry but you’re quite wrong about engineering. About fifteen percent of the population could probably make it through, but the required math and problem-solving skills do not belong to all or even most members of the population. Skill can be learned, talent cannot.</p>
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<p>You thinking I’m wrong doesn’t make me wrong. 15 percent of the population could make it through an engineering curriculum? That’s a hypothetical statistic that you just made up. </p>
<p>I could say that 15% of the population could make it through an English curriculum, too. But who cares, I’d be making up the same crap you are.</p>
<p>Your biases aren’t counterproofs to my biases. As an accounting and computer science major, I am confident that 50%+ of the college population (we’re not talking about a general population anyways) could earn a CS degree (or accounting) if they wanted to, but it’s not for everyone. Just like I’m bored to death in a history lecture, I would expect many students to die of boredom when learning about pension accounting.</p>
<p>See, we can both make up numbers.</p>
<p>I’d just like to point out that it’s absolute crap that people think liberal arts are for the talentless and an easy route toward a degree. The ratio of Hemingways and Shakespeares to Einsteins and Hawkings is roughly the same. Give it a rest. It took just as much inherent ability for Nietzsche to produce On The Genealogy of Morality as it did for Hamilton to develop the quaternions. </p>
<p>I struggled much more with literature in high school than I did with calculus, though that’s probably because I never did the assigned reading. People will excel in what fascinates them and that’s the answer to this thread. The idea that some majors are harder than others is ridiculous.</p>
<p>‘Rigorous’ is the term that I think this thread is looking for- not ‘hard’. Engineering is arguably more rigorous than the humanities majors. And this is coming from somebody who wants to major in philosophy.</p>
<p>So to once again reiterate…</p>
<p>Hardest major = my major</p>
<p>Easiest/bull s h i t major = your major</p>
<p>I think people in the “hard” majors (like engineering, physics, chemistry, math and blah blah) need to realize that just because someone isn’t majoring in the above “difficult as hell” majors doesn’t mean that they can’t handle the major. Yes, of course there are some people who were engineering, math, or whatever hard major at one point and switch out to an “easy” major because they couldn’t handle it. However, you can’t really assume that people majoring in social science or humanities or something else are people who aren’t capable of handling a “hard” major. Some people simply don’t want to major in those majors because they just aren’t interested. It’s like saying…oh hey, you play baseball, that means you couldn’t handle football or basketball. See how dumb the logic is now?</p>
<p>And for people majors in whatever because you want to make money, have vast interest, or for any other reason…AWESOME dude! Just don’t be a gigantic d o u c h e about things.</p>
<p>This thread inspired me to look up the true definition of liberal arts and the results surprised me. The definition of of liberal arts according to the dictionary is </p>
<p>“the academic course of instruction at a college intended to provide general knowledge and comprising the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, as opposed to professional or technical subjects.” </p>
<p>Therefore, according to this definition, natural sciences - including biology, geology, physics and chemistry - are considered liberal arts majors. Would anyone consider these majors to be “easy”?</p>