I know a lot of people here are wondering why they were/weren’t admitted; this might help explain things regarding the general direction of departments at OSU. The school is looking more for Business/Engineering enrollments, fewer A&S.
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I do not think it is accurate to say that university is looking for fewer A&S students. Majors popular among pre-med students such as biology and neurosciences (both part of A&S) have a large enrollment.
What I think has happened is that between having higher caliber students and the lessons from last recessions, students/parents are gravitating towards job oriented or pre-professional majors. So, Engineering, Business, pre-med, animal sciences (which I think is popular among those aiming for vet school) are all in demand. English, History, Geography – not so much.
Yes, it is true that university hasn’t being admitting weaker students who are interested in a major that isn’t in demand – for example, a lower ACT student won’t get in simply because they want to major in Geography and very few other students want to major in Geography. Whether or not university should have been doing so is in an interesting question.
I actually think it’s really sad, and often misleading, that students don’t think that the humanities will lead to good, solid employment.
The masters of the universe? Invariably, they almost all majored in the humanities or social sciences. Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) was a history major. Barack Obama majored in political science and then got a law degree. Steve Jobs didn’t actually graduate, but at Stanford he was a double major in physics and poetry (and creativity allowed him to excel beyond STEM guy Bill Gates). Ted Turner was a Classics major. BOA’s CEO majored in history. These people understand the larger structure of society, and that’s why they come out on top.
When these people send their own kids to college, those kids also major in liberal arts. They don’t send them to school to get “vocational” degrees. Michael Eisner was adamant that his kids major in English because it would allow them to think, write, and see the big picture. Unfortunately, many graduates with “technical” degrees lack an understanding of the big picture, and they don’t understand culture or history enough to understand the larger implications of their work. In addition, most humanities surpass STEM graduates in earnings by mid career–probably because they’re able to move into more managerial work rather than just number crunching.
I never had any problems finding work as a humanities major. If anything, my skills with writing were very much in demand. I guess it’s inevitable, though, that a country that makes such poor choices regarding its political leaders would not find any value in the liberal arts. Or maybe they’re making poor choices regarding politics because their liberal arts education has been so incredibly inadequate. …
If OSU’s humanities graduates are employed very well, then the departments involved should market this fact (especially with information like fraction of graduates with a job, average salary etc.). I bet this will change the tide.
I suspect that this isn’t quite the case. At least I have met humanities major from OSU and other similar schools work as car salesperson, apartment complex manager, etc. Heck, an English PhD was in my office trying to sell me insurance. But, let us look at data averaged across all graduates with a particular major, rather than anecdotes. I work with an OSU foreign language graduate from 20 years back – she tells me that most useful tool she learned that has given her current (and previous) job is Excel!. Surely it did not happen in a history or English class.
On the other hand, humanities majors from Ivy League, Stanford etc. can find good jobs in consulting, finance etc.
OSU isn’t Ivy League where you will be in demand no matter what. But OSU is attracting smart career-oriented students (unlike, say, a state school with a lower bar, or even OSU from 10-15-20 years back). These students are capable of STEM fields, and are ambitious. And, unless humanities can make a strong case for their career prospects, the enrollments will be stalled.
And, please – examples from kids of famous people are not helpful. They don’t have to worry about jobs, loan repayment, etc, common challenges for the bottom 99% of the population. Moreover, I suspect what is happening with kids of famous people at Ivy and other similar school is as follows. It is well documented that these schools keep certain number of seats for rich kids’ (called developmental cases :-)). These developmental cases cannot handle rigorous majors at these schools, while competing with kids from thebottom 99%’ of the population, who had to be very sharp to get into a school like that. So, they settle on the `easier majors’.
Actually, these are the people we need to be talking about. Notice how it’s fine for your “99%” kids to go to school to learn how to crunch numbers, while the wealthier would never stoop to that level. In other words, there’s a class disparity in this country, and sending off the poor and middle-class to learn “skills” that will make them employable only as middle management, at best, is horribly classist, and a kind of social engineering at worst. If that’s where you want to aim, and where you want your kids to aim, then that’s fine, no judgment there. But the people who are smart enough to engage with discourse? To understand politics and why they matter? Know how to understand, manipulate, and employ rhetoric? These are things you can learn only in a liberal arts education.
And plenty of OSU humanities majors do JUST FINE with their humanities degrees. Gee, the most recent case I can think of was our recent Rhodes scholar. An English major–what an idiot, working in an “easy” major like that! In fact, the English department provides a lot of info about its recent job placements. You should check that out.
On a daily basis, I’ve run across a lot of OSU business majors who also sell insurance and work as community managers at apartment complexes. They don’t even make $30k a year.
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Well, if you want your child to not get restricted to middle management’, or continue to be in99%', do not send them to OSU!. Here is the list of colleges Fortune 500 CEO’s came from:
http://www.bestcolleges.com/features/colleges-with-highest-number-fortune-500-ceo-graduates/
OSU isn’t in top 38 (probably only 38 colleges had presence in this selective list).
On the other hand, 33% of S&P 500 CEO’s had a degree in Engineering. So, their parents did not restrict them as lowly number crunchers’ by routing them through a STEM degree (or as I guess you like to call it,vocational degree’).
I searched and did not find information on English department web-site on fraction employed, average salary, top employers and functions etc.
Oh, and really? It’s awfully disingenuous to talk about liberal arts majors as not earning enough money to make it, since it’s pretty well established that that isn’t the case. So any defense about how the poor and middle/working class students HAVE to major in business or something just to survive in this market is a specious argument at best. Such liberal arts majors aren’t “just” for the upper classes. They have real value for anyone who knows how to apply what they learned. I come from a working class background, and I resent that people believe I should have just gone to school and majored in business so I could get by in life. Obviously I should not have been allowed to “aspire” for better things–like knowledge or a life of the mind or something. But not only do I make money, but I also have the benefit of understanding the shape of Western thought.
Moreover, money isn’t the end-all-be-all anyway. I know a lot of miserable engineers.
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Liberal-Arts-Majors-Fare/144133/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?_r=0
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For a change, I have to agree with you and say that with my STEM education, I do not understand the shape of western thought, or frankly, what western thought’ means. Or why we should separatewestern’ and eastern’ (ornorthern’ or southern’) thoughts. Or why not just focus oncentral’ thoughts.
``Oh, and really? It’s awfully disingenuous to talk about liberal arts majors as not earning enough money to make it, since it’s pretty well established that that isn’t the case. ‘’
Just in case someone does not follow the links you have given, I am summarizing some of the data points:
Right out of college, graduates in humanities and social science made, on average, $26,271 in 2010 and 2011
But at their peak earning ages, 56 to 60, humanities and social-science majors earned $66,185,
Not surprisingly, people with engineering degrees do particularly well over the course of a career (making $97,751 at peak earning ages). But, the report points out, they are a small group: only 9 percent of working college graduates. Science and math majors also do quite well over time (making $86,550 at peak earning ages).
I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. And personally, I’ve been very disappointed in the writing, thinking, and analytical skills I see in OSU graduates and wouldn’t hire most of them. It’s too bad that our state’s flagship puts so little value on producing graduates who are curious, analytical, and executive thinkers. Their failure to promote the liberal arts will lead to more of the same of this.
The English department does indeed make that info available. They’ve been very transparent, but I assume you have to actually contact the department to get an assessment.
By the way, I certainly believe in strong humanities GECs for all majors – not the ones taught by TAs or those with multiple choice exams, but with real writing assignments that are critically graded. My son is in high school – when I saw the rubric for grading essays for his AP World History class, I jumped with joy. I wish more of my STEM graduate students would have gone through that. But the sad part is that the teacher has too little time to grade, and provides very little feedback on essays. The teacher has 6 sections to teach (not all AP though) and with nearly 25 students per section, where is the time.
Then I hope you aren’t really an “OSU Prof,” though I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. It’s sad that you are working antagonistically to undermine the role of the humanities at your university. Maybe doing so will guarantee you a bigger salary? Well, whatever you get out of it, I hope it keeps you warm at night. Because the university on the whole will suffer if it continues to jettison liberal arts disciplines like history, philosophy, English, foreign language, and Classics. And it certainly won’t ever earn a coveted spot in your “top 38” universities if it aims so wholeheartedly at the corporate and cultural philistinism that you champion.
And FYI, we do have what we call the “global south.” It’s something you might have learned about if you’d actually taken the time to, you know, read or something. Or figure out who Antonio Gramsci was.
This certainly doesn’t refute my point. Humanities majors don’t starve to death. They do well. They may not surpass STEM majors on average (and I concede that my original post was misleading in this sense), but they succeed. More importantly, they don’t make statements like “zomg, southern thought!”
I guess readers (who are either prospective students or parents in most cases) can decide if they care more about 30K more per year or learning about the shape of western thought and Antonio Gramsci. By the way, courtesy the number crunchers’ orvocational training’ folks churned out by the universities, we have the Internet, and I could read about Mr. Gramsci rather easily.
As an aside, I really wish you had learnt something about business. You have been trying to shoot down someone who is trying to explain simple `demand’. Calling me illiterate or as someone who champions philistinism isn’t going to bring more students to your field. And we are having so much trouble handling all the students in engineering these days, I do wish that many of them would happily go to other fields, rather than being upset about GPA cutoffs we are forced to enforce. But I think these students (and/or their parents) understand market dynamics better than you do.
If anyone’s lack of understanding is apparent here, osuprof, it’s yours. If you knew anything about politics, political economy, market forces, or, gee, I don’t know, the history of this country, you might understand that a public education wasn’t always out of the price range of middle-class Americans. It became so over the last 20-30 years, thanks to wide-ranging efforts to cut public funds for education. How did we get here? Because of the mindset of people like you, who believe that education exists solely to serve corporate demands rather than to serve the needs of the many–i.e. to preserve cultural memory and educate a well-informed electorate. Public education doesn’t exist as a “job training” site, osuprof. Sorry, it doesn’t. It saddens me that you work at a public university, when obviously all you care about are profits and “supply and demand” rather than producing well-informed citizens. You aren’t well-informed yourself, though, so go figure.
I think it’s indeed grand that parents here can see what their money at OSU is “buying”–a professor like you who sneers at other majors as “easy”–even if those majors produce Rhodes Scholars.
If you’d actually bothered to comprehend the article, you’d have grasped that students are indeed applying to OSU to major in humanities. The demand for a humanities education is there. Why? Because our modern economy still needs people who can read and write.
And I am working in business, like a lot of other humanities majors, thanks.
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But you hadn’t even heard of him, and wouldn’t even know who he was if not for a lowly humanities major. (And I’m guessing that your understanding is still superficial at best, since skimming a wikipedia page does not compare to the education you get in a small seminar–though I’m sure you’d think it does.) Moreover, a technical school wouldn’t have produced a Gramsci. That’s what absolutely blows my mind about STEM people: their arrogance. I never see humanities/arts majors saying that people with an interest in technology shouldn’t pursue that interest or make money off of that interest. They’re simply asking to not be deprived of pursuing their own interests–at a public university–simply because they are perceived to be “out of step” with the current trends. But people like you absolutely sneer at the idea that anyone would ever presume to go to college to, I don’t know, read and think and learn history or art or whatever. Nor do you think, apparently, that your university should foster these programs for the benefit of their STEM and business students, who will enter the workforce needing to consider the common good. It’s absurd.
Most humanists are also grateful for the way that technology has allowed them to share their interests and make publicly available the intellectual achievements of the past. Just google “digital humanities” or “public humanities” to discover the ways that humanists and scientists have partnered for the benefit of everyone else. OSU actually has one such program, but I doubt that you’ve bothered to find out about it, and you’d probably cheer its de-funding in favor of something more lucrative.
``Nor do you think, apparently, that your university should foster these programs for the benefit of their STEM and business students, who will enter the workforce needing to consider the common good. It’s absurd.’’
Just look 5 posts up and you will see my belief in that regard. Wonder who here cannot read … And I think you started sneering’ at STEM education by calling itvocational training’ and `number crunching’, which I take exception to. I have never in this thread suggesting harm at humanities, but simply stated that market forces are controlling the demand. OSU chooses strongest applicants primarily (it seems - I have no involvement with admissions) based on ACT/SAT and GPA, and if these students want to do engineering, business, or pre-med (and a few other pre-professional majors), what can be done? You think STEM faculty goes around and tells high school students not to study History/English/Classics? University is already holding engineering admits to a higher bar than Art and Science admits. Also, 45-50% of credit hours of an Engineering student come from Art and Science, which means that this fraction of their tuition (after central tax) also goes to A&S. Business turns away about 1/2 of OSU freshmen interested in them, with a GPA cutoff. Should it be even higher to push students to humanities? Is that the purpose of a public university, i.e, to not allow students the opportunity to study what they choose (and if it is based on post-degree salaries and not by their desire to be better voters in the next election, I think it is their choice to make!). Or to not give Engineering the budget to actually teach the students interested in them?
And regarding my knowledge of history and culture … I am not even a US Citizen, and except for MS and PhD, received my education elsewhere. I can talk to you about History and Constitution of the country I hold passport for, despite my STEM education and role as a STEM educator. But I have published more than 250 papers in international venues and graduated 25 PhD advisees in my career. All but 1 of my PhD graduates are working in this country – either educating others or, in most cases, building technology. This is what an `illiterate person’ can do. And, just for others to see, this is the kind of professor money paid in OSU tuition buys them.
You stated:
Talk is cheap, and from what I understand, it takes money to employ actual professors to teach classes rather than underpaid TAs, and OSU won’t hire humanities professors. How do you plan on staffing a humanities GEC program if you refuse to allocate money to these programs? No, these programs don’t bring in a ton of money, and yes, they need to be subsidized. Maybe your lack of understanding does indeed stem from your non-U.S. background, but I’m not that naive to make that kind of assumption. But I’ll explain anyway: In the U.S., education is supposed to be a public good, not a for-profit venture. Therefore, it was not designed to generate capital but to enrich lives, build a knowledge base, and produce civic-minded graduates who are involved in their communities. What OSU fails to understand, then, and what you seem not to understand is that universities are not supposed to be solely beholden to market forces. They are not businesses, and treating them as such is disastrous policy.
I apologize for the hyperbolic and insulting tone. I do not think that STEM people are number crunchers or whatever. Many are indeed brilliant and creative. My point, however, was that the true innovators and leaders of our society more often have a background in the classical liberal arts, or, like Steve Jobs, they combined their love of science with a love of humanities and art. It’s terrible that OSU wants to deprive its own students of that potential and no one should make excuses for it based on “the market.”
``How do you plan on staffing a humanities GEC program if you refuse to allocate money to these programs?’’
I am not the provost :).
``What OSU fails to understand, then, and what you seem not to understand is that universities are not supposed to be solely beholden to market forces. ‘’
Yeah, but they have to see what students want to study and actually pay for someone to teach those majors. Engineering has seen 60% increase in enrollments in last 7-8 years and faculty size has gone up by at most 5%. So, everyone in the University is hurting one way or the other, with State budget cuts and desire to keep tuition low.
``I apologize for the hyperbolic and insulting tone. I do not think that STEM people are number crunchers or whatever. ‘’
I accept the apology.
`` My point, however, was that the true innovators and leaders of our society more often have a background in the classical liberal arts, or, like Steve Jobs, they combined their love of science with a love of humanities and art’’
And, I do not doubt that. Don’t think any supreme court justice has a STEM background either. And, I just made an observation on this – these exceptional individuals did not go a State School either. The fact that they were exceptional could be seen from their high school records, and Ivy League/Stanford came calling easily. Most people are not like that – I am just suggesting that OSU Humanities needs to appeal to `less exceptional’ students. I do think this is why Humanities demand is very strong at Brown and Yale and so on … and not so much at OSU or most Big Ten Schools. This is just an observation on the demand, not a suggestion (as if anyone will actually care what I write here) for anyone as to what to study where.