<p>Let’s frame this debate slightly more logically.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I think we all agree that receiving a BA or BS is nearly essential to career success in many areas, so it’s logical that regardless of major, most would benefit from obtaining a degree.</p></li>
<li><p>If you must be in college for four years or so taking classes, what should you take? A widely agreed upon answer would be taking classes in whatever will benefit you most in reaching your goals, whatever they may be.</p></li>
<li><p>What are your goals? If a person is completely sure that he or she wants to be a doctor, then it may make sense to choose pre-med without hesitation (keep in mind that about 50% of pre-med students change their minds about this aspiration sometime during college, same goes for pre-law; many students just say doctor or lawyer because they don’t really know what else to do, or what being a doctor or lawyer really entails). However, I agree with the person who said that passions change over one’s life: how can one know for certain which career path/life path will provide fulfillment? Given this, one might think that spending one’s college years obtaining an education that will provide tools for deciding what matters in life and which goals to pursue would be a good choice. Additionally, pursuing a course of study that would be applicable no matter if the person sticks with a single field for their career or changes every few years (which is the norm study) seems like a wise decision.</p></li>
<li><p>Which course of study provides a person with the ability to discover what matters in life, which goals to pursue, and a broadly useful set of skills? A liberal arts eduction. To be clear, the liberal arts include the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, etc. (everything besides pre-professional degrees like engineering, business, nursing, education or similar majors). A liberal arts education provides a person the ability to study many diverse topics, pick a single area of inquiry to pursue deeply based on their interest, and general training in critical thinking that results from rigorous analysis of difficult questions. One might say that doing a math proof is more difficult than writing a paper, but what if the topic of the paper is “Define and defend the purpose of life”? That question would be absurdly difficult to answer in a detailed fashion while still keeping a logically sound argument. The point is, challenging oneself in an area of interest is the best way to learn and grow as an individual.</p></li>
<li><p>It seems that most agree that laboratory sciences are best studied in universities due to the necessary equipment, but some of you also say that you can get the equivalent of a humanities education from reading books at a library alone, and let’s assume that’s true. You’ll need to spend quite a significant portion of four years reading lots and lots of books (i.e., your full-time job is reading books), and how realistic is that for someone who isn’t in college? You might say that you can spread the reading over a lifetime, which is true, but that assumes it doesn’t matter when you learn any specific piece of information, that it’s all just for fun. I would argue that the intensity of reading and writing a humanities major does is absolutely essential to shaping their abilities. If one reads philosophy or history books for fun at home, that’s great, but it’s entertainment. It would be like going to the gym once every few weeks. Consistent, rigorous interaction with the ideas of great thinkers throughout history, and discussion/debate with intellectual peers or superiors (professors) is the value of a humanities major.</p></li>
<li><p>Why not pursue both types of degrees? If we consider that the average undergraduate completes 120 credit hours (5 classes a semester, 10 per year) and half of those are business classes, that still leaves quite a few classes for the liberal arts. Similarly, liberal arts majors typically have less requirements, perhaps 45 credit hours, so it’s very reasonable to receive both a liberal arts degree and a pre-professional degree like business or education that doesn’t have a significant amount of requirements (engineering is the most problematic major, as it has lots of requirements typically that cause problems for anyone desiring to double major or take many classes outside of engineering). The point is, with decent planning, most undergraduates should be able to receive both a pre-professional and liberal arts education should they desire it. If that is the case, why would a person choose one over the other?</p></li>
<li><p>Why should one study in a pre-professional program? In contrast to the objectives of a liberal arts education, pre-professional programs provide a specific set of job-related skills that prepare a student for the working world. Most students will need to make money at some point, so having a set of marketable skills seems to be a reasonable idea. Are there disadvantages to a pre-professional program? They take time away that a person could spend learning other things that are more interesting (this depends on the person). As with the humanities, can a person learn the relevant skills without classes? Perhaps not in engineering or in majors requiring certain sets of equipment, but business and education at least are quite readily learned through reading books if a person spends enough time doing it. However, the same argument for why a humanities course is superior to just reading books would apply to both business and education.</p></li>
<li><p>What is the best course of action for a student? Discover what interests you, and determine what skills you would like to develop. Then, find classes that match with those two factors and figure out which major(s) would allow you to follow your interests and develop your skills without taking classes against your will. If you wish to be a doctor, but you also have an interest in Arabic, then take the pre-med requirements and major in Arabic. If you wish to be a college professor and have an interest in sociology, study sociology alone. If you don’t have an interest in anything at all, and just want to make money, pick whatever pre-professional major you desire (and have fun with your exceedingly dull life devoid of curiosity). If you wish to be a businessman, and have a bit of interest in history, chinese, and biology, then major in business and take courses in each of those areas, perhaps even choosing one or two as minors.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are dumb, unmotivated, or idealistic students in every major. Some may be weeded out faster (engineering) than others, but they are everywhere. Generalizing by major is just irrational: there may be an economics major (liberal arts) interning every summer to prepare for an investment banking career, and there may be a nursing major that spends every weekend and summer getting trashed. If you plan to waste your time getting trashed every night of the week throughout college, then a pre-professional major will allow you a slightly better chance of receiving a job upon graduation when compared to the same person in a liberal arts program, but hopefully we aren’t picking majors based on what the worst or average student will do. </p>
<p>Personally, I began as a business management major, and realized that I didn’t particularly like my business classes, although I did like business itself. I am interested in the qualitative aspects of business (e.g., organizational culture) more than the quantitative (e.g., finance), and I realized that a liberal arts major would give me a stronger background than a business major if I wish to understand people and society. Additionally, I wasn’t sure what sort of career I desired, so limiting myself with a pre-professional degree would not have been smart (e.g., if I should desire to pursue a humanities Ph.D, a business major is not going to get me into a top program). I’ve been slowing discovering where my skills lie, and taking classes that interest me along with developing these skills. It just so happens that a humanities major fits me best, and I am quite happy with it. Most of my friends are business majors (quantitative areas), and I think they made good major choices in relation to their personalities, skills, and interests.</p>
<p>There are many paths through life, choose the one best for you, but make sure you do give it some serious thought. The question of major choice had been central in my mind from the point I started college until a few months ago (rising junior). Now, career choice is the next great question, and I don’t intend to just forget about it until I graduate.</p>