<p>My son is a senior in high school and is applying to colleges. I want him to go to MIT like myself and my father, but he wants to go to a liberal arts school. I've tried explaining to him how a liberal arts education is a dead end. How can I delicately explain this to him, without making it sound like I don't care about what he wants? I'll support him in whatever he decides, but I don't want him to ruin his life.</p>
<p>dead end? ruin his life? </p>
<p>Liberal arts educations aim to produce graduates who can reason, think logically, and communicate well both verbally and in writing. These are skills that will serve your son well regardless of where his career takes him.</p>
<p>Do you care about what he wants? MIT is an excellent school but it’s not right for everyone. Is it right for your son? He’s telling you it’s not; are you listening?</p>
<p>
I think it will be very hard. Mainly because you probably don’t. Otherwise you would not make a blanket statement that “a liberal arts education is a dead end”. There are millions of very successful and happy people who did not graduate from MIT, and who’s liberal arts education served them well.</p>
<p>The scientific method you were trained in at MIT would suggest some research into your hypothesis about liberal arts schools before reaching your conclusion.</p>
<p>The data I am familiar with would suggest that there is a very high correlation between a liberal arts education and admission to top ranking graduate schools and professional schools in a wide variety of fields.</p>
<p>You could begin this research by investigating the range of programs from which MIT admits to their own graduate programs. I expect you will find many more liberal arts graduates in the incoming grad classes at MIT than you would predict.</p>
<p>I hypothesize forcing a child to follow in the footsteps of the patriarchs can lead to its own kind of dead end.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Looks like JimEufaula is just laying some bait here. I’m not biting.</p>
<p>Does your son want to pursue engineering or science as his major? May be he is into something completely different - sometimes it skips a generation.</p>
<p>You can’t because it’s not true.</p>
<p>Let’s see - topic designed to get comments, careful choice of words like dead end, time for a quick check… yup 1 post … flame bait</p>
<p>What course(s) did you and your father study at MIT?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure FLVADAD and scualum are right, but on the outside chance that JimEufaula actually exists, he should check out Papa Chicken’s thread “What’s a Liberal Arts Education Good For?”</p>
<p>Percentage of all grads getting PhDs
Academic field: All Engineering, Hard Science, and Math</p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Note: Liberal arts colleges in bold. Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period </p>
<p>
1 34% California Institute of Technology<br>
2 ** 24% Harvey Mudd College **
3 16% Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
4 ** 10% Reed College **
5 9% Rice University
6 ** 8% Swarthmore College **
7 8% Princeton University<br>
8 ** 7% Carleton College **
9 7% New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology<br>
10 7% University of Chicago<br>
11 7% Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<br>
12 7% Case Western Reserve University
13 6% Harvard University<br>
14 6% Carnegie Mellon University<br>
15 6% Johns Hopkins University<br>
16 ** 6% Haverford College **
17 ** 6% Grinnell College **
18 6% Cornell University, All Campuses<br>
19 ** 5% Kalamazoo College **
20 5% Stanford University
21 5% Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
22 5% Yale University
23 5% Cooper Union<br>
24 ** 5% Oberlin College **
25 ** 5% Lawrence University **
26 ** 5% Bryn Mawr College **
27 ** 5% Williams College **
28 ** 5% Pomona College **
29 4% Colorado School of Mines<br>
30 ** 4% Bowdoin College **
31 ** 4% Earlham College **
32 4% Brown University<br>
33 4% University of Rochester
34 4% University of California-Berkeley<br>
35 ** 4% Wabash College **
36 4% Duke University
37 4% Worcester Polytechnic Institute
38 ** 4% Amherst College **
39 4% Stevens Institute of Technology
40 ** 4% St Olaf College **
41 ** 4% Hendrix College **
42 ** 4% Beloit College **
43 4% University of Missouri, Rolla<br>
44 4% University of California-San Francisco<br>
45 ** 4% Occidental College **
46 4% Alfred University, Main Campus<br>
47 ** 4% Allegheny College **
48 ** 4% Whitman College **
49 ** 4% College of Wooster **
50 4% SUNY College of Environmental Sci & Forestry<br>
51 ** 4% Mount Holyoke College **
52 ** 4% Bates College **
53 4% College of William and Mary
54 ** 4% Knox College **
55 ** 3% Franklin and Marshall College **
56 3% Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus<br>
57 3% Washington University<br>
58 3% Long Island University Southampton Campus<br>
59 ** 3% Macalester College **
</p>
<p>Note that only about one third of Swarthmore graduates are science or engineering majors. Thus, about 24% of Swarthmore’s science and engineering majors are going on to get PhDs in science and engineeering, a number that compares favorably to MIT’s roughy 16%.</p>
<p>I knew nothing about LAColleges until my son ended up at one of the bolds above. Not even one I had ever heard of before. He made the choice and boy am I glad. He has become educated in a way that I never experienced going to a large well known university. He has one-on-one classes with his professors. It is a tight knit community and I don’t worry. He graduates this June and will be going on the grad school.</p>
<p>Just noticed his name Jim You Fool a …</p>
<p>PapaChicken’s thread actually came after this thread, so if anything, he should be the one posting here rather than starting a new thread.</p>
<p>No feeding ■■■■■■!</p>
<p>Isn’t there at least the remote possibility that JimEufaula is simply ignorant?</p>
<p>Does make you wonder when someone’s very first post seems deliberately aimed to elicit controversy…</p>
<p>I didn’t mean that people with liberal arts educations cannot be successful, but statistically, those with more practical degrees find higher paying jobs (see <a href=“http://www.doe.mtu.edu/news/2008/NACESalaryChartSummer08.gif[/url]”>http://www.doe.mtu.edu/news/2008/NACESalaryChartSummer08.gif</a>). In recent years, the demand for computer scientists and engineers has been on a steady incline, and we need more than ever new technologies to sustain our way of life. I know my son. He has an analytical mind and I want him to be happy and successful. I believe I have his best interest in mind.</p>
![http://www.doe.mtu.edu/news/2008/NACESalaryChartSummer08.gif[/url]](http://www.doe.mtu.edu/news/2008/NACESalaryChartSummer08.gif%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>To vballmom: Degrees in engineering and hard science fields also produce graduates who reason and think logically, and communicate well both verbally and in writing.</p>
<p>To interesteddad:
It seems to me that your data shows the opposite. Of the top 25 schools you posted, only nine are bolded as liberal arts colleges, and of those, Harvey Mudd is highly focused on using science in industry and should not be considered as a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nine of the schools are engineering schools. You would expect them to have high rates of **math, science, and engineering **PhDs. What’s remarkable is that there are eight liberal arts colleges and nine mostly liberal arts universities in the top 25. If you don’t want to count Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore is the only one of those LACs that even has an engineering department.</p>
<p>So of the top 25 math, science, and engineering PhD producing undergrad schools, the breakdown is:</p>
<p>9 science tech speciality schools
8 liberal arts universities
8 liberal arts colleges</p>
<p>This is on the tech school’s own turf and they don’t have a clear advantage beyond the three top tech schools in the country (Caltech, Harvey Mudd, MIT). Wanna compare Economics PhDs?</p>
<p>Ok, I’ll bite (again).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agreed. But there is more than one path to fulfill this demand, and a liberal arts degree is a valid one. My degree is from an LAC in economics. It got me my first job doing economic research. Two years later I started a successful career as a software engineer, consultant, and entrepreneur. Having a liberal arts degree has not once held me back. When I started out in software, some of the best programmers had degrees in art and English.</p>
<p>I believe that rather than thinking of a liberal arts degree as a dead end, a more correct view is to think of it as a launching pad for a wide variety of careers.</p>
<p>By the way, you might also be interested to know that despite my staunch advocacy for liberal arts degrees, my son (high school senior) has applied to nothing but engineering universities. His choice: they suit him much better than a liberals arts school ever would.</p>