<p>It doesn’t matter what the original term meant. And it isn’t as if people are “forgetting”, they don’t know it or consider it. The connotation is part of our vernacular.</p>
<p>Or do you think the majority of people think of Caltech and MIT as a LAC?</p>
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<p>In answering the question, what matters is what the connotation of the terms was.
If it is wrong, then you can’t reinterpret the results based on “well, if the connotation matched the denotation, the survey would have been different…”.</p>
<p>Think of it this way.
If you had a survey and asked “Do you ever peruse a newspaper” and get a reply of 90% yes.
But then you realize that most people have the connotation that “peruse” means to “look over” or "quickly review.</p>
<p>You can’t say “oh, but wait, that really means that people do read things in depth”.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd College is usually considered a LAC. Percentage of degrees awarded was about 59% science and math (including 25% CS), 6% humanities and social studies (only available as off campus majors), 35% engineering.</p>
<p>Also, Harvey Mudd, MIT, and Caltech probably require students to have a more well rounded liberal arts education than most LACs or research universities.</p>
<p>Caltech is an LAC in the same way Deep Springs is a junior college–in other words, the labels don’t really fit, even if they sort of do, technically.</p>
<p>I think it’s also worth pointing out that plenty of top firms recruit heavily at colleges that have no business degrees at all. They are hiring people with all sorts of degrees.</p>
<p>Some of the classification depends upon the university. Not sure what has changed since the ‘good old days’ but when I was at UMinn, Computer Science could be taken in the College of Liberal Arts or the Institute of Technology. The programs were slightly different, but one was a liberal arts degree and one was a STEM degree (before that term was widely used as such).</p>
<p>The key is that what they mean is not so much the college within the university that is granting the degree, but the actual major and degree granted. I have a degree in Poli-Sci, but it is a BS, not a BA. To some employers, that distinction means something, to others, not so much. Economics can be considered a ‘social science’ but it is also a math-based program. I would expect most employers are not considering Econ degrees to be part of a liberal arts degree. What they really mean, and most of us probably understand, is English, Philosphy, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Archeology, etc. etc. etc. </p>
<p>I am seeing lots of young people listing their courses along with their major and GPA on their LinkedIn pages.</p>
<p>That way, they can highlight specific skills even if they haven’t taken a second major, a minor, or a certificate, as sometimes a humanities or social science major might have taken more math than a biology or even a chemistry major, or taken a cluster of compsci courses. STEM majors sometimes take upper-level foreign language classes or classes that require tons of reading and writing. </p>
<p>It is also easy to see whether a student has padded their GPA by taking the easiest classes that would satisfy gen ed requirements.</p>
<p>And hence the popularity of full-pay professional master’s degree programs, as well as all sorts of post-bac programs for ambitious students who did not make the first-cut by employers or go straight to medical school, law school, or funded grad program, or whose undergraduate program left them short in any way, and who do not have a specific talent or skill that is attractive to employers regardless of academic background, or set of connections. I myself am stunned by the numbers of young people I see who are hard at work studying for the LSAT after a few years of unemployment, underemployment, or dead-end jobs. Others in our area find themselves back in school taking post-bac medical school admissions programs, or taking STEM classes, accounting classes, or business classes to prepare for a different career.</p>
<p>There has been lots of fuss about how students from poor families are left behind because they cannot afford unpaid internships or volunteer work, but little about how students who need to go straight to work cannot afford to pursue a talent they did not discover until the last year of college, especially if this talent or interest will require a few years of additional coursework to build credibility, or hone study skills that were lacking in early years of college.Neither can these students afford to add a trade certificate to a college degree, and many will also lack the family connections to get into suitable employment or even underemployment that will provide opportunities for advancement.</p>
<p>All the liberal arts majors I’ve known – especially today’s pragmatic young people – are keenly aware that for them in particular, job hunting can be a challenge. Hence the interest in schools that provide internships, and in fact, the growth of unpaid internships. For many liberal arts students, internships - unpaid or not - are a way of getting something meaty on their resumes. I still maintain that the proactive, engaged liberal arts major will find employers - and even rewarding jobs and careers. Many of us on this forum are good examples of that. </p>
<p>@"nervous mom" – a newly minted grad who lacks the credentials to enter a a specific field is not completely precluded. The first job the grad takes is not a lifetime commitment, and a student with a particular interest can look for opportunities to work toward that goal. Maybe the student takes a job in an unrelated area, but opts to attend a grad school or certificate program part-time in the evenings, or via an on-one program, to improve their skills. Or maybe that student takes an entry-level position working for a company or industry that is interesting to them, even though they are doing administrative or support work rather than the skilled work they would prefer but do not yet qualify for. </p>
<p>I think the problem is when a person looks at the bachelor’s degree as being the end of the road rather than the starting point, whether or not the college grad pursues a formal post-grad education.</p>
<p>Yes, that is exactly what my new grad hopes to do - will need a couple years of post-bac work in order to take on skilled work since she did not truly discover interests and talents until late in the college career, and fortunately can afford to live on a low wage for a while, with no loans to repay. Hopefully this will not turn into long periods of no wage, though. We will help with living expenses and tuition for part-time classes until she is launched, although now that she has a degree we expect that the classes she takes will move her towards a goal of skilled employment.</p>
<p>Our new grad took lots of challenging classes both within and outside of her major and her GPA is too low to make a top law school or medical school a reasonable goal, or (I confess) I would probably see her joining her friends who are frantically studying for the LSAT or doing post-bac medical admission programs. It is below the 3.5 that seems to have become the de-facto cut-off these days for many large employers who recruit from “any major”, but fortunately above a 3.0, which seems to be the minimum for many continuing education programs.</p>
<p>Does she have work experience? By the time my daughter graduated from college she had 17 different paying jobs that she could have listed on resume – all either part time or summer jobs of course. </p>
<p>My d’s first job out of college was ideal for her major – pretty much a dream job for her. But the job responsibilities included maintaining a database and doing some bookkeeping – and she wouldn’t have gotten the job without demonstrated experience in both. Those are skills she picked up over the years in various office settings. </p>
<p>@calmom - Only a few paid jobs, lots of unpaid volunteer work beginning in elementary school, and she is thinking of getting in touch with contacts made through volunteering. She has picked up lots of random office skills with both jobs and volunteer work, though, not to mention leadership skills in EC’s. She is not afraid to go outside of her comfort zone and has an unusually eclectic academic background.</p>
<p>D will likely use skills acquired in her liberal arts major for the rest of her life, avocationally and hopefully vocationally as well, so has no regrets there, but has discovered a strong talent in another area rather late in the game.</p>
<p>I earn my living from skills I picked up, on my own, in my early 40s. Before that I was a lawyer. I was looking for something less stressful when I was also trying to be a mom to 2 school age kids. </p>
<p>Your daughter isn’t “late” – she just happens to have a college degree in something different than what she might choose if she could start all over again. If she’s lucky she will find a job that touches on her interests. Or maybe the job she does get will lead to new and different interests.</p>
<p>Again, whatever she get will be her first real, working-world job – not her last one. </p>
<p>@Niquii77 – why are you surprised at the number I posted? My daughter’s first paying job was doing database entry at age 14. (I’ll admit – I got her that job – I had a business associate who mentioned a large backlog and I offered up my daughter at minimum wage.). Her next job was working retail, which she got on her own by going to about 40 different retail stores and filling out application forms until one finally called her back with an opening </p>
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