<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, that is my point. I wonder why so many parents here disagree. I haven't been here as long as most of you, so I don't know the history. It almost sounds like people are saying the tech degrees are a waste of ones time in college. I wonder why. There are many ways to be educated. Becoming an intellectual and pursuing a humanities degree is only one route to an education. Why assume that someone in math/science/computers is not well-educated? I'm sensing an intellectual snobbery.</p>
<p>Mrs.P:</p>
<p>I understood you to wonder why anyone would want to have a humanities/social sciences degree. We try to explain why. </p>
<p>No one has put down engineers, premeds, pre-law, carpenters, nurses or car repairmen.
I sense lack of self-confidence.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>MrsP. At the time of that quote, you were **not[/not] the poster on my mind.</p> </blockquote>
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<p>curmudgeon, there are undercurrents here that I don't understand. I suspect some of the people posting in this thread have a history that I'm not aware of. I should stop posting and merely soak up the antagonism. There seems to be heated debate over subjects that shouldn't even raise ones blood pressure. The price of gas is more controversial than why one goes to college or what one majors in.</p>
<p>MrsP. what is your definition of an education or well educated? It may differ from somebody else's. Can someone be considered educated who concentrates the majority of their time in one technical field to the exclusion of the "broader coursework" such as literature, history, fine arts, language and philosophy?</p>
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<blockquote> <p>I understood you to wonder why anyone would want to have a humanities/social sciences degree. We try to explain why.</p> </blockquote>
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<p>marite, you misunderstood me. I have one of those degrees. I know why people pursue them. I don't disagree, it's a wonderful option to be able to expand one's mind. I did that. I was not employable and I didn't understand why. I had a hard-earned degree from a name institution. I should have been able to walk into a job. The world doesn't work that way and it was a hard lesson to learn. If we tell our children, study whatever you want and a job will come to you, are we being realistic? It might be an adequate job, but I don't want to hear from my own children in 10 years that I encouraged them to take a degree that encouraged them away from a high paying occupation should that later become important to them. I believe in laying it out for them up front so there are no surprises later on.</p>
<p>What you don't realize is we may agree on the end point of this conversation but we are taking different routes to get there.</p>
<p>curmudgeon, do you want the real answer? This goes back to elementary school education, where children are taught to learn by rote, not to think for themselves, and especially not if it goes against modern teaching methods or ideas. If they are fortunate, they might begin critical thinking in high school. For most students, they get very little of it until faced with the SAT. College is the ideal time to learn to think for oneself, but it is also a time to prepare for a career. Take the California public college system, for example. You study one field of interest, perhaps more than one if the major allows for it. You also take a wide variety of general education classes so you are exposed to many different ideas and thought process. If you are fortunate, you learn to think critically. It is my personal experience that a college education can be very limiting, and it shouldn't be. It should be expanding. To be well educated, one must be able to think and to manipulate ideas, but also live in the real world. There is much more of the former, little of the latter in many of the educations students are getting.</p>
<p>I have several of those degrees. I have been employed without a break ever since I earned my last degree; my income is in the six figures. I have a very good friend who had a high flying job in the high tech industry. He was laid off and after months of unemployment is now at a different job earning far less than I. </p>
<p>My kids learn by looking around. What should they make of my and my friend's experience? That they should major in the humanities? Actually, I have told them no such thing. But I have supported them in their aspirations. I did tell them, though, that nursing will not go out of fashion and cannot be outsourced. It has no appeal. Shrug.</p>
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I can find out the price of gas by calling the "BigGass Store" down the road. End of controversy. This appears to be harder to define. My reason for posting? I have a genuine interest in finding out why there IS so much antipathy regarding college choices that pops out on Ivy threads and elite threads and well, pretty much all over. I am just wondering if this rabbit trail will lead to a rabbit.;)</p>
<p>marite, tech jobs have always come and gone as long as there has been a tech industry. I see it being shortsighted to write it off because someone is unemployed for a period of time. Those tech people who earn terminal degrees in their fields are rarely unemployed for long because they have many other skills they can use to earn money, not only working for someone else. By a terminal degree, I mean the highest possible degree one can earn in one's field.</p>
<p>curmudgeon, now I understand (I don't see an option to add icons, but if there were I would add a lightbulb). I'm interesting in a more basic question. Why is there so much antagonism when people disagree? I'm used to debates, but I notice more personal attacks than debating.</p>
<p>Mrs P, </p>
<p>If my D wanted to major in engineering, I would support that equally. My point was not to denigrate the sciences at all, but to advocate that kids major in subects that they really enjoy. Some kids really enjoy subjects that will make them more 'employable' to boot. That is a bonus.</p>
<p>I worry, though, when I see a kid put the cart before the horse. What major should I do to get an in-demand job, rather than 'what is my inner voice calling me to do?' </p>
<p>I had several friends from college who got all the way through grad school before realizing they'd studied the wrong thing. One went back after law school and became a doctor; another went from industrial design to nursing! Oh well, they finally got to what they loved.</p>
<p>You see these 17 or 18 year old kids deciding on a college based on it's having a marketing degree, when they have never yet had the chance to try philosophy, anthropology, biochem, japanese, sociology, poetry, psychology, comp lit, religion, applied math, econ, or a number of other fields...</p>
<p>If, after tasting some of these choices, the kid WANTS to major in business, that seems just fine to me. Also I can see the appeal for kids who plain ol' "hate school" and want to learn something practical. Not everyone will have a great passion for an intellectual pursuit. </p>
<p>My main concern is that my kids will be emotionally satisfied by what they do.</p>
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But aren't there some schools , maybe a sufficient number-maybe not, where it is more likely to get mostly the latter and a thin slice of the former?</p>
<p>There has always been technology and industry. But a tech industry?</p>
<p>I have a handyman who used to be employed by Polaroid. He was a technical staff person. It's many years since not only Polaroid the company disappeared, but so did the technology that the company was associated with. I am still employed; he is too,-- as a handyman.</p>
<p>When I went to college, it would have been considered safer for a girl to take steno lessons than to pursue a humanities degree. I had to buck the trend and the discrimination to pursue graduate studies. I have no complaint about the way my life and my career have turned out. My S is embarked on a career path that I am pretty sure will not be high paying. But he WILL be employed. The choice of career is his. I have no complaint about it, either.</p>
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Hey, we've all wondered the same thing and been accused of the same thing.</p>
<p>If you can , toughen up a little (hard, I know. I've been stung by some horrendous bites by what I felt were genuinely evil people. But I'm over it.;)). It can get better. You'll come to see , around these parts we have a "Live and Let Live Less Correctly" attitude. ;)</p>
<p>(And anyway what they do to us here ain't near as bad as they did to Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse when they tied him to that maypole and swung him around. :eek: )</p>
<p>Regarding lifelong learning - yes, the CS and engineering majors must be prepared for lifelong learning in order to keep up with the field or they'll find themselves quickly behind. The same is true for anyone else entering these fields as well. This includes physists and mathematicians, many of whom end up in CS and other applied fields - actually most do unless they enter the educational field. I had one colleague who was employed in CS who had a PHD in Physics from Harvard and had been (and currently was) a professor at some Ivys and other high-end schools. Given his credentials, I asked him "what are you doing here (meaning why are you doing CS)". His response was that he had 2 daughters in college and had to pay for them somehow. </p>
<p>There are very few rewarding fields where one isn't faced with a requirement for lifelong learning but then that's part of what makes those fields interesting.</p>
<p>To marite's point; in the technical fields one must keep up with the technology and adapt and expand or else they may find themselves unemployed in the field like her Polaroid friend. One mustn't forget however, that many people were able to move from one area to another in the technical fields. The people I've known in the technical field that found themselves on the 'out' usually either were unable to manage to change or were simply unwilling to put the effort into it. Some simply took the opportunity to retire. Some of the best, most adaptable, and most valuable people are some of the older employees. This adaptability also helps one avoid the 'hot major' syndrome a previous poster mentioned.</p>
<p>While some may consider our son to be in a glorified trade school because he is a compsci/cogsci major and say the same for the engineering students I teach, I find this to be an ill informed and somewhat snobbish attitude.</p>
<p>There are endless jokes about LAC students being glorified hamburger flippers, something I find equally degrading. LAC studies are wonderful and add greatly society in many ways.</p>
<p>Do we think that by demeaning one subset of students, we elevate others? I think not. In fact by holding such jingoistic attitudes people demean themselves.</p>
<p>And the phrase "life of the mind" is tossed around here, usually in the context of liberal arts studies like literature, philosophy and such. Should not figuring out that the proof of Dijkstria's algorithm is a proof by contradiction(son helped me with this one) or understanding the dynamics of dispersed 2 phase flow in homogeneous isotropic turbulence be accorded enough respect so as to be considered other examples of "life of the mind"? So what if they result in a Google or General Electric valuing such knowledge enough to offer a job. Maybe it should just be considered value added component of a "life of the mind".</p>
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I hope I didn't give you that impression. It's just that my H used to work in aerospace in California in the 1980's -- I'm sure you are aware of the downsizing that occurred in the early 90's. I use to work for a company that had a reputation of lifetime employment -- I resigned when my H took a foreign assignment, but that company eventually ended up laying off many, many wonderful people to remain competitive. People who've worked in Silicon Valley during the downsizing that took place there were also stuck in a difficult situation. What about accountants? It wasn't so long ago that the Big 8 firms were busy merging, and people were out of work. I guess my feeling is that there is really no sure thing -- in which case, study what you enjoy and prepare yourself for a changing career. For my particular son, I felt that he would be better off pursuing more of a science. My next one may well choose engineering, which is a demanding and difficult field. But this is a kid who could make anything out of legos, and who appropriated any tools in the house at any early age.</p>
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Now we're cooking! We got &^%$ on here I can never hope to understand (I thought Dykstra's contradiction was that he couldn't go to the left later in his career). </p>
<p>But Originaloog, how many times do we see students or parents say "No math/science for my kid so, given that, which top school is best?" or something similar. These folks have no interest at all in learning the topics and search out schools where they don't have to. I assume that heavy/math science kids have done the same, in fact I know they have. Are either appropriate educations, or college experiences? And can either be said to be educated?</p>
<p>sjmom, I wasn't directing my thought to you or any one person in particular. I was merely speaking to a general attitude often voiced here at cc similar to the following which was posted recently.</p>
<p>"My father used to say that a person wasn't educated unless he had a liberal arts degree. Anything else was "trade school"</p>
<p>What purpose is served by such an attitude other than to speak volumes about the originator of the comment.</p>
<p>In pursuit of lifelong learning, I hope my children at least have the opportunity to do that in areas that interest them. While it could happen, I wouldn't suppose a biology major would like expanding his knowledge of retail management, nor would an English Lit major enjoy expanding his knowledge of medical office management. </p>
<p>The point I am trying to make is that it would probably be much more exciting to engage in continuing education throughout one's career if it is an enjoyable career. To get to that point, a student needs to find a job he likes, which would probably pertain to the college major (employability). </p>
<p>Some interests tend to make better avocations than careers.</p>