I definitely am confused by what you mean–you keep saying “we all know” but I really don’t know which you mean. It seems to be it’s not a matter of not wanting to offend anyone, so much as not wanting to defend your assumptions. Shawbridge named a bunch of non-STEM majors to ask if you consider them “basket-weaving,” but you ducked the question.
Do some people really never get tired of humanities bashing? It’s SUCH a tired trope.
Steve Jobs studied physics, literature, philosophy and calligraphy in college. Zobroward would have written him off as a loser.
The world according to zobroward?
Ted Turner, founder of a multi-billion dollar media empire, classics major. Loser.
Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate in medicine, English major. Loser.
George Soros, billionaire hedge fund manager, philosophy major. Loser.
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs, government major. Loser.
Mitt Romney, private equity firm manager, English major. Loser.
Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express, history major. Loser.
Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, history major. Loser.
Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney Corp., English major. Loser.
Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, English major. Loser.
Barack Obama, President of the United States, political science major. Loser.
George W. Bush, President of the United States, history major. Loser.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, history major. Loser.
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, economics and sociology major. Loser.
John G. Roberts, Chief Justice, US Supreme Court, history major. Loser.
Antonin Scalia, US Supreme Court Justice, history major. Loser.
Anthony M. Kennedy, US Supreme Court Justice, history major. Loser.
Clarence Thomas, US Supreme Court Justice, English major. Loser.
Elena Kagan, US Supreme Court Justice, history major. Loser.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court Justice, government major. Loser.
Stephen Breyer, US Supreme Court Justice, philosophy major. Loser.
Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court Justice, history major. Loser.
Samuel Alito, US Supreme Court Justice, government major. Loser.
Steven Spielberg, movie director, English major. Loser.
Toni Morrison, novelist and Nobel Laureate in literature, English major. Loser.
Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio), religious leader, philosophy major. Loser.
Imagine what these people might have accomplished if they had studied something “practical” instead of “basket-weaving.”
Oh please.
There are always the top, top people who would be successful even if they didn’t go to college. Hint: there are a lot of people who studied government and history who did not become Supreme Court justices. My gardener for example.
Besides, Driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror is not very smart. The economy and environment is just a tad different than when these people chose a major.
I am late to this thread, and was a philosophy major to boot, so I probably should know better than to wade into this. But I don’t believe the point is that the traditional humanities majors are akin to basket weaving. I also understand that many of you are trying to get certain posters to list majors that will allow that poster to be tarred as a racist or a sexist, an unfortunately familiar line of attack.
So let me step in and try a substantive point. For years and years, the benefit of a liberal arts education was said to be that a person studied a broad set of disciplines which provided a certain perspective and the ability to reason effectively. In short, and flipping the pejorative, an education rather than training. I happen to agree with this, and I think that many of the traditional areas of study still provide such benefits. However, there are now many undergraduate majors that are much more narrowly tailored than English, Philosophy or Economics. It is my contention that many of these maybe are more appropriate fields of study at a graduate level. In other words, how much value does an “Arts Management” (Ohio State) or an “Arts and Ideas in Humanities” (Michigan) BA have in the professional world? I would posit that a degree in either likely means that a person either needs to pursue graduate studies in what appears to be a narrow field, or is likely to struggle to find a professional job with a BA.
I am not picking on education in the arts, but since the alphabet starts with A, and I only looked at the first page of the majors offered list, you get what you get.
Tenure is an outdated idea and it must go.
Rather than the risk of missing a “trigger warning” label on an idea or word, it is far safer to just make sure profs follow the rules. Tenure gets in the way of that.
Whoa, zobroward. I disagree with you entirely.
First of all, Wisconsin already has many top ranked STEM departments and multidisciplinary STEM projects- including whole new buildings in recent years for them. No need to change the past course on that.
Secondly, the “Wisconsin Idea” and “sifting and winnowing” are a major part of the university philosophically. Strong Sociology and other departments that encourage thinking outside the box. We moved from the state 3 years ago and I cringe at how Walker is trying to gut the strong traditions. I was proud of my state and its flagship U. Questioning accepted thought is a major part of a university education- even for hard science students. We read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” (and wrote a one page paper on it) for our Honors Chemistry course back in the 1970’s- having a social conscience and not merely learning facts from a top ten department of chemistry.
A college education is not job training. Part of an excellent education is the breadth requirements which require you to think outside your major. Part of a university’s mission is to advance knowledge in all, not just STEM, fields. Part of the Wisconsin U’s mission has been to serve the state (and it has done so in many ways), not just teach students on campus. There are many campuses in the UW system outside of the flagship in Madison whose role is to primarily educate students for jobs in many fields, including nonSTEM ones.
All of the above has nothing to do with the topic of tenure. re post just above- “rules”- what are they? What should they be? How does one define productivity. Is it teaching multitudes of students? Is it advancing human knowledge? Major research universities have more than one role.
It certainly should be. But somewhere along the line the question authority folks got put in charge. And now it is very difficult to express certain types of thoughts on college campuses. Five minutes with google will disclose any number of conservative speakers who have been dis invited from college campuses, shouted down at talks, etc. Another five minutes will disclose the lock step political donation history and voting registration of the professorate through out the country. It is awful hard to accept that the danger on University campuses today is that left leaning professors do not have sufficient protection to follow their research path or publish as they wish.
As far as Wisconsin goes, my understanding is that Wisconsin is the only state that has its tenure policy enshrined in state law, and that Walker is seeking to change that. Don’t know if that is a good idea or a bad idea, but to pretend that the outrage over his latest budget proposals is because of his attempt to silence the brave truth tellers in the ivory tower and not yet one more attempt to destroy the guy who dared to take on the teacher’s union is maybe a bit disingenuous.
Walker was kicked out of Marquette U. Records no longer exist so reasons not known. His gutting of public unions was very political- he didn’t touch those few who endorsed his election campaign. He no friend to education. The fear is a loss of the greatness of the flagship university through the efforts of a man who doesn’t understand its ideals. Thinking in purely economic terms instead of ideals can be short sighted.
@wis 75
You are funny.
You state something as fact (that he got kicked out)
Then in the very next statement, you say that records don’t exist.
So where do you have proof that he got kicked out?
And when you find that proof, please let Politifact know because they said: “determined such insinuation of any scandal [being kicked out] was untrue.” The vice provost claimed he was “in good standing” when he left.
I will wait for your post with the proof or a correction to your original claim.
Ted Turner was kicked out of school.
That idea of picking people who were successful with those types of degrees is a bit silly, since using a similar list you can argue you don’t even need to go to college:
Ted Turner (kicked out of Brown)
Bill Gates, dropped out of Harvard
Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of Harvard
Steve Jobs, dropped out
Oprah, dropped out
F. Scott Fitzgerald, dropped out
Larry Ellison, dropped out
John MacKay (CEO Whole Foods), dropped out…after 7 years
Wolfgang Puck, dropped out.
Ralph Lauren, dropped out.
Walt Disney, dropped out.
Even the two founders of Google are on leave from the PhD program, so not technically dropped out, but have yet to complete the program.
Looks people are bashing Scott Walker. A large reason he is going after UW is that the university and its employees got heavily involved in his recall campaigns. If organizations are going to get involved in politics, and UW-Madison certainly did, they should expect retribution when/if they fail. As a great man once said “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.”
I’ve never heard allegations that the University of Wisconsin as an institution got “heavily involved” in trying to recall Scott Walker. No doubt many of its faculty and staff did, because of deep disagreements with his policies. That is their right as American citizens. That’s how democracy works. The idea that a vindictive politician would then be able to threaten the jobs and livelihoods of those who stood opposed to him in the democratic process is perhaps the clearest example of why tenure protection is necessary.
Oh please. You don’t get to eat your cake and have it too. It is as much the governor’s right to set out his fiscal policy as it the right of those brave light bringers in Madison to cancel classes so students can go to rallys and circulate recall petitions on campus. Let’s not pretend that the issue 10 fight, or the lawsuits, recall petitions and John Doe investigations covered the left in Wisconson in glory.
And yet Walker is the vindictive one because he won’t give the university every dime it asks for. I assume that the John Doe investigations and the recall campaigns were not vindictive at all, right? Just well meaning, wonderful people doing their best to save the world from an evil republican.
And tenure should have nothing whatsoever to do with politics. The fact that it often is cast as such is one of the major problems facing our universities today.
You also can’t have your cake and eat it too, at ohiodad51: University of Wisconsin WILL lose its stellar reputation when and if the governor has his way with it. It will lose top faculty (who will be recruited by schools that DO offer tenure) and it won’t attract top grads to its grad schools. A university where most of the faculty is adjuncts or untenured staff is a glorified community college. And of course, the real losers will be the residents of Wisconsin whose university will have been one of the “public Ivies” - turned to a no-name cautionary tale for the rest of the country.
And the debate in Wisconsin should be on exactly that point. Whether the fiscal priorities set out by the governor reflect the will of Wisconsin voters, or whether proponents of more funding for the University can convince voters that higher spending is necessary to maintain the University at a level acceptable to Wisconsinites.
But the argument made here is that Walker is a bad person. Yet he is not the one who has personalized any of this. Rather, the side that claims to be about high minded idealism is the side making wild accusations and breaking down doors in the middle of the night. That is really my point.
So, hypothetically, it would be okay for theoretical high strung and vindictive and maybe slightly irrational pol to unravel a well respected university for reasons unrelated to academics?
That’s messed up. The drive to mediocrity begins with a fragile ego, I guess.
The drive to mediocrity begins with a fragile ego – and ends in the overall dumbing down of a community, state, country.
If we let people who don’t respect education make decisions regarding education we will have one giant pile of academic doo-doo.
But hey, if it’s OK with a bunch of undereducated, highly manipulated masses that educationally we become a third world country, well that’s what will happen.
Meantime, Germany will attract top European talent due to free, high-level education with their equivalent of tenured professors, China will attract its share with state-of-the-art labs that used to be a specifically American magnet for the world’s scientists, and the rest will go to Australia, for English language and good weather.
That’s American exceptionalism for ya: a first-world nation eager to “vote” itself into obscurity and ignorance.
Walker’s problem is he is not very smart. True hack bought and paid for by Koch.
That said there are some good reasons U admins need the flex to change priorities and move out no longer needed faculty from closing or small enrollment majors.