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<p>Ah, now I see your perspective. And you believe there are no solid career paths outside of engineering? Beyond their technical skills, what sets them apart as good managers – is that the same or a different set of qualities?</p>
<p>(BTW, I did not mean to imply incompetence is a good way to get noticed, just that competence is only one piece of the puzzle.)</p>
<p>I’m at a liberal arts school now…and I’m a little annoyed sometimes at how impractical it can be. I hate general requirements…I want to take what I want if I’m paying that much $$$ - and not deal with the hassle of navigating through pottery and basket weaving 101 classes…</p>
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No, that’s not what I meant by my sentence.</p>
<p>I believe that in hospitals doctors managing other doctors are better than average <em>at being a doctor</em>.
I believe that in accounting firms the accountants managing other accountants are better than avearge <em>at being an accountant</em>.</p>
<p>A strong technical foundation in whatever industry is generally critical for advancement. Are there exceptions to the rule? Absolutely. However I’d say that most managers of professionals were generally <em>above average</em> before they got promoted. Not a controversial thing to say.</p>
<p>Does it mean they were 99th percentile in their technical skills? Generally not, but it does mean they were pretty good.</p>
<p>^ But do you believe that that is all they were (technically strong)? Clearly not, as they did not have to be 99th percentile in their technical skills to advance, and why were they promoted over the 99th percentile candidates?. What other talents got them promoted in your view?</p>
<p>I’m intrigued that each of your examples are fields that require technical expertise. That’s such a thin slice of the available career paths; and if $$ is the goal, there are plenty of non-technical grads out there who make more than engineeers or doctors or what have you.</p>
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Obviously not, and I’ve never said that.</p>
<p>Generally to be a good manager you have to have good knowledge of how that business operates.</p>
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The term “technical” is probably a misnomer. What is probably the better descriptor is “operational”.</p>
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I’m sure there is a point in here, I just can’t find what it is.</p>
<p>^ The point is that one need not have a technical degree to be financially successful, if that is one’s definition of success; i.e., a LA education can be a worthy financial investment, with a higher long-term financial return than technical careers.</p>
<p>BTW, I think your responses are both valid and helpful for students sorting out their futures. I would encourage students to get as many responses from adults as possible to see different perspectives.</p>
<p>But how many liberal arts majors can say they’ve done that? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it sure is difficult and probably requires a stroke or two of luck (e.g. meeting the right person at a party who can get you in to some corporation).</p>
<p>A technical degree qualifies you for nearly every job a liberal arts degree qualifies you for.</p>
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Where has anyone said that a technical degree is a prerequisite for financial success?</p>
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There is no data anywhere that says, in aggregate, non-technical degrees have a higher return than technical degrees.</p>
<p>[Best</a> Undergrad College Degrees By Salary](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp]Best”>Common Jobs for Majors - College Salary Report)</p>
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I agree but remind any readers that most of those higher-paying fields are also open to those with technical majors.</p>
<p>I think Mr Payne’s point about management was that a manager with no knowledge of the content they manage is not an effective manager. In other words, English majors are not likely to successfully jump in as managers of people working in technical areas.</p>
<p>^ There are plenty of English and history and philosophy et al majors who achieve middle and upper management, if that is what they choose to pursue.</p>
<p>There are also plenty of English and history and philosophy et al majors who are MDs, JDs, pick your profession.</p>
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<p>Good: we’ve come along way from earlier posts claiming that LA degrees are luxuries for the wealthy and not sound educational investments. :)</p>
<p>For those who have a passion for the liberal arts, there is no reason to foreclose a broad education out of “career suicide” fears.</p>
<p>Look. I think what we’re arguing about is more: sci/quant vs. humanities/social sciences. Econ’s a fence-sitter in this discussion. (It’s not REALLY about liberal arts vs. vocational) </p>
<p>Majoring in English will close you out of Engineering jobs (duh!) or accounting jobs. It’ll even keep you out of patent law, since working in patent law and certain branches of intellectual property almost absolutely requires a technical background. But chances are, if you’re going to major in English in the first place, you weren’t looking to work in a lab or do coding for 40 hours a day in the first place. Not everyone wants or has the temperament for more quant-based work, and no amount of fear-mongering from techies should keep you from perusing a humanities or social science degree. </p>
<p>Will majoring in English keep you from all great paying jobs? Of course not. If you plan to go into law–at least in the US–you’re gonna have to take a first degree in something, and it doesn’t really matter what that something is. Ditto with Medicine (though you’ll be taking plenty of lab/quant classes anyway, even if you do major in mythology)</p>
<p>This topic seems to surface time and again, and there are always a few who love to tout the superiority of tech degrees because it’s useful. Oddly enough, many graduates of top engineering programs actually don’t end up working engineering, but in finance and consulting-fields that one can enter with a humanities or social science background. Again, you’ll likely be shut out of certain subfields–i.e. a comp sci or EE background would likely help if you’re looking to work at certain VC firms, and a MD is useful for certain healthcare consultancies. But those are exceptions. </p>
<p>I don’t think I need to remind everyone that there are other industries other than tech firms. Entertainment, publishing, education, fashion, household product manufacturing, graphic design etc. etc. Granted, these are industries being rapidly reshaped by technology, but the content is no less important. We all love the ease with which we can download movies, music etc. But the tech is merely the means to the end–the content is still what we’re after. </p>
<p>In any case, as someone with both an arts/humanities and tech background, I’ll say that I DO detest many BA programs that allow students to graduate without a single course in statistics or economics. I detest the programs not because I think the students won’t be able to find a job without some statistics, but because they are poorer citizens as a result, and are less able to make informed decisions or interpret the talking points in politics. But you can still take those courses as a folk and myth major.</p>
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<p>A liberal arts education is not an excellent investment unless it is taken from a credible and quality school that offers it. There are hundreds of liberal arts schools across the country pumping out thousands of LA majors. Why do you think the starting salary for LA majors is lower than non-LA majors? Its supply and demand. Unless one can reasonably afford a useful LA education from a well known college, I don’t think an LA major is an “excellent investment” across the board. Face it, studying something like russian studies from Pong college is NOT a good idea. </p>
<p>Nobody ever said that liberal arts majors can’t offer good education or good career jumpstarting skills. At the same time, you can’t claim that liberal arts majors offer the same earning potential or good career-oriented skills as non-liberal arts majors. There are too many people that idealize a liberal arts major and it makes students delusional that they can just enter a leisure studies program in a liberal arts school and be successful.</p>
<p>More and more colleges and universities are adding stronger humanities, art, and english requirements in their non-liberal arts degree programs. Employers want more than just technical skills obviously, and mixing in liberal artsy kind of courses help those students become better communicators and speakers. I personally think that a pure liberal arts degree program is going to become obsolete in the future. 2010 is NOT the same as 1970.</p>
<p>Actually, the better argument is not simply against a liberal arts education, but rather how higher education is conducted period. The whole system–liberal arts or not–is really in need of a revamp for a number of reasons.</p>
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Prescient.</p>
<p>Finally. </p>
<p>I would like to see liberal-arts major programs shrunken until only the cognitive elite are left in the programs. People with IQ below 120 have no business being liberal arts majors. We do need our smart kids to learn to appreciate the liberal arts, but dumb people have nothing to gain from majoring in liberal arts. Joe White, Shaneka Black, Ching-Chong Yellow, and Jose Mexican with IQs of 100 have no business majoring in History. They would be much better served learning a value-creation trade. Liberal arts fields are not significantly related to value creation, therefore has limited utility in the real world, regardless of the many platitudes that many posters in here profess. </p>
<p>Government-funding should be limited for students wishing to pursue a liberal arts degree. In addition, funding for liberal arts should be MERIT AND NEED based, so lower IQ individuals need not apply. This would act as disincentive to majoring in liberal arts. If rich mommy and daddy want to pay, I have no problem with this, they are welcome to.</p>
<p>Speak that truthiness, Sigma.</p>
<p>^^ In the above couple of posts, I believe we have just witnessed the horrors that emerge as we move away from valuing the liberal arts as a society. Ugly enough for anyone yet?</p>
<p>Elitists are a sad bunch. It is not the name brand of a college that matters it is the drive and intellectual curiosity of the student. I agree that a student who does not actively engage should not pursue a LA degree (or any degree for that matter). But “Podunk” educations can be just as worthwhile as elites.</p>
<p>What happended at Enron? The place became lousy with Harvard/McKinsey brahmins who were all about ego and bonuses. What happened at GE? The hiring/advancement culture went to credentials and test scores. I submit it is no coincidence institutions go down the tubes when they value credentials over assessing merit, which comes from many backgrounds.</p>
<p>Econ studies could be very enlightening. Too bad what passes for econ in the US (and which will meet with the approval to the fed to allow tenure paths) is so worthless. Anyone ready for the next meltdown brought to us by our esteemed pure free market economists?</p>
<p>Clueless Dad,</p>
<p>What do you suggest they teach as economics? Marxist Economics? I find that type of economics to be very depressing. Both Austrian and Keynesian schools of thought are taught at most Universities, as should be. Students should be left to figure out for themselves which one they believe to the correct picture. What passes as an economics undergraduate education at the majority of non-elite schools is worthless, because all the quant heavy parts are lifted out or dumbed down to cater to the marginal IQ of the lowest common denominator. </p>
<p>I agree with you that it is not the brand name of a college that matters, it is the drive and intellectual curiosity of the student. However, these two items are often linked with a sufficient intelligence, say >120. Most dumb people aren’t driven or intellectually curious. A person of 100IQ most likely doesn’t give a hoot about the Great Works. You obviously haven’t been in a college classroom as of late. Most students (especially ones of lesser intelligence) are NOT actively engaged. How can they be? They barely understand the material even after heavy doses of sparknotes and tutorials. They don’t care. It’s just a hurdle on the road to an invisible cushy job in the office. Smarter students adopt this attitude as well, which is quite sad, IMO. </p>
<p>Therefore, I would propose that “Podunk schools” limit the number of liberal arts students in their programs to more realistic numbers, or reduce them to honors only designations.</p>
<p>Government should stop funding liberal arts educations on a need-only basis, and instead adopt a linked need-merit based system. SAT scores should be used as a proxy to determine allocation of funds.</p>
<p><em>sigh</em></p>
<p>And why bother to educate the “non-elite” at all? This is part of my problem with the quant crowd extremeists: they think everything can be reduced to data sets, including human potential. That’s quite a fascist society you would engineer, Navy. I’ll vote myself off that island.</p>
<p>I’m not arguing everyone should pursue a LA education; just that those who have a passion for LA should not be fearmongered to lesser (for them) college major choices. People can self-select according to their interests. But there is no shortage of successful (however variously defined) LA graduates waving from the other shore – for students so inclined, jump in and enjoy the swim!</p>
<p>I do think there should be enough humanities components in tech programs so that anyone boasting of being a college graduate at least has a fundamental awareness of the broader society/world we live in. Harvey Mudd attempts this, even classifying itself as a LAC – that’s a pretty impressive model for the tech crowd.</p>
<p>You can get broad-based econ offerings at Berkeley, Madison, Harvard but these are pretty much islands in the stream these days. In a society where our fed chairman was an Ayn Rand devotee (yes, that is really true!), and a Fed aggressively shunning non-Chicago School academics, I think perhaps you should re-vist the range of econ on offer at most academic departments.</p>