You bring up good points, and I don’t know if we actually need more humanities grads or not. I do think we lose something very valuable if we get to a point where no one will be studying history, literature, the arts, foreign languages and cultures, etc. And maybe the fear is we’re heading there. At the very least, someone has to be tomorrow’s high school English and History and Spanish teachers.
My main thinking about all of this is finding ways to support students who really would like to major in these subjects, but are reluctant to because they don’t see a path to a decent job. Employers may not be clamoring for humanities majors per se, but there are plenty of major-agnostic jobs for the ones with the right skills.
I’m in the process of formulating a response to @neela1’s reply to my post, and will elaborate more there.
Advising is critical for all majors, but especially those that are not pre-professional. My daughter’s very smart friends who went to Ivy league schools and got degrees that ended in Studies, were at a loss as to what to do once they finished college. They were told you can do anything you want, which is useless advice since they didn’t know what they wanted to do. They needed guidance to help them narrow down anything and steer them in a direction. They have all since settled into careers that they seem to enjoy, but it took them a few years to get there.
I think it’s more of a wider societal problem. K- 12 schools are not teaching the humanities in a comprehensive way. Students aren’t inspired by the things they aren’t learning and reading about. Many people who pursue humanities degrees go into teaching, myself included. Young people are not going into teaching because they won’t be able to support themselves on teacher salaries. What does a country without teachers look like? We’ll have to answer these questions in the coming years.
No minimum criteria would work for all colleges. Each college/department has to decide on its own. At least some of them could even include an entrance exam for the humanities majors (or a subset of the humanities majors), to test the students for their abilities to comprehend, analyze, make inferences, etc. I realize this would surely be controversial and against the current trend.
Any reason for the public/private distinction? Do the private schools have fewer prerequisites for their majors as a general rule?
I do too.
For the vast majority of sales positions, correct. There are technical sales that require some degree of familiarity with what the company does. You don’t need a CS degree to be in corporate sales at Microsoft, but if you’re a sales VP in financial services, like aircraft leasing, you’re going to need to understand lease economics backwards and forwards and that will typically be someone who studied finance, accounting, econ or at least have sufficient quant, and typically won’t be someone who studied art history. There are plenty of exceptions, but in my lengthy travels, not too many.
You may have heard that somewhere, but my colleague’s daughter just graduated from USC film, and this topic was brought up in conversation. Nobody told her to double major “in case it doesn’t work out,” and frankly that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing anybody at that place would ever say. The reason they gave her is very ‘liberal arts’ in its reasoning and covered in their FAQs:
For Cinema & Media Studies students, a double major is encouraged to broaden the scope of analyses of the film medium.
My friend’s daughter was encouraged to take an additional workable major apart from music composition. She is doing economics. Everyone is happy with the idea, including her.
That’s plausible and makes sense. Of course, I wasn’t really responding to any factual assertion about whether anyone is or is not happy with your friend’s kid’s choice.
Rather, my response was limited to your ascription to USC of a motivation for having their film grads double major “just in case plan A doesn’t work out.” That reasoning would be pretty consistent with and supportive of the views you and others in this thread take about being economically practical with one’s education. And maybe somebody at USC thinks that way. But I’ve not found anything to suggest it’s an official institutional position. The reason given by the department itself is that exploring other academic areas of study will enhance the students’ abilities to do film. Again:
For Cinema & Media Studies students, a double major is encouraged to broaden the scope of analyses of the film medium.
I agree that this is going nowhere and we just keep repeating the same thing without convincing the other - so I’ll repeat it one last time. Nobody is so shallow as to say that the only thing that matters when picking a major is the financial outcome. You’re simply misinterpreting what others have been saying.
There’s another “solution” to the problem faced by the colleges in teaching the humanities (or teaching in general), according to this author who teaches at a men’s maximum-security prison:
The challenge with pairing a STEM with Humanities, is the large number of required classes in a STEM degree. Humanities, on the other hand, tend to have far more flexibility with electives.
Even a math degree, requires a large number of Math core and electives classes (using UF as an example, the 120 credit hour degree requires at least 39 a minimum of 39 credits of mathematics and mathematics-approved electives).
I’m simply not familiar enough with private schools.
I do know that public universities tend to have strict rules around earning dual degrees/double majors. Publics are very focused on getting students to graduate (and make room for the next group of students).
That’s interesting to know. Back in the stone age when I was an undergrad at a very large public flagship, you could spend the rest of your life there taking classes and nobody would ever say a word.
My first experience with private undergrad with my kids was a bit of a surprise in that respect. They are very, very focused on getting you out in 4 years. I’m assuming it’s a function of their stats for rankings purposes.
These days, with many public universities (or some of their departments) filled to capacity with subsidized (in-state tuition) students, they do not want any one student consuming more than their needed share of subsidy. Hence, they may be more generous with credit units for AP scores and have various incentives to complete a bachelor’s degree as quickly as possible.
UF philosophy lists 33 credits. 39 + 33 = 72 credits, leaving 48 credits for general education not covered by the majors and free electives for any left over. It looks like UF general education not overlapping with the math and philosophy majors is about 31 credits.
Math = 39 credits, Philosophy = 33 credits, GEN ED = 39 credits (111 total)
Graduation require 120 credits
GEN ED frequently overlaps with major requirements on some level (more in the Humanities than in STEM). I didn’t look too deeply here due to time. But almost always the case. So the 111 cr total in (1) is surely too high.
The double-dual criteria at UF are not terribly restrictive. It’s really meant (on a quick look) to make sure that people aren’t “double dipping” too much and that they have a purpose to getting the double. So, say you double major in two closely related fields, and the overlap is considerable. Then it seems as if you are getting two majors without much total exposure. So there are rules to minimize. Unlikely that this will affect a STEM-HUM combo, no real overlap. The other requirements (why do you want to do it) seemed pretty easily met. I’ll add that this “purpose” criteria is unusual - I know people at many publics, this is the first time I’ve seen it.
Math is probably one of the easier majors to make into a dual major or degree program, if both are within a college of arts & sciences at a university, as far as meeting gen ed requirements. Middle kid was at a public university and got degrees in Applied Math and Linguistics (social science, I realize) and a minor in Creative Writing. She did it in four years - only thing that perhaps makes it a little difficult is that many colleges require more credit hours (in any course, any department) to earn two degrees rather than two majors.
Where she was, it required 150 credit hours. My eldest also did two degrees and a minor in four years, at a private college, and their requirement was also 150 credit hours.
If the humanities (and social science) majors are to have more respect, and for any decline to stop, I think that these programs need to be held to some sort of standard which can be demonstrated. I’m not certain how this would work, but more rigorous gen ed requirements in math and science, along with writing courses that require certain types of papers - literary analysis, research, creative pieces - would be a start.
I know my middle kid’s advisor had her sign up for the graduate school equivalent course for a number of her linguistics courses, starting sophomore year, because they thought the rigor she needed just wasn’t there in the undergrad courses. And this was at a respected school.
which is going out of fashion.
to the problem faced by the colleges in teaching the humanities (or teaching in general), according to this author who teaches at a men’s maximum-security prison:
