<p>“Strange. The STEM teachers in my high school(Think we attended the same one) were at best a draw…and at worst…went waaay too fast and had a tendency to make students feel really stupid for asking questions or clarification.”</p>
<p>Well that was great (for me!) </p>
<p>And yes, I know of Edward Burger - he was after my time. My high teachers helped students build a cyclotron in the high school basement, and then the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Defense Department had to come in and declare it off limit to the students who built it.</p>
<p>My high school produced four Nobel laureates in the sciences, plus mathematician Paul Cohen, string theorist Brian Greene, physicist Lisa Randall, and genomic researcher Eric Lander, just to name a few. (There were also Thelonious Monk, Lucy Liu, and Tim Robbins.)</p>
<p>FYI, there are many who regard undergrad B-school with the exception of the very top-tier like Wharton or NYU-Stern to be more of a guts/joke major for less academically inclined students. That was a reason why a financial company I worked for stopped hiring them…especially after having experienced so many problems with such majors from lower-tiered universities. </p>
<p>^ agree. When I said non-engineers in my tech field were lib arts, I meant humanities, not math or science. Classics, English, social sciences, you name it. This brought research, analytical and writing skills- plus an ability to relate to clients and develop relationships (which includes a lot more than doing deals or solving problems.) Perhaps it’s unfair to generalize that business was seen as an easier major, but, in that context, it was.</p>
<p>The thing that immediately strikes me is the chart included with that article</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Notice the huge divide between the vocational subjects - business, education, health, communications, engineering - and the liberal arts - social science, humanities, science, and mathematics.</p>
<p>This is clear evidence that the oft-repeated claim that the liberal arts do a better job in teaching one how to think is in fact valid.</p>
<p>It’s also an endorsement of the claim made by cobrat (and that I, a business major from an untiered school, strongly endorse) that a business degree from any but the very top schools is an inferior degree.</p>
<p>Since this is a parent thread, I wonder how many other parents read their children’s course catalogs and make any suggestions to their children as to what courses to take in college outside their major. </p>
<p>For my kids, I tried to help them 1) fulfill their major requirements 2) fulfill their core curriculum, 3) graduate in four years, and 4) expand their education outside their majors - for my STEM kids that meant adding humanities and business courses. Prior to each semester’s registration, I always emailed to my kids lists of interesting courses that would fit in the empty timeslots around required courses and what requirements they could be used to fulfill. They often were so busy with schoolwork that they didn’t have time to look into the catalog as deeply as I could. In their huge universities, they both always knew all about the courses in their major, but not as much about what else was available, unless their friends had taken a certain course. I think I helped them to add breadth to their studies, besides fitting in minors, and a semester away. In the end, they always took what they wanted, found some really cool courses on their own, but always listened to my input and took up many of my suggestions. </p>
<p>So was this “helicopter parenting” or making sure that my kids got my money’s worth out of school??? (I never asked to see their grades, but always asked to see their schedules prior to the start of a semester.)</p>
<p>Not quite so fast. The more “vocational” majors* tend to be more popular at the less selective schools. Business, in particular, seems to be most popular at the least selective schools. Meanwhile, liberal arts appear to be most popular at the most selective schools. So you’d have to control by school selectivity (and perhaps even student ability within each school) in order to get a valid comparison.</p>
<ul>
<li>Except engineering, which seems to be most popular at the mid-level schools.</li>
</ul>
<p>High school is definitely not the place to get a liberal arts education. Most high schoolers are incapable of fully understanding great art and literature because they lack the context to do so. “You have to be over thirty to appreciate Proust.”</p>
<p>In the old days, all privileged students studied the same Classics curriculum in high school that formed the foundation for life-long learning. They might not have understood Virgil at 15, but they could understand him at 35. What we’ve done is eliminated the concept of a core of humanities learning and replaced it with whatever is trendy. Our kids know very little in the humanities and arts that will sustain them throughout life.</p>
What if you double major in physics and engineering? Then I guess you are both more capable and less capable that social science students on this essay test. You are sort of Shrodinger’s student.</p>
<p>Engineering: 1158
Social science/humanities: 1192
Science/mathematics: 1200 </p>
<p>I am puzzled by these numbers. STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Math</p>
<p>S&M (I think they are more masochistic because they could have just taken the easier route to their diplomas but I digress) still seem to be ahead of everybody else. How does that make them part of liberal arts being great but STEM being bad at the same time?</p>
<p>STEM and liberal arts are not mutually exclusive terms. They intersect at science and mathematics. Engineering, OTOH, is outside the definition of liberal arts.</p>
<p>Huh? The required freshman and sophomore math courses are typically the same for both majors. At the junior and senior level, math and math-like courses diverge; most would consider the theory and proof heavy math major courses to be harder than the math and math-like courses that other majors take (though some engineering, physics, statistics, and computer science majors do take the math major courses).</p>
<p>It only says “controlling for first semester scores”, not necessarily SATs. Also, the CLA was a test of “writing and reasoning”, which makes it rather interesting that humanities and social studies majors did not outperform science and math majors, with engineering majors not far behind.</p>
<p>Then again, being knowledgeable about STEM subjects is no guarantee whatsoever of being “literate” about anything else. One of the most infamous Holocaust deniers in this country is Arthur Butz, a tenured electrical engineering professor at Northwestern with a degree from MIT. (Because of his presence at Northwestern, along with Michael Bailey’s, I would have had a fit if my son had wanted to apply to that school. Justifiably or otherwise, that’s how I felt.)</p>
<p>The book included a 60-page appendix on the methodology. I haven’t read it, but reviews of the book indicate that among the factors controlled for are entering SATs.</p>
<p>And are you seriously arguing that a test that evaluates reasoning would give an advantage to humanities and social studies majors over math and science majors?</p>
<p>And engineering majors are indeed significantly behind the liberal arts crowd. That surprised me - though the fact that business majors are at the bottom I would have predicted.</p>
<p>"Huh? The required freshman and sophomore math courses are typically the same for both majors. At the junior and senior level, math and math-like courses diverge; most would consider the theory and proof heavy math major courses to be harder than the math and math-like courses that other majors take (though some engineering, physics, statistics, and computer science majors do take the math major courses). "</p>
<p>UCB - are you an engineer? I don’t know if I would consider theory and proof heavy courses in Math to be on par with steadily advancing Calculus classes required for engineering but that is a matter of opinion.</p>
<p>To be fair, I’d think that’s more of an indictment of the less intellectually curious subset who tend to be overwhelmingly drawn to STEM fields than the STEM fields themselves. In short, those from the extreme narrow-minded sect of the college == direct job training school. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this type of narrow-minded education is often encouraged in many totalitarian and authoritarian states in recent history* not only to advance their scientific and military prowess, but also to try nipping any potential political or social dissent at the bud by eliminating or curtailing the humanities/social sciences to the point they are little more than propagandistic devices** of the state. </p>
<p>** Book bans, adoption of “racial science”, history as straightforward jingoistic/militaristic indoctrination, disparagement of those studying the humanities/social sciences…especially if their studies takes them outside accepted state/popular opinion orthodoxy, etc. </p>
<p>*** One Chinese grad student who majored in a social science at Peking U undergrad and is now finishing up his PhD once mentioned a joke in China where everyone who went to Tsinghua…a STEM oriented Top-2 university ended up working for the state and tended to be very politically conformist whereas everyone who went to Peking U…another Top-2 university oriented more towards the Liberal Arts are much more likely to launch protests against government wrongs and thus…end up graduating to a prison cell.</p>