Some quantitative skills =/= adding and subtracting numbers. If the person does not have enough quantitative intuition, we had zero interest in the person when we were hiring at a bank, or even now at a different non-bank finance firm.
Did I indicate otherwise? Numeracy was your term, not mine.
Hire who you like, based on whatever you like, but if you base this evaluation on students having taken 1/3 STEM courses, you may be missing out on some fantastic candidates who possess impressive “analytical intuition.”
Also, while it may come as a surprise to many who post here, working at a bank/financial institution is not necessarily the goal of every liberal arts student.
Yes don’t forget the 3 top management consulting firms😀
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Sometimes it takes time to “sift and winnow” to separate the wheat from the chaff – or, as in this case, to arrive at, and present concisely, an opinion.
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Surely kids want to do all kinds of things, and no one is saying anything otherwise. But I have seen hiring in banks into non IB roles, and I have heard of hiring into mgmt consulting roles, and both these places require “good” analytical/quantitative skills. I don’t know any english lit grad in parts of the bank that I worked in – even sales people. Certainly all kinds of majors go into Law. And I have no idea about those – Law firms can hire whoever they want. Reading and writing skills need to be stronger there perhaps. And all these majors like history, english etc train you very well in those skills. I also hear that Law as a profession is seeing some decline because of the advent of automation through AI etc. I have no idea – this is second hand information.
I mentioned banking and consulting only because they’ve been mentioned above as places that hired humanities graduates in large numbers.
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It was only a matter of time before we got to those two Jobs That Must Not Be Named…
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There’s no evidence that they hire humanities or non social science grads in droves in the Eall Steet world like others have mentioned. There is published evidence that they don’t.
Others are sharing anecdote which may be true of their specific organization but it’s anecdotal and not industry wide. If it is, then please present evidence. It doesn’t matter if the data is 6 years old or from today. In fact, it would likely be more slanted toward the other argument presented six years ago than today. And it still wasn’t…even then.
The world today and in my opinion in 20 years from now, is and will be different from the past. That means how people are educated needs to change even though traditional higher education, in many ways, hasn’t.
We now live in an automated and outsourced society - very different than years ago. We have gone from manual tracking of sales to green screens to hardware storage to the cloud. We have gone from HR or travel agent as a desired career to one that has eliminated the retail travel agent (for all intents and purposes) and removed many functions of HR to automation and AI. Remaining jobs often sound more like data analysts than HR people.
Many well established service organizations have vanished, replaced by those with a creativity and innovation that has changed the world we live in.
While higher education has seen innovation (specialized programs, delivery methods), I think at its roots it remains vastly unchanged.
My prediction and maybe I’m wrong is in 10, 20 years if the same folks were debating the same subject, there would be massive change of opinion because I believe in many cases students are not being given the tools for today, or their future.
Software writes or chooses words, corrects grammar and spelling and perform calculations previously needing to be understood by individuals. It decides who is the best candidate to hire or what pitch to throw to a specific batter with two strikes.
We can all believe as we want. But if we look around us - the world is different. And reading Shakespeare, while perhaps enlightening, is a luxury that I personally don’t see adding value to careers of today or the future. .
It is possible that in the old days, when the industry was more elitist, they preferred pedigree over training, and much of the pedigree schools had no business majors. These days, I have heard of kids from IU’s Kelly School, certainly Ross from UMich, Haas from Berkeley, Business undergrads from Georgetown and a bunch of kids from other business school etc get placed into IB roles routinely.
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Can we get back to topic thread or, since this is not the cafe, at the very least keep tangents related to college and stop beating a dead horse?
I know that Stanford has a new way of saying the last 4 words in the last sentence at the risk of offending horses, but I’m too exhausted to look.
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Yes, let’s not fall for the red herring that the liberal arts do not include math and science. That’s silly.
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By definition, “The Liberal Arts” include both math and science. The problem with many people is that they do not actually understand the meaning of the term “liberal arts”, and jump to their own conclusions.
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The UK: Rishi Sunak wants all pupils to study maths to age 18 - BBC News
Of course this is high school.
What is the typical level of maths completion by UK high school graduates, both the university-bound and non-university-bound?
For university-bound students, 28% take maths as part of their A-levels. The A-levels maths curriculum is not analogous to anything in US education, but covers calc 1 and some intro statistics. A separate module, Further Maths, is taken concurrently by a smaller cohort and covers more depth and breadth.
https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/323211-uptake-of-gce-a-level-subjects-2015.pdf
I haven’t read the full thread, but has anyone suggested otherwise? Math and science are not only included at LACs, they usually have a larger representation than at comparable non-LAC private colleges. Differences are more likely to occur in more vocationally focused non-liberal arts fields, such as engineering. While some LACs do offer engineering, offerings are often sparse with few persons choosing related majors.
As an example, the average major distribution at the highly selective/ranked/wealthy LACs of Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore is summarized below and compared to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. The distribution was generally similar. Most common majors at both types of highly selective colleges included econ, CS, biology (usually pre-med), math, and others associated with higher incomes. The LACs as a whole had a larger portion math and science majors, with the exception of bio/pre-med. The largest differences occurred in engineering (less common at selected LACs), math (more common at selected LACs), and foreign language (more common at selected LACs).
Average Major Distribution at Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore
Social Sciences / Econ – 21%
Math/Stats – 12%
Biology – 10%
Computer Science – 9%
Physical Sciences – 7%
Psychology – 6%
Foreign Language – 6%
Visual/Performing Arts – 5%
English – 5%
History – 4%
Area/Ethnic/Gender Studies – 4%
…
Engineering – <2%
Average Major Distribution at Harvard, Yale and Stanford
Social Sciences / Econ – 22%
Computer Science – 12% (33% higher)
Biology – 12%
Engineering – 8% (4x LACs above)
Math/Stats – 8% (33% lower)
Physical Sciences – 6%
History – 5%
Psychology – 4% (33% lower)
Visual/Performing Arts – 3% (40% lower)
English – 3% (40% lower)
Area/Ethnic/Gender Studies – 3%
Foreign Language – 2% (1/3 LACs above)
Yes.
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Math, if taught as problem solving, is helpful for many topics, including those which are considered “humanities”. After all, writing anything which is logically consistent requires understanding basic logic, and logic is mathematics.
Logical fallacies are arguments that violate mathematical rules, and every logical rule that is used in writing an essay can be generalized and written in symbolic form. Things like Venn Diagrams come from formal logic, and can be used to demonstrate the logical inconsistency of a statement in literary or historical analysis.
I haven’t seen anything in this thread (after nearly 240 posts) that remotely defines “liberal arts” as OP was looking for, other than what they historically include. Sciences are historically included, but what about Computer Science? Most would probably say no because it wasn’t included historically. But should it be?
“Liberal arts” are also Western concepts so they’re not only historical but also cultural. We probably all agree that languages, math and basic sciences are fundamental in higher education in every culture, but what else are also fundamental for a college graduate to fully function as a highly educated citizen in a modern society? Should those fundamentals be static or evolving?
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Are computers science? With me they always are more like a game of chance 