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These are examples of academic departments in Harvard and Princeton. Who is going to hire someone who studied Anthropology? Why would a company hire a guy right out of undergrad who studied Philosophy in Harvard? Why not offer pre-med programs and business for undergraduate students? How would someone from Harvard who did East Asian Studies get a job? In short, these academic degrees and progams are simply impractical. My question is why?
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<p>First off, in the case of Harvard, Princeton, and other elite schools, many companies will hire these grads simply for the brand-name of their school. For example, I know quite a few graduates of various 'impractical' majors at Harvard who were snapped up by high-prestige management consulting or investment banking firms. In these cases, the companies weren't hiring them for what they majored in. They were hiring them because of the Harvard brand-name, which basically signified that having a Harvard degree meant that you were good enough to get into Harvard in the first place. In other words these companies were basically using Harvard as an outsourced HR department. </p>
<p>I'll give you a few examples from the business world. The CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano, does not have a business degree or an engineering degree. He has a degree in history from Johns Hopkins. Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and now Secretary of the Treasury, has a bachelor's degree in English from Dartmouth. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, has a bachelor's degree in Medieval History and Philosophy from Stanford. Tom Anderson, founder of Myspace, has a bachelor's degree in English and Rhetoric from Berkeley. Countless other examples exist of people getting 'useless' degrees and then having extremely successful careers.</p>
<p>Part of the issue is that at many of the top schools, many students come from rich, privileged backgrounds. They don't really care what they major in, as they know that once they graduate, they are going to be hooked up by their daddy or their daddy's friends anyway. For example, we all know that George W. Bush was a lackluster student at Yale. But obviously he didn't care because he knew that he was going to get a nice cushy job from his family no matter what he majored in. The same could be said for both John Kerry and Al Gore - both of whom were, at best, mediocre students while at Yale and Harvard respectively. All 3 of these men studied "impractical" majors (Gore studied government, Bush in history, Kerry in political science). But seriously, if you were born into the life of privilege that all 3 of these men were born in, would you have cared what you majored in? All 3 of these guys were basically trust-fund babies.</p>
<p>However, you have touched upon a related issue which is why is it that public schools that don't cater to the rich still often times insist on teaching unremunerative subjects? An Anthropology student from Harvard may get snapped up by Goldman Sachs, but an Anthropology student from SW Missouri State won't be. The latter school has to worry about providing marketable skills to its students, because its students most likely don't have rich parents who are going to hook them up, especially if they are going to use state tax money to do so. If rich people want to spend their own money on an unmarketable degree, that's their business. It's their money, they can do whatever they want. It's quite another matter when you're talking about spending state taxpayer money to subsidize unmarketable degrees. If you're going to use public funds on an educational program, you should ensure that those public funds are actually going to benefit the greater economy by providing marketable skills.</p>