<p>I am so far out of the college application process with our youngest daughter matriculating in 2007, that I am out of the loop, but I saw this article on D1s Twitter, and thought it was interesting. Yes, she works for a tech company, but was a journalism major, not a liberal arts major.</p>
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While the tech boom is partly responsible for the spike in students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, many tech CEOs still believe employees trained in the liberal arts add value to their companies. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously mused that for technology to be truly brilliant, it must be coupled with artistry. “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough,” he said. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” Other tech CEOs across the country agree that liberal arts training--with its emphasis on creativity and critical thinking--is vital to the success of their business.
<p>What exactly a linear arts degree? Math is liberal arts degree isn’t it? Or do they mean graduate from a liberal arts college? In that case of all the tech companies that most of us can recognize graduated from a university with the exception of the CEO from Netflix who I believed graduated from Boudoin(sp?)</p>
<p>Math and science majors seem to take more humanities and social science courses (“liberal arts” courses) than “liberal arts” majors take science courses. Therefore one could make the claim the math/science majors have a more well rounded/better education than the liberal arts majors. Computer science can be in the letters and sciences (or whatever a school calls that- UW-Madison designation)) or engineering depending on the school. The L&S requirements require foreign language (including HS units) and more humanities and social sciences than business or engineering. I know son got hired as a software developer (current company software engineer) for his thinking, not his programming abilities- he added comp sci as a second major to his math major and had bare minimum comp sci credits.</p>
<p>My point- having a STEM field degree does not mean missing out on other fields. One reason a college education is needed for many jobs at tech companies to develop, not just do programming.</p>
<p>I’m aware that Jeff Bezos from Amazon wants his top executives to write because they can think clearly when they do. That is not always the same as wanting a liberal arts degree. </p>
<p>What does “liberal arts” mean?
Is math a liberal art?</p>
<p>This is now rather murky territory. The concept of, and the phrase, “liberal arts” dates from the time of the Roman Empire. At the time, and for centuries afterward, a liberal arts education encompassed virtually the entirety of human knowledge. With the explosion of knowledge during the past century or two, the concept became much murkier. Now, it seems to refer to almost any degree program which is not professional (e.g. engineering, journalism, nursing, etc…). This seems inadequate to me, however.</p>
<p>Math is one of the liberal arts. If a student earns a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, it seems reasonable to claim to have a liberal arts degree. On the other hand, a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics probably should not be considered a liberal arts degree. Same with physics or chemistry. The BS is targeted toward students intending to proceed to graduate school, basically making it pre-professional.</p>
<p>Actually, it goes back earlier than the Romans. It was already present in Ancient Greece. The Romans inherited it from the Greeks by conquering them and enslaving their scholars to educate their children/adolescents. </p>
<p>The Romans were known for being one of the first civilizations to employ engineering on a massive scale. </p>
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<p>Not really sure about that as it depends on the field. In some STEM fields/departments, one can get into a PhD program with a B.A. as well as a B.S. provided the student fulfilled admission requirements of the department. </p>
<p>In some others, even a B.S. alone may not be a guarantee of admission in the given field without substantial coursework in a critical related field. Economics is one field I know of where this is the case as in several Econ departments I know of, the most common undergrad major for their PhD students tend to be Math or other mathematically intensive fields like Physics or Engineering…not Econ. </p>
<p>According to several grad students and a few former undergrad Econ majors who did go on to grad study in that field, unless the BA/BS in Econ is accompanied by enough critical math courses to be almost a practical second-major in math, their chances of being competitive in most Econ grad programs…especially the elite ones are extremely slim at best. </p>
<p>Econ is sort of a special case. The vast majority of economics majors do not plan to go on for PhDs and do not intend to pursue careers as economists. The requirements for the major are set up for this majority, not for the minority who do hope to be admitted to economics graduate programs. That minority needs a lot more math.</p>
<p>This should not come as a surprise to students in an economics department that has even halfway decent advising.</p>
<p>I think when they say liberal arts they mean it as a shorthand for non-STEM. That article particularly mentions Humanities. I know that people with social science backgrounds are increasingly looked at to be part of a data science team. And I know a couple of young women at google, one was a sociology major working in people operations, another art history seems to be working in the ethic department, interesting fit there. I know for software engineers they are going to expect that sort of coursework or experience, and for product managers they expect technical people.</p>
<p>Things must have changed because back in my time in the Bay area, I know a UCLA Political Science grad was an admin. Lots of technical directors whose English is not native also loved to hire liberal arts so they could dictate the ideas and let them type up something, they could be bother. Free the technical directors time to do more stocks trading. The women complained to me that’s how I know. I guess you can say that’s love too.</p>
<p>S1 decided to hedge his bets and ended up majoring in Math and Philosophy. However he was self taught and very proficient in “coding” and “programming” which translated into a well paying tech job as soon as he graduated.</p>
<p>Some of the best hackers have not education and were hired by Facebook in the early stage. I think some of them posted on Quora has since now retired.</p>
<p>There is a push, in some circles, to make computer programming a trade (not a profession). Lots of evidence that it can be learned early in life (mid teens) with an obvious early financial payoff. The son of a friend of mine, for example, was hired straight out of high school by MicroSoft; at a salary of $45,000 per year. Also, see this article at the Wall Street Journal about Apple:
<a href=“Apple's New Whiz Kids - WSJ”>Apple's New Whiz Kids - WSJ;
<p>Many of the first generation of systems types did not have a degree at all, but were trained initially in the Armed Forces and then learned as they went along. They were among our elders when I started working in the software industry in the early 80s. (Mainframe system software/utilities.) They had typically been in the biz for at least 15 years at that point.</p>
<p>Learning as you went along was the norm, no matter what you started with.</p>
<p>The first CS offerings at the university levels…including PhD were in the math and/or engineering departments. Some of the older CS Profs my friends had actually received their CS PhDs from their university’s math/engineering departments. </p>
<p>As for people working in CS, they came from many different backgrounds ranging from math/engineering majors to musical performance/lit majors to folks with no high school diplomas, but much on-the-job training in the armed forces or private tech firms. </p>
<p>The biggest tech company in my area loves LAC grads. This, of course, gives me hope for my liberal-arts-major son who will be graduating in two years.</p>