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Consider that the criteria for what our parents thought were "practical" degrees have shifted dramatically. A practical degree used to be an entry to a job and a career. But many of the jobs today's students will hold do not yet exist and few baccalaureate degrees provide a stable career. The shelf life of today's job-related skills is often only a few years.
The value of communication skills, global citizenship, cross-cultural literacy, and group facilitation are permanent and cut across all fields. Even in fields that are clearly pre-professional, graduates with the requisite technical skills may get entry-level jobs but it will be the professionals with the broad-based liberal arts skills who will be promoted into leadership.
Today, in my opinion as a college administrator, "practical" undergraduate majors help to develop those universal skills which students can then augment with technical skills. Communication-intensive majors which force students out of their own cultural bounds and require that they view the world from differing perspectives are ideal, and most of those that Dave listed above look great to me.
And yes, my Depression-raised parents would choke and sputter if they read this, but they were citizens of a different world.
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