Quoth the raven

I was having a discussion with my friend's uncle who is a recruiter for a fortune 500 company, and he was telling me that he hates hiring engineers for non-engineering positions. He was telling me that engineers can't think outside the box and he feels that there are lots of liberal arts majors (he mentioned art history specifically) that are much smarter than engineers. he went further by saying that art history is considerably harder than engineering because it requires writing about complicated topics and analyzing social behavior?? or something like this... this seems to fly in the face of everything I previously thought--is this viewpoint common?

aibarr

Some people have had a bad experience or two with engineers (and honestly, with some of the stuffy, personality-less engineers I've met over the years, who can blame 'em?) and they end up having an irrational irritation for anybody with an engineering background.

I'd say he's the exception and not the rule.

RacinReaver

Yeah, I imagine he's been dealing with the kind of engineers that like engineering for the aspects of it which can be very plug and chug, and not the creative thinking, problem solving aspects most engineers enjoy about the field.

mydegisunacred

He's right, engineering is much easier than art history. Art history majors have to learn about styles of art and evaluate works. The engineering slackers only have to learn how to mathematically model the physical world and use these principles to create the technology that our civilization is built upon.

ChamilitaryMayne

No way in hell. Art history is just memorization of specific styles, common themes, techniques, etc. from different eras. Then you use this knowledge to analyze works and their meaning by discussing certain references and determining why something was included in the work. Art history discussion is a lot of predictions, opinions, and fluff. I took an art history class and did really well by simply memorizing all aspects of the styles, eras, etc., and when I had to write essays I would mention the facts and then BS a lot. Art history majors might be more open-minded and able to see the big picture while having great BS skills when compared with engineers.

Mr Payne

Your friend's uncle is an idiot.

xjis

c'mon. i thought this thread was a joke thread. now i can see you are being quite serious.

i'm not taking any of this seriously however.

aibarr

As background, my husband minored in physics in college and was a few courses short from getting a second major in it. He's currently working on his doctorate in music composition, as I've mentioned before. It's a far cry from my structural background.

Having been able to closely observe our careers within our respective fields for the past eight years, I really think that there's no distinct way that anybody can say, out and out, that one field is more difficult than the other. Y'all know about the engineering challenges that we face, and yeah, the concepts are pretty difficult. As a composer's wife, though, I've had to tag along to countless new music concerts, and I can't say that I understand atonal music any more easily than I understand lateral-torsional buckling mechanisms. It's a real challenge to sit there and listen and try to make sense out of what I'm hearing. I'm *still* hearing new stuff in my husband's masters thesis that I hadn't realized was there before.

And it's not even just that there's a degree of difficulty to it... In my field, there may be lots of ways to correctly design a beam, but the end result is binary. It works, or it ain't. There are varying degrees of better-and-worse, but if it achieves the goal, then it's my call as to whether it makes it into the final design. I hand my work on a piece of paper to a crew who builds it, and if they want to critique my work, then they've got to issue a formal question and I get to either correct my error or tell them why they're being idiots. In a subjective field like writing or art or music, your works and your opinions can be called into question by *anybody*. That is why these subjective fields are *so* difficult to make a difference in... Public opinion is so fickle and so subjective that it's incredibly nerve-wracking for the artist. For every big public performance, I buy my husband two cards… one for if it goes well, one for if it doesn't.

We probably perceive art as being less critical than our own engineering careers, and that's probably valid, from a life-basics point of view. I mean, I design safe hospitals, my husband writes quartets. I have the corner on the market of life-critical jobs in our house. I once told my husband that it must suck for him to have to spend his entire life in pursuit of a career that could be replaced entirely by kittens. He looked shocked for a moment, and asked me what the heck I was talking about… I said that music doesn't really do anything aside from make people happy, and kittens make people happy, so if you were to do away with music you could just replace it with kittens and you'd be okay. Thankfully, he's used to my macabre sense of humor, so he laughed… But he only laughed because he knows I'm kidding. Society remembers the musicians and the artists for a reason… Such subjective matter is what makes civilization civilized. We value free speech in this country so much more highly than we value free wastewater treatment services, and for good reason.

Both realms are important, and both are very difficult, for different reasons.. Neither should be considered as less necessary or inferior to the other.

Mmkay, I'm done. Anybody else want the soapbox?

steevee

Engineering is not easy. However, I believe engineers are often presented with problem sets where they have to think a certain way to arrive at the correct solution. Open-ended problems, where creative thinking is critical, is often lacking in the majority of the engineering curriculum.

aibarr

I would tend to agree with this (I know that a lot of my coworkers can't literarily analyze their way out of a paper bag, and though I used to be able to in high school, I probably would have a rough time of things, too) but I think that engineers develop a different kind of creative thinking (ever see a group of engineers baby-proof a home?) that would make them incredibly good Fortune 500 employees.

So while I agree with you, I still think that the OP's friend's uncle is bogus.

xjis

ok. arts vs engineering.

im in no position to talk about PhD programs since I didn't even do PhD in engieering, just BS. so i will just talk about undergrad majors.

i'm not sure about art history, but i know music major in Cornell is joke, at least for BA degree.

i know schools like juilliard and comparable programs will be extremely rigorous, but...

if you are doing art history in cornell, i think it will be pretty similar to doing music major here and very easy.

not just personal opinion that cornell music major is easy... i took several music major courses myself including piano lessons from cornell professors - you get automatic A's for lessons (4 credit if you are a music major), and i got A's in all music major courses.

during hs, i was taught by piano prof who was a juilliard grad and he made a strong case that i do piano instead of engineering.. so i'm not just talking out of my as* here. i know how *un-rigorous music program is in cornell and just assuming art history here wouldn't be any harder.

aibarr

Cornell's also not at all known for its music schools... And while I was in high school, I debated between a career in piano performance or engineering until I blew out my wrists in a spectacular Beethoven-related carpal tunnel disaster, so I'm in about the same position as it sounds like you were, but my roommate was a violin performance undergrad at the Shepherd School at Rice, and I met my husband while he was working on his masters at Shepherd, too... Yeah, I didn't hold a candle to them. My husband's always writing, and my roomie was (still is) always practicing. Being around them, I learned really quickly that there's a huge difference between considering a career in music and committing to it. It's like throwing your life off a cliff and hoping you bounce. For every academic job opening in my husband's field, there are around 100 applicants.

Music or art is a joke in some places. It's definitely not a joke at the serious places.

alipes07

a.)How do the thread go from art history vs. engineering to music vs. engineering?

b.)My sister is an art history major at a very respectable school and it is a joke. Many of her fellow classmates are simply taking it as a pre-law major to guarantee a high gpa.

c.) OP, your uncle is probably right that non-engineers are more emotionally intelligent. However, in terms of sheer problem-solving skills he is dead wrong.

Panglossian

What's with all these 'X vs Y' threads on these boards? Who really cares if something is easier than something else? Let people do what they enjoy doing, especially since not everyone can do Laplace transforms, and not everyone can identify the subtle nuances of a Monet. Sheesh.

mydegisunacred

music is hard because of the hours of practice, ensembles youre in, the stress of performances, etc

were talking about art history. You dont have to make art, just appreciate it