<p>Alex Romanczuk, major in comparative literature and mathematics: I’ve derived no tangible benefits from my study of comparative literature. I have no intention of pursuing a graduate degree in the subject, and no employer will ever hire me because of my knowledge of early 20th-century German poetry. Hegel’s dialectic won’t feed a hungry child, and pretending to understand Finnegans Wake won’t somehow give me the moral power to stop the evil scientists from unleashing their killer robots. To think so is dangerous, incorrect, and insulting. A comp-lit degree is really quite useless, which is exactly what I find so appealing.</p>
<p>Big deal. He obviously know how useless comparative literature was in job and career prospects, so he got a degree in math as well.</p>
<p>It is more of a concern if students choose majors with little knowledge of the job and career prospects at the end and are then surprised by the lack thereof for many majors. (Though biology and chemistry majors may be more likely to get these unpleasant surprises, since it is more commonly assumed that humanities majors face poor job and career prospects at graduation.)</p>
<p>I’ve derived no tangible benefits from my continued presence on these boards, or on Facebook for that matter, and yet here I am, reading an article about people wasting their college years on literature. I feel like a double failure for bearing witness to other people’s lack of ambition & squandering my own potential at the same time.</p>
<p>What a negative, defeatist attitude this student has! How does he even know this yet? Any employer who is looking for someone who can effectively communicate is going to hire the comp lit major over the math major any day.</p>
<p>…or if you want to go into sales, customer service, public relations, publishing, journalism, sales, advertising, mass media, legislative analysis, education, or any other career that uses the written word, which generally includes some facet of every possible industry and profession.</p>
<p>If I need someone who can communicate about literary subjects, the comparative literature major wins. But if I need someone who can communicate about mathematical subjects, the math major wins. (Of course, the student quoted is a double major in comparative literature and math.)</p>
<p>Note that writing and communication requirements are pretty much universal for all bachelor’s degrees in the US. But university level math is rarely required for a bachelor’s degree unless the major requires it.</p>
<p>Well the guy in the article wrote that he took 65 units of Comparative Literature courses while at Stanford. So perhaps that is about 20 more classes (?) of writing than the straight math major might have taken. And presumably the calibre of the writing is quite high, given that it is Stanford we are talking about. So he is probably very well qualified to handle any job involving writing and interpretive reading.</p>
<p>Of course, he also had a lot more math than a typical comparative literature major takes, so he would be much better at communicating about any subject involving math than a typical comparative literature major would be.</p>
<p>Um, every possible quote in the world, by definition, is out of context. To not quote out of context would require quoting the entire article, and in that case, I might as well just give you the entire article.</p>
<p>And giving you the entire article is precisely what I did, so that you are free to place the quote into whatever context you please. Hence, I believe I remained well within the bounds of proper discussion board discourse. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The point was to have readers on CC think about the issues discussed, and then spark a discussion. I believe that goal has been accomplished. After all, with perhaps the self-admitted exception of Ghostt, we are all here on CC because we actually learn and benefit from the postings and discussions provided by the participants here. {My advice to Ghostt is would be to stop participating on CC if he truly derives no benefit from doing so.}</p>