@Proudpatriot Thank you. Dd is a strong math student, so that is excellent advice.
You’re welcome. I can’t claim it as my own. My oldest son received that advice from his advisor when he was in college.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek "You all make me nervous. My high school sr plans on pursuing IR, IB, or econ combined with 2 languages. She is very serious about her languages, though. Her goals are to be at an advanced-high level by college graduation.
The languages are a given. She is still exploring the others."
Keep in mind that there are students who will succeed in any major. I think people are commenting on in this thread about majors an average student with no particular talent or a specific plan should probably avoid choosing because it looks cool.
For example, archaeology is a terrible choice for an average student to pick randomly and get Bs and Cs in. On the other hand, it can be an excellent choice for a top student in a high quality program, planning on a Phd., and developing the specialized skills needed such as classic languages, osteology, scatology, history, or geology. That successful student probably spends summers on dig sites, and maybe works in the museum or on research during the school year.
These students are valuable because they are developing a lot of knowledge. If they focus on Julius Caesar’s Rome and a fibulae comes out of the dig, they know what it is on sight. If a fork comes out, they know it doesn’t belong there because the fork had not been invented yet. Etc.
Engineer would not know on the spot if the fork does not belong but he/she would definitely question it and find the right answer.
Here’s my take: I agree with the ideas expressed here that the only “low value” major is the one pursued without passion or interest. We’re all going to die and not a one of us knows when. Life is too short to piss away 4 or 5 years doing something you don’t like. And you’re probably not going to be very good at it anyway.
Here’s my other take, which will piss some people off: I think it is very much a socioeconomic variable that explains the trend for pushing kids to study what is the currently most employable thing.
It is because of the understandable focus on the screwed up economics of higher ed that people for whom paying for college is a major struggle tend to get caught up in the current fashionable degree.
In the final analysis, if your child has learned to question, to think critically, to learn to appreciate and understand and not fear things and people who are foreign to their experience, to be able to understand some level of symbolic and quantitative reasoning, to write and express well, to have a sense for what has happened in the world and why … in short if they’ve learned to learn, then your kid has won the education game.
The world will keep changing and so too will its demand for the latest skill set. Nobody will ever be permanently relevant. But those skills I cite above, and others, are enduring.
International Relations can open up so many opportunities if intellectually you are a global citizen or if you grew up as an expat kid with variety of life experiences, cultural sensitivity and exposure to multiple languages, ease to feel comfortable in alien surroundings etc and enhance it with your IR education and personal interest towards world outside your personal bubble.
If you lived your whole life in same town, speak only English, feel uncomfortable around people who look diffrenf than you and can’t differentiate between Republic of Turkey & Thanksgiving Turkey then IR is a pretty much useless degree.
“a degree in Fashion Merchandising or Fashion Design”
Not the same thing at all. I mentioned the first and not the second.
@WorryHurry411 , I think your intent is good in your post, but I cannot disagree with it more. It is precisely the kid you describe who might most benefit from an IR education. Education, at its best, is transformative, not reinforcing or polishing of what is already there.
The “Citizen of the World” type you describe is perhaps the person who might not benefit the most from an IR curriculum. They might benefit more by being pushed in another area of thought.
“I think people are commenting on in this thread about majors an average student with no particular talent or a specific plan should probably avoid choosing because it looks cool.”
Wow. Just wow. An average student with no particular talent. I may come off like an elitist jerk sometimes, but I would never limit someone’s future like that. For one thing, I’m not qualified to assess anyone’s capacity for growth and evolvement over the course of a lifetime. People develop at different rates and at different times in life.
It doesn’t matter whether a degree is in or out of fashion. What matters is that someone is pursuing an education, and they’ll be the better for it when they’re done. About that I am 100% sure.
Again, the exercise of undergraduate education, at its best, is learning to be a good learner.
The list I see on post 29 is consistent with my experience here in the Great White North. I always enjoy Blossom’s posts, but her position on business majors strikes me as at odd with everything I have known or seen.
I am genuinely puzzled.
“Not the same thing at all.” I am quite aware of that but both are in support of the fashion industry and kids interested in fashion will have different goals. There will sometimes be overlap in what kids are learning . I see no reason to dismiss Fashion Merchandising. It seems to be a legitimate major that can include different aspects of education related to fashion and I linked a list of programs that have it previously. Here are some top Fashion schools on the east coast. http://www.fashion-schools.org/articles/top-20-fashion-schools-east-coast
I always enjoy @blossom’s post as well, although my experience with business majors is 180 degree’s from hers. One of the strengths of college confidential is getting input from people like Blossom whose real world experiences differ from yours.
I also enjoy @blossom’s posts. But I must be overlooking it- where in this thread did she post? I don’t see a post of hers here.
When I hired for the aerospace industry (I was much younger and less experienced) it was always a surprise to see that you didn’t need to have a degree in aero/astro engineering to get a good job in that sector. Why? Because airlines need people who can figure out how to keep the orange juice cold on board, and how to advertise, and how to design frequent flyer programs which will attract and retain customers without having them give away every single seat, and how to make sure that you are paying the right amount of liquor excise tax in every state you are doing business in, and how to make sure that your employees aren’t being sexually harassed by their managers, and how to make sure that you are complying with the law when your CEO and CFO speak at the annual meeting, and how to design an annual report which will get read (and is in compliance with the law) and how not to get sued by environmental groups when you de-ice your planes in zero degree weather… etc.
The whole nine yards.
The thinking on CC which seems so curious to me is the assumption that everyone at a global advertising agency makes ads (maybe 20% of headcount are actual “creatives” who have a hand in the creative process) and that everyone in the insurance industry is either an actuary or a salesperson, and that everyone at an oil company advises on drilling strategies and has a degree in petroleum engineering.
The reality is much more complex. Bill Gates hired sociologists to help the more traditional tech hires learn how people interact in groups and how connectivity develops. Disney has always hired people with training in literature and literary analysis and cultural studies to help them better understand storytelling and how to create a compelling experience. Banks hire psychologists so they can learn how to translate habitual behavior into money-making lines of business (next time you pull out your debit card to buy a cup of coffee you can thank a psychologist). Casinos hire art majors who understand why certain environments cause people to linger and others do not.
The idea that there is one discipline- called “business”- which is attractive to actual businesses is a little strange. The idea that there is only one on-ramp to a corporate career is manifestly not true. There are many companies which hire thousands of business majors every year along with new grads with degrees in “other”. If your kid wants to major in business- god bless. But if your kid doesn’t- shoe-horning him or her into a corporate career via a business major is a questionable strategy in my mind.
The last tough hire I had a work was for a relatively junior role for someone who was good in math and fluent in Russian. And a strong preference for a US citizen to make security clearance (if that became necessary) easier down the road.
Are you going to do this the hard way and wade through 5,000 business majors to find the one who is fluent in Russian, or are you going to do it the easy way and post the role at 5 colleges with a strong Slavic Studies program and cherrypick the kids who have taken an advanced math class or two? We went the easy way. Like any other company would do.
If you needed real fluency in Russian combined with real math skills you would go after math graduates of better colleges in the New York Metro area. Plenty of math savvy kids with heritage language skills.
Why would you prefer somebody who started Russian in college and has taken one or two math classes?
We didn’t need a graduate of Courant or someone who could get hired at DE Shaw doing advanced analytics. We just needed someone reasonably math-literate. And no, we didn’t hire someone who started Russian in college; and no, we didn’t need someone in NYC.
An “Art” major is an ineffective way to judge one’s academic skills and fluency in what it takes to succeed in life. There are programs that emphasize a rounded education and those that offer no academic stretch, where the degree is hardly more than a certificate.
You’d need to check what it takes to get a fashion merchandising “degree.” The one kid I know who did (and I’m not in NYC,) is happily employed at Nordstrom. In contrast, other art degree kids I know have found great flexibility. In large part, after the qualities of the individual, that can depend on the college, its requirements, and the level of teaching.
As for IR, maybe it would help to quit looking for the lowest common denominator. It can be a field of study with depth and breadth. And smart kids will be adding courses outside that dept.
Heritage language skills can vary very widely from full native-fluency to having none…even among immigrant/first generation children growing up in neighborhoods heavily dominated by fellow immigrants from the same society of origin.
The Russian-American HS classmates in the NYC area are not exempt from this issue. Some can read and speak Russian as well as a native-speaker.
Others are practically no different from native-born multigenerationed Americans who only know American English. Including some who grew up in neighborhoods with large Russian emigre populations where Russian is spoken on a regular basis like Brighton Beach.
Are you talking about your HS classmates from 20 years ago?
Where I live there are many who are clearly bilingual. They speak English in the community/school, and their family’s native tongue at home. (Russian, Farsi, Spanish, Portuguese etc.) Fluent in both. Commonly the kids speak/translate for their parents or grandparents.
Some heritage speakers have native-level fluency in speaking and listening, but much lower level literacy in reading and writing.
Some high schools and colleges offer heritage speaker versions of those language courses for such students.