Canuckguy’s article from Higher ed is 5 years old, and the link to the Georgetown’s article in their usually excellent Center on education in the workforce is broken. That said, the issue of employment with BA level, MA level and doctoral level psychology degrees was addressed in post 106.
Maybe I’m elitist, maybe I’m just a dinosaur – but getting a job and making money says exactly zero about whether you got an education.
I’ll add a personal feeling. D2 majored in psych, is working in the field. Yes, what many of us would consider low pay, but she’s satisfied with the entry and drawing on both her education and the corresponding empathies/understanding. She may go back for an advanced degree, to allow her to hang her own shingle.
Re: “whether you got an education,” she is superbly educated, including depth and breadth, critical thinking. (And I’m no pushover.) The salary is the least of her drives.
Passion, common sense, hard work, etc can take someone a long way. My wife has a 2 year certificate from a “Retail” College that no longer exists - converted to condos - and is extremely successful. Makes more than me - the Cornell grad!!
“hang her own shingle.” That’s great as long as she goes in with her eyes wide open (as jym alluded to in #106). I was a sociology major, then MSW, then LCSW. Lots of years in clinical work, but finished in managed mental health care (authorizing inpatient and outpatient treatment, utilization review, etc.) Managed mental health care seems to be here to stay and can be a pain, there is malpractice insurance, sometimes burnout,etc. All the best to her. I liked the psychology classes I did take.
“Re: “whether you got an education,” she is superbly educated, including depth and breadth, critical thinking.”
Since she majored in a liberal art, I would expect so. I might be a little biased, since that’s the major I chose, too.
Ah well, if we’re comparing, my dh didn’t go to college, and makes more as a UPS driver than I ever even came close to making as a deaf ed teacher with two credentials (but no masters), but then I quit 22 years ago to raise kids.
In my current part time job as a college consultant (work for myself and for a company), I have the potential to make a lot more money than I did as a classroom teacher, but I’m a homeschooling mom who wants to work part time, so we definitely rely on my “uneducated” husband’s income.
My degree was in Communicative Disorders, a very specific degree that could go multiple ways including audiology, speech pathology and education.
I’ve always felt that there are multiple forms of “education.” As long as someone wants to learn, that is key to me. I see nothing wrong with someone pursuing sports management or the dreaded fashion merchandising if that is what they want to do. I respect lots of people that haven’t gone to college but instead have gone through certificate type programs. I couldn’t figure out a complex plumbing leak or an electrical problem if my life depended on it. I’ve been pretty impressed with some of these guys that have unfortunately had to work on our old house . I know I can’t drive a UPS truck! Or cut someone’s hair or tailor a suit or put up drywall or lay tile. Yes, passion, common sense, hard work, and humility go a long way.
Thank you @sevmom !!!
“know I can’t drive a UPS truck! Or cut someone’s hair or tailor a suit or put up drywall or lay tile.”
Me neither. I’ve had plenty of students for whom those were the right paths. And as Good Will Hunting reminded us, you can get a heck of a liberal education with a library card if you put in the time and effort. If you’re in medical school, there is a robust intellectual component, and there’s also learning to suture on a leg of pork, which has way more in common with cutting hair than it does with solving chemistry problems.
None of that changes the fact that some kinds of programs promote intellectual growth more than others, and I’m an intellectual growth kind of a gal.
“some kinds of programs promote intellectual growth more than others” And that is clearly your bias. What are they? Psychology is a fine major, but so are many others. I was a sociology major. I enjoyed it. I doubt that would make the cut for you .My kids were engineering majors. There is no way I could have gotten through their “programs.” The whole liberal arts automatically equals superiority in terms of critical thinking, intellectual growth just is a puzzle to me.
I don’t think we’re saying that LA or certain subjects equal superiority. Usually, posters feel the opposite, that humanities are pretty useless because they don’t always lead to obvious career paths in that specific field you studied. Even on this thread, we had several references to publications about specifically in-demand majors.
DS#1 had a friend who majored in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations. Never quite got that one.
We had a tour guide who was a genocide studies major, with a minor in dance.
I very much dislike the labeling of some majors as “least valuable,” because
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It assumes that the definition of “value” is about how easily/likely a major course of study in college leads to post-college employment or high salaries or both, rather than something else like interests or passion;
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It assumes that quantity over quality of jobs is what’s important; and
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It’s usually based upon some outdated or erroneous assumptions about majors.
For example, most of the skills that you’d learn in a video game design major are pretty much the exact same things you would learn in a computer science major. The C++ doesn’t change whether you’re using it to code a productivity app or code Minecraft. A person who majored in game design could go onto a successful career coding productivity apps or being a PM at a social media company or whatever. Same with actuarial science - an actuarial science major is really a combo of math/stats and business, which could be applied in a lot of other places. You don’t have to become an actuary.
And why would an engineering and business combination major be bad? I can think of several good combinations: data science/business analytics, operations research, supply chain management, logistics. All good majors, all fields that are pretty wide open in terms of jobs.
Definitely not sure what makes anthropology, biology, or international relations less valuable. One anecdotal experience of a college graduate being unable to find a job in 4 months isn’t really evidence for or against a specific major. The Georgetown Center for Workforce Education has a great report on why summer unemployment for recent college grads really isn’t much to worry about on a large scale.
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My notion of an educated person comes straight from Dr. Johnson’s Renaissance Man and refined by Baron Snow’s “The Two Cultures”.
All these talks about IR reminds me of Laszlo Bock, an IR grad who was with McKinsey before Google. In this interview with Thomas L. Friedman, he really reiterated what post 29 was saying. Good stuff.
I have a sibling with a degree in psychology and a minor in physics. Her skill sets are so unique that her old employer still wants her back even though she has been out of the workforce for over two decades.
Why? The study of Greek and Roman classics is the the study of the foundations of Western civilization. Seem pretty important to me.
And the job opportunities are…???
The person did get a job… in auto finance.
The same as in any non-vocationally-specific major, such as biology or English.
I don’t consider the purpose of undergraduate education to be vocational training.
I understand why many people do, though, especially if they have to take out a lot in loans to make it happen.