Liberal Arts, a Lost Cause?

ucbalumnus
Sun, 09 Aug 2015 04:45:45 +0000

DrGoogle:

What I found was useful course she took in college was conflict resolution for potential RA job that didn’t pan out. Not sure if that’s liberal arts or not. But it’s very useful skill. If that is vocational then why the look down on vocational classes.

College used to be more of a luxury for the upper classes, not something to upgrade the job and career prospects of not-necessarily-upper-class people.

Today, the idea of choosing more pre-professional majors and studies in college may be looked down upon because it signals that the student is more likely to be from a lower SES background and thus must prioritize acquiring skills for immediate job finding at graduation, rather than studying a liberal arts field that, while useful intellectually over the long term including in employment, is less directly applicable to immediate job finding at graduation (someone from a high SES background is more likely to have a family safety net to allow for a longer job search, or taking a lower paying job that gives better experience to step up to better jobs in the future).