<p>curmudgeon, the majority of this forum’s regulars think exactly like you. I cannot fully agree. If you check the link I provided, you can see why.</p>
<p>Mamochka, I went back and re-read that thread. You generally failed to communicate any convincing argument for your position there, and you completely failed to deal with the mountain of evidence presented that your premises were dead wrong – including the fact that the child about whom you were worried was obviously brimming with marketable skills. It’s fine that you “stand by [your] comments,” but your comments there rang pretty hollow.</p>
<p>I understand perfectly that you are not prepared to agree with the majority simply because it is the majority. But how do you deal with the experience of the majority: person after person who has been economically and personally successful, or whose children and other relatives have been successful, in part because of – not despite – an undergraduate major that you do not respect?</p>
<p>I’ll repeat here the experience of my immediate family: Father (history -> corporate law, chairman of a large firm), Mother (philosophy -> university Education professor), Me (comparative literature -> corporate law), Wife (psychology/American studies -> government official managing $1.3 billion budget), Sister 1 (Spanish -> investment management, with no additional degree), Sister 2 (art history -> M.D.), Brother (geography -> international trader). Now, it would be a terrible world if everyone were like us, but everyone isn’t.</p>
<p>Most of the kids I meet are quite practical. If anything, they tend to dismay their parents with their career-focus and anxiety. No one is selling anyone a bill of goods about how it doesn’t matter if you study accountancy or English. My daughter is an English major – and was never going to be anything else – and she has been scheming how she will earn a living since she was 15. (She has learned, over the years, that she has lots of skills for which people are willing to pay her. She’s not going to earn back her college costs immediately, but she knew that going in.)</p>
<p>There’s an element of unfairness here, of course. Very smart, social people are often able to earn a good living without a lot of practical education. That’s not true of everyone. But the students in the middle and towards the bottom of my kids’ high school classes are not majoring in English or art history. They are studying business, accounting, nursing, and, in one case I know, commercial art. The Harvard, Yale, and Stanford English majors are pretty well populated, but – guess what? – that’s not going to be a problem for those students.</p>
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<p>Assuming facts not in evidence. What demonstrates the “increasing emphasis” on liberal arts to which you refer? I’ll go ahead and grant you the implied exclusion of math and science from the liberal arts, although that is an incorrect characterization.</p>
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<p>This is because the world is advancing and our education system is not moving forward. If we were to require students to learn more pre-college, more would be taught in undergraduate study eliminating the need for graduate school. The problem is not the work force moving forward quickly that grad degrees are required, it is our education system that is outdated and needs to be moving forward. </p>
<p>I am not saying students should not be studying arts or music, but that it should not be OK for any student to pull out a calculator to multiply 8*12. Everywhere else in the world this is unacceptable, and that should be the case here as well.</p>
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<p>Refer to the quote statement in this reply. People feel that graduate degrees are required to have the same career a bachelors gave 20 years ago. It is not because we are advancing so quickly, it is because our education system is not advancing quick enough. That is evidence enough in itself. We need to stop using the excuse “I suck at math” it is an essential in all other economic powerhouses around the world, and should be in the US as well.</p>
<p>“…it should not be OK for any student to pull out a calculator to multiply 8*12. Everywhere else in the world this is unacceptable, and that should be the case here as well…”</p>
<p>Perhaps you would prefer we revert to using slide rules…</p>
<p>Uri, I hate to pick on one major/profession, but I will give an example, and cc posters please correct me if I am wrong because this is not an area in which I have much backround. Occupational threrapy used to be an undergraduate major until fairly recently. One could then continue studying this major in graduate school. Now it has become or is becoming a purely graduate school program. This means that the student is out of the workforce for a few more years, and accumulating more student loan debt. Occupational therapists were managing to practice in the US by gaining skills on both the undergraduate and graduate level. They met licensing criteria by fulfilling requirements on the undergraduate level. Now one can probably pick any undergraduate major, and just make sure that they have taken prerequisite classes for entering this field as a grad student. I wonder if there was really the necessity for this change, and why.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think the failure, if any, is more at the high school level. For a lot of kids, college (or most of it) looks like remedial high school. (It was not so long ago that a high school degree was considered sufficient preparation for any number of careers.)</p>
<p>I have to say, though, that I graduated from high school with only two years of science and math through the calculus AB level. No one suggested to me that that was inadequate. My wife only had two years of science and three of math, and she never took calculus. My daughter – who is even more humanities-oriented than I was – had three years of science and equivalent math (although taken in three years, not four). My son had five years of science and five years of math (through calculus BC), and a non-insignificant number of his classmates had a year of post-calculus math when they left high school. So you couldn’t prove by my experience that math and science have been de-emphasized over the past 30 years.</p>
<p>I have the same experience as JHS, college bound kids are getting far more math and science than they did 30 years ago - especially girls.</p>
<p>I don’t have the impression that we are seriously lacking in science majors, but I know Tokenadult has stats about how few kids continue on in math.</p>
<p>Uri- You are quite far off.</p>
<p>Math and Science majors don’t make the big bucks and don’t have heavy employer interest. Engineering and business/econ are the most desired degrees out of UG. However, Engineering has a very finite path of advancement, leading to a return to grad school for an MBA to get the real money. Look where the money is - MD’s, MBA’s, and JD’s. MD’s are the science majors, but there are far more applying to med school than get in(not a bad thing mind you), suggesting that there are limits to the need, even if pay is very high. MBA’s have no such limitation, and are frequently social science kids and engineers. JD’s are social science and humanities kids in general. The liberal arts degrees are generally used to set up graduate school purpose or fulfill specific roles.</p>
<p>There is a demand for engineers, that is being met with a very large group of engineers to be. But math/science majors? Jobless without advanced degrees, and quite possibly even then. There are more PhD’s that PhD jobs in America. The math genius, the engineer, and so on at Princeton? They are following the psych and econ majors to Wall Street, without any significant advantage.</p>
<p>I find your judgement to be ludicrous. Our math and science people are NOT getting jobs, please don’t tell me that we need more of them.</p>
<p>We need engineers, MBAs, JDs(well, only at a certain level, below which we are overpopulated), and MDs. Three of those don’t require any specific undergraduate program. And two require minimal math and science.</p>
<p>There is a reason that only a smattering of the Ivies and the like offer engineering or business, the two ‘most demanded’ majors. That being - business hire smart people, not those who are well trained. If America is facing a problem, it is not that we are properly training our students(although I do think that HS should be escable earlier, so that trade/vocational schools are more included with HS). The problem lies with the students. They are the ones failing to cause changes. After 5 years at a job it doesn’t matter where you go your degree, your job experience should compensate. College lets business make you pay for 4 years of preparation. Training can be done by you(engineers) or by the company(the social science kid), but after those first few years, it evens out. So then, if we still don’t have innovation, it is a failure among the students, not the curricula.</p>
<p><em>end rant</em></p>
<p>DSC, you are blaming lack of knowledge on the students, not the curricula. Aren’t the educational institutions on both high school and college levels at least partially responsible for a situation when it is hard to find a qualified software engineer with an US college degree? Sure, it is much cheaper and easier to setup programs in humanities than in sciences and technologies, then import engineers from oversees. Sure, there will be some bright kids with degrees in humanities who will find their way no matter what.
I dare to say that the opinions prevalent on this subject on this site do not necessarily reflect your average public opinion in this country. Read this recent research summary as an example:
<a href=“Barefoot Shoes for Women | Origo Shoes”>Barefoot Shoes for Women | Origo Shoes;
<p>Too many technicians. Not enough creative thinkers, planners, or leaders.</p>
<p>I am curious about what the UriA/mamochka side would like to see happen. That survey isn’t evidence of much other than utter confusion – math and science are important, but no consensus that kids should be forced to take more of them, and no understanding of what the value of taking a little more of them is. Widespread agreement – among parents and students – that employment prospects are the most important factor in picking a major, but natural talents and interest is a close second. And, even then, students don’t seem to be adopting science majors in droves.</p>
<p>Why not? I don’t think it’s because they are getting seduced by the siren song of French literary theory (as I was). It’s because they don’t see the great jobs there.</p>
<p>What are those great jobs? Programming? I think most of today’s college students have some awareness of the Slaughter of the Innocent Code Writers six or seven years ago. Engineering? Maybe. Science? What’s “science”? What kind of job is a B.A. or B.S. in biology or physics supposed to be prepared for? (Other than Graduate Assistant, of course.)</p>
<p>The fields where tons of entry-level BAs seem to get hired and to do well are finance (in which math is a good thing, but science below the PhD level of negligible importance), marketing (hard science irrelevant) and service businesses, where communication and organization are paramount. Engineering? Maybe – but I’ve seen an awful lot of good engineers with mediocre careers. </p>
<p>I’m missing how herding more people into math and science majors is going to solve everyone’s problems. And, as far as I can tell, 90% of the math people learn is simply irrelevant to anything other than more math, and maybe theoretical astronomy. I never use math I learned after 8th grade (I had very good middle school math, though). A couple of times a year, I wish I knew some more math, but not often. I have a pretty good understanding of what scientists do, but there’s nothing in my life for which a couple more science courses would have prepared me better.</p>
<p>mamochka - Did you read what I said?</p>
<p>After an amount of time in the workforce, it doesn’t matter if you had the official education or not. Therefore, if there are failures, it comes to the people themselves, the curricula doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Also, my point was that money does NOT flow to math/sci kids. It flows to people with grad degrees(who are from all fields) and engineers. However, the long range earning potential for an engineer is no different that most other undergraduate degrees, the only difference is at the start, as there is less room for advancement.</p>
<p>Oh. I see now that I walked in on Act II, without seeing ACT I. Carry on. I know how this play ends. It’s been done before. ;)</p>
<p>“Assuming facts not in evidence. What demonstrates the “increasing emphasis” on liberal arts to which you refer?”</p>
<p>“Refer to the quote statement in this reply.”</p>
<p>Wow. So the source you cite in support of your sweeping claim about the direction of American higher education is…Northeastmom’s post? I’m afraid that won’t do. Two people assuming a fact without evidence would be no more convincing than one. Ironically, in this instance Northeastmom made it clear that she was offering a theory, not fact – she referred to her post as “just my opinion.”</p>
<p>This kind of thing will only undermine your position that a liberal arts education isn’t necessary to prepare students to analyze and support arguments.</p>
<p>mamochka may well come from the former Soviet Union where only a handful of fields – engineering/sciences being among them – offered a reliable path towards economic/social well-being. </p>
<p>This is not the case in the US, where liberal arts graduates can move onto law, business & medical careers. </p>
<p>I think the crux of this disagreement may well be a cultural misunderstanding.</p>
<p>JHS, I am not trying to solve anyone’s problems or “herd” anybody into science & technology. I am merely suggesting that there may be many humanities graduates who cannot fully relize their potential, and that the educational system could do a better job explaining life after college. This would help with the “quarter-life” crisis too. </p>
<p>Katliamom, the fact that someone expresses a different opinion does not necessarily mean a cultural misunderstanding. BTW, in the former Soviet Union engineering/sciences did not lead to economic prosperity or elite social status. Yes, I know that liberal arts graduates can move onto law, business & medical careers. The question is, how many such graduates (and let’s not talk about Ivy League and other top-tier schools) end up in low paying jobs without the means to continue their education.</p>
<p>mamochka, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I lived in Eastern Europe, traveled in Russia recently & back when it was the Soviet Union, and know a lot of Russians, eastern/central Europeans in academics. Everyone I met pushed their kids into technical fields, engineering and the sciences. The same could be seen in the parts of Asia I’ve traveled in.</p>
<p>As to American liberal arts grads ending up in low paying jobs – yes, some do. But many do not. And there have been millions of liberal arts grads who pursued and continue to puruse law, business and medical careers. I am NOT referring to Ivy League or other top-tier schools – I am referring to public and private universities and colleges across America. </p>
<p>As I’ve said in many posts – higher education is something this country gets right. There are many choices, and many opportunities to get an education, to get more education or to completelely change your direction in education. It’s a flexible system that’s the envy of the world, and yes, I can supply some links to prove it but you too can google.</p>
<p>More emphasis needs to be put on math and science. We are lacking in those fields. We do not keep up with what is suggested by Moore’s Law. I personally feel that this needs to be emphasized above all else. We have become too boorish a nation, where most HS students eliminate mathematics and science before anything else, as they feel it is boring or too difficult. Engineering is perhaps the best analytical education you can get. We have a problem when our children don’t like to read Joan Didion; but we do not say a word when these same students rule out mathematics and science. We should be keeping up with the rest of the world. We need to be creative & innovative. The best selling merchandise in the US is foreign produced. The largest sales of automobiles in the United States are of foreign produced vehicle such as Toyota. We should be emphasizing how fun math, science, engineering can be. Right now we are pretty much emphasizing people to stay away from it. </p>
<p>JHS - I am an engineering major, and as an engineering student, I can see how advanced foreign students are in these fields. They take American jobs, well paying American jobs at that. Universities and employers alike often feel students are not well prepared to cut it in the real world. And as far as your earlier statement. MBA’s many times do this to get into financing and/or banking, as well as other fields where quantitative skill is very important. Engineering is, in my opinion, the best analytical education you can get, yet the numbers of engineers and scientists are declining. Being a advocate for emphasis on these fields, as I know how we lack very much in comparison to other countries, reminds me of how dependent we really are on these countries for innovation. Too much emphasis is being on culture nowadays. </p>
<p>I do not suggest removing arts programs, I am merely suggesting reform in administration in the school systems across the country. HS students should be introduced to these fields more often, as they are very important to the progress of our countries economy, especially with such new horizons in global markets, our innovation falls short.</p>
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<p>Math & Science is an enormous part of engineering. Engineering is math and natural science applies to specific topics. It is funny that the highest paying jobs in the country are in finance, which are very reliant on mathematics. The argument for MD’s and Law school fails in comparison as well. Math and Science (engineering, etc) students do extremely well in professional schools and are more prepared for the analytics. </p>
<p>The people are doing well with graduate degrees, of course. This is because our undergraduate degrees are not preparing students well enough to take on careers in those fields. Graduate programs are pretty much required at this point. Soon a PhD will be the next high school diploma.</p>