Meet the Parents Who Won't Let Their Children Study Literature

Parents Forum
21

Why do posters on CC insist on painting everything in such black and white terms? Most students, even those majoring in technical or specialized areas, are still getting a well rounded education. Many are good readers, writers, and critical thinkers. My D will be going to a flagship. Each school she is applying to has broad gen ed requirements. The humanities/social sciences major versus STEM/business/etc. major presents a false dichotomy.

And for those providing examples of successful liberal arts majors becoming successful in business, there are many undergrad business majors that are equally successful.

This is another of my pet peeves about CC.

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Why must you insist that selecting a major in a preprofessional subject is mutually exclusive from having the “ability to learn”, think critically, and articulate their thoughts? At American universities the major, AT MOST, takes about 50% of the entire college schedule. Students have plenty of opportunities to choose courses in various subjects. At a strong college, do you really believe that the study of Economics, as a major, produces more critical thinkers and communicators than students who study Finance - just by the student selecting Economics over Finance?

Our friends across the pond (and the rest of the world) must not know how to think critically and articulate their thoughts since most universities overseas are 100% major focused…

Also, HEADLINE, not all students want to, or can afford, to go to grad school. So if the end game is accounting, and they don’t want to take ‘accounting courses’ after college (this is called grad school) then why shouldn’t they major in accounting? They can fast track to their CPA and go about their business.

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“Unless the goal is to become educated, erudite, skilled and capable at any number of jobs.”

What you said.

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Another thing to realize is that even fields which require heavy pre-professional educational requirements such as engineering/tech aren’t a guarantee one will find or maintain gainful employment in that field.

In my extended family, there are plenty of engineers who experienced cyclical downturns when they ended up as SAHDs in an era when this was definitely frowned upon because their engineering/tech fields were laying off people left and right.

In this period, ChemE was especially hard hit to the point most parents who were engineers…especially ChemEs were strongly discouraging their kids from majoring in it and felt their kids had a much better chance of landing a leading role in a Hollywood movie or a major Broadway play than finding gainful employment in that industry at the time. Also, endless accounts of ChemE engineering classmates who were driving taxis, waiting tables, or working retail/service sector jobs not requiring a college degree/any college education.

In the summer of 2011 while my friend was looking for a car to rent, chatted up with our customer service rep. Found out he was a CS major who happened to graduate right into the dot com bust ~2001-2.

Despite his major, he was never able to get his foot into the computer tech industry and after extended periods of un/underemployment, ended up working as a customer service rep for a car rental chain. While he’s ok with where he’s at, he didn’t need a CS degree to be a customer service rep as he could have been hired into that position with any major or even without a college degree.

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@itsgettingreal17 We posted almost the same thought - at the same time. You are not alone!

The people coming from the “working as a ski instructor in Vail or Sun Valley” come in with a different perspective than those of us that grew up in working class families. I actually know many highly paid business majors working in business, and some business majors working in lower paying jobs. Same with history, English, Music etc… majors. Actually, most people I know that majored in humanities are either teaching or work in HR. With the exception of Econ.

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And not to be snarky, but many of the individuals posting such black and white opinions present an example of precisely what liberal arts and elite institutions decry (I attended two of them). I am truly amazed.

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@itsgettingreal17 and @suzyQ7 , I don’t know if you are directing that to me, but no matter.

You both seem terribly confused by what’s being said here.

The issue here is that the STEM crowd is the crowd which typically presents the fallacy that you describe as “black and white” or “mutually exclusive”, and which often decries the liberal education model as a waste of money.

To be clear, yes, I unapologetically proffer that there is, indeed, a difference between the education that a kid gets in an overly vocational and focused degree program than the one he/she gets in a more traditional liberal arts model. I prefer the latter, and I’ve spent much of my career as a technician. Yes, that involved grad school, but I draw on the skills I obtained as an undergrad every single day I go to work.

I didn’t say business school majors don’t get jobs and aren’t successful. You’ve reached your red herring quota for the day. I do, in fact, believe that Econ. is “as good” a preparation for a career in “business”, whatever that means, as a business school curriculum, and I also believe that Econ. is a more valuable education in and of itself, for its own sake beyond commercial value.

I do know a lot of people who majored in business, pharmacy, etc. in college. In general, no, I’m sorry, they’re not as well rounded, and they’re often not as good with the written or spoken word or thinking more broadly about solving issues that fall slightly or entirely outside of their wheel house. They tend to fulfill some lower level distribution requirements the first year or two, then thereafter until graduation they’re locked into a series of narrowly focused courses. I don’t think that, ideally conceived, that’s what undergraduate studies should be about. If you’re poor and need to get to work right away and that’s the overriding concern, then, yeah, you should pick something that sends you right to a pre-determined career/job path.

At some point along the line of the spectrum, yes, a course of study can be more “job training” than classical education. If you don’t value the latter or understand how it, too, can and does play a critical role in career success, then I can’t help you, because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Learning to learn, developing good verbal and written communication skills, developing enough quant. skills to be able to defend yourself, learning to think critically and becoming more aware of the larger world in which one lives, are the most important things to take away from undergraduate studies. I firmly believe that to be true.

Major in accounting if you want. As for mine, I’ll tell them to major in econ if they want to go that way, and like my friend who runs the tax dep’t at a public REIT, they can take accounting classes later if they think they need it.

At the end of the day, if you want to change my mind, you’ll have to explain to me why there are so many people running organizations who majored in Spanish at Liberal Arts College X or who majored in math at Dartmouth. How did that happen w/o job training?

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To the “black and white” question:

My observation of this thread has one position being “Pre-professional majors are valuable and traditional liberal arts majors are not valuable” and another side saying “traditional liberal arts majors are just as valuable as pre-professional majors”.

Not exactly “black and white”. One is a superset of the other.

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Really? When the poster above you flat out states that a liberal arts education is more valuable?

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^^^ I didn’t read him saying that they were more valuable. What he said was graduates of those are, IHO, not as well rounded.

He also uses the word “prefer”.

And “I didn’t say business school majors don’t get jobs and aren’t successful.”

So, yes.

31

Middlebury- all these years and I had no idea you disagreed with me so often (is there an emoji for “tongue in cheek”)

The issue is not black and white. There is no “one way” and no better path. But the parents who often decry the waste of time and money that go into getting a degree in philosophy or history or East Asian Studies typically do not understand how valuable SOME (not all, but some) new grads who have these majors can be in a business.

That’s on them.

I have a bias against many (not all, but most) undergrad business programs because having hired new grads for going on 30 years from a very wide range of colleges and universities AND for a pretty broad range of roles at various companies, I have a POV and perspective on the kids who come out of SOME of these programs.

Case study A- kid majored in International Business at a well regarded State Flagship U. OK- kid is interested in international, right? We live in a world that is increasingly flat, right? Kid cannot articulate- in any way, shape or form, a perspective (even if it’s wrong-- not looking for the “right answer” here, just an opinion) as to why China’s emerging middle class is behaving differently in some substantial ways from India’s emerging middle class.

Two powerhouse economies representing billions of people. Isn’t this what majoring in “international business” means? Having an interest in different regions around the world and how that relates to their society, economy, public health challenges, infrastructure development? Nope. Kid studied abroad in a lovely city in Western Europe and is hoping to get a job in Paris doing “International Business”. This particular university has fantastic programs in history, a wide range of cultural studies departments, econ, etc. The kid would have been better served by majoring in one of those- and THEN getting a job doing “international business” because the business degree in no way has given him/her the analytical tools to understand the globe. Can the kid do a discounted cash flow analysis? I’m sure. But my company spends millions of dollars a year training our employees, and we can do that in our mini-MBA program, no need to “buy” a kid who already knows it if the kid also can’t think his/her way out of the India/China conundrum.

Case study B- kid majored in marketing at a well regarded U. First question from the first interviewer-- Why marketing? Answer- it had fewer math requirements than any of the other business disciplines.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Marketing is possibly the MOST quant- heavy discipline right now in many corporations now that Big Data and analytics are transforming the way marketers think about customers, segmentation, share of wallet, buyer behavior, narrowcasting, not the mention dozens of new ways of slicing and dicing behavior based on web search analytics (Yes, they know when you look at a pair of shoes on Nordstrom’s website). A kid majored in marketing to avoid math? what possible job in a large corporation in marketing could this kid perform???

I won’t bore you with Case studies C- Z. You get the point.

Are some undergrad business programs both broad and rigorous? Yes. But don’t pay four years of tuition for your kid to absorb the kind of content that most companies will teach a new employee in a matter of months.

Rant over.

32

Wow, what’s with all the hate for accounting? I’ve been pleased over the years with my BS Accounting from a small LAC and my CPA license. I’ve had the opportunity to own my own firm and deal with many varied and interesting clients. It’s been emotionally, mentally, and monetarily rewarding.

Who knew I’d be a better person, if only I’d majored in Humanities at the same school, then "taking some accounting classes (30 credit hours worth) " so I could sit for the exam? /sarcasm/

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Honestly I’m surprised a small liberal arts college offered an accounting degree, mine certainly didn’t they didn’t even offer business.

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If you love accounting then fantastic. The world needs more accountants who love what they do.

But to take a kid who’d be a world class something else and force him/her to become a mediocre accountant? Seems like a waste of time and talent.

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Here’s my two cents about college majors and employability. It will probably make both sides mad. Also, although I think what I’m going to say is more true than false, there are also many exceptions whenever you’re discussing stuff like this.

Of course, if you don’t care that much about employment or salary then major in whatever you want.

  1. If you’re a college student who has really “got it going on” - you’re from an affluent background, or your family has lots of social and business connections, or you’re attending an elite school, or you’re a natural entrepreneur / really bright / charismatic / a real go-getter - then you have lots of flexibility to major in whatever you want (within reason). Of course there are no guarantees, but you’ll probably do ok. There are lots of majors where a high potential kid can learn great critical thinking skills (if they put in the effort !), and they can pick up most of what they need on the job and can be successful.

  2. If you’re an average college student - and only if Lake Woebegon are half the kids not below average - and aren’t from a family that can jetboost your career, then you want to pay a bit of attention to marketability of your major and your potential career prospects. Probably should avoid majors like party planning, fashion design, communications, xyz studies. You also have to play to your strengths - can’t turn most kids into microchip designers no matter how much the starting salary is. Majoring in liberal arts like English or Economics or Math is more risky than for the previous type of student. On average, these kids should give some more consideration to professionally oriented majors like accounting / engineering, etc. where you learn a marketable skill and often have a good career path.

Just some general ideas. I still think get-up-and-go, willingness to learn, natural aptitude, etc. matters more than what you major in. A lot of successful people do not use much of what they learned in school. But if you’re starting from the back or middle of the pack then every bit of boost helps.

I tend to agree but for different reasons than you articulate. The problem is that “business” at many colleges seems to attract a lot of least common denominator students who don’t really have a strong passion for much (I’m not talking about top 10-20 business programs like Wharton, etc). Especially the easier majors in the business school. It’s more a function of the quality of the incoming students and not so much about the nature of the curriculum … at least in my opinion.

Evaluating new college graduates (whatever their major) is a bit like evaluating babies - most of them haven’t really done anything yet that you won’t have to throw into the diaper genie; it’s all about what they can grow into. And the least common denominator students usually don’t have as much potential to grow.

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@itsgettingreal17 , you are conflating two aspects of the argument here, and in particular two parts of my post.

you seem to equate my comments with what I find to have inherent value with what I perceive to be expedient in the job market. and, frankly, given your take on this topic, that’s not surprising.

yes. I think a kid who has a degree in Economics … a kid who has read and understands Das Kapital or the German Ideology, who understands Keynesian theory, who understands macro economic monetary policy, who understands the Chicago free market school and is required to read a case or two written by Frank Easterbrook or Dick Posner and understand how that can influence not only business but life and society in general, a kid who has taken a few related Philosophy classes and has examined the fundamental concept of ownership and private property, and, yes, a kid who has taken an econometrics course … yes, THAT kid, in my world, has been better educated in terms of what I value than a kid who took a bunch of accounting and marketing and organizational management courses. I will not hide from that preference. and, in my experience, after a few years, the econ kid will run circles around the accounting kid.

but none of that is what’s really at issue in this thread. what’s at issue, at least in the main, is whether THAT kid will fare as well in his or her career than the kid who studied finance. I think so, and I think in the long run, maybe better.

@blossom, I exaggerate. we part ways on only a few points, the most notable, I think, being on the relative disadvantages of attending a huge university vs. a small college, holding constant for selectivity and relative resources.

and your rant wasn’t a rant. your case studies are precisely what I’m getting at, especially the part about the company teaching the business skills.

ask yourself why on earth Goldman Sachs, that bastion of financial engineering, hires math and government majors from elite liberal arts colleges.

i’ll tell you, because I know: they don’t want little junior business kids; they want kids who can think and who are good at learning new concepts.

the world will keep changing. you can’t learn it all ahead of time. your best defense against becoming irrelevant is to learn to be a good learner.

all else being equal, a liberal education, one that includes rigor and true balance, is better, in my view, than narrow education.

but, as I acknowledged, things are often not always equal. if you need to start making a good salary right out of college, then find that niche and go after it. I won’t get in your way.

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“Business” is the umbrella that several majors fall under. I’m certain people realize this, but the amount of tsk-tsking makes me wonder. It’s finance, accounting, IB … any number of legitimate pursuits. Many housed within a liberal arts framework of English, history, Econ, so on. For many, studying Econ and then dropping major coin on grad school is not within their means. And hoping to graduate with a job would seem to be a laudable goal.

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“The people coming from the “working as a ski instructor in Vail or Sun Valley” come in with a different perspective than those of us that grew up in working class families.”

@suzyQ7 , isn’t that just a little too rhetorical to be even remotely additive to the conversation.

there are simplifications, and then there’s what you wrote.

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eh, I’ve said my peace. there’s no hate for accounting nor for business majors.

it’s ultimately a function of one of two things: what one values. and, of course, responding to the two or three other threads, on this point, what one needs right away after college. I’ve already conceded that if one’s first job out of undergrad needs to be “the job” and if being on one’s own making decent bank right away is the imperative, then, yes, major in what is most expedient towards those ends. I think that goes w/o saying.

the economics of college have certainly become more complicated. I’ll not argue with that point.

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Just for you, @MiddleburyDad2 from Karl Marx bio on Wikipedia: