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

Parents Forum
41

“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.”

Which comes first- the chicken or the egg?

I agree with your post. I am not a historian of higher education so can’t tell you whether the easy majors in the business school exist because the students are weaker- so they need to water down the curriculum so the kids can graduate, or whether the topics themselves don’t lend themselves to a ton of cognitive rigor AS TAUGHT at these schools.

I love small schools by the way. Kid wants to major in comparative literature? I can recommend 50 LAC’s where that would be a terrific idea. Kid interested in biostatistics with a concentration in cog science? Not so much. Not the fault of the school. But a by-product of size and scope and number of faculty and physical resources is that the small college is less likely to have professors getting cool grants to do weird things which bring together three or four somewhat related scientific disciplines.

But we agree more than we don’t.

42

@blossom 50 LACs with comparative literature? I bet there aren’t more than 25 LACs in the U.S. where you can major in that. But I agree with the point of your post.

43

Any LAC which offers a degree in English AND a degree in at least two foreign languages is going to have a mechanism by which to major in comparative literature. French and English? German and Spanish? Russian and Italian?

Name me five LAC’s which don’t have an English major AND a foreign language major?

44

@LadyMeowMeow , you think there aren’t 25 LACs in the US where a kid can major in comparative literature? I’d bet almost all of them offer that major.

45

So for all positions you all would hire a GMU student who majored in Literature ahead of GMU student who majored in Finance?

46

And an LAC without a comp lit major WILL allow an English major to double major in a foreign language.

Net net- Comp Lit.

47

@CCDD14 ,

you left out this important part:

“Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy, and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that “without philosophy nothing could be accomplished”.”

Back then, almost all education was classical in the sense we speak of it now. Moreover, as a guy who attended law school in the modern era, I can tell you that law school is terribly academic; in a way, it is another type of liberal education. You can’t attend law school and study one or two things. It’s juris prudence in the broadest sense. Most lawyers will tell you the one thing you are not ready to do when you leave law school is practice law, and that is very true. It’s almost another example that relates to my point of view on this subject.

And, think. If Marx had become a lawyer or an accountant (affectionately known as 'book keepers back then," you and I would not be repeating his name and he would have been forgotten to history long, long ago as just another hired hack.

Instead, he became one of the most influential and thought-provoking thinkers in history. He was a brilliant man whose talents would have been wasted on commerce.

48

MiddleburyDad2 has a argument, if you restrict yourself to elite programs with elite kids like Middlebury. The kid who attends an Eastern Illinois type school would be better off in a business or pre-professional program though. A liberal arts degree from most schools at that level leads to a teaching career at best or at worst a Barrista or office administrator. At least an accounting or business degree will give the non-science kids some skills.

Also, MiddleburyDad2 seems to assume that kids who study Finance, Accounting, Building Construction, Hotel Management or some other pre-professional area of study don’t have interest in History, Philosophy or other liberal arts. Just because someone decided to study something more immediately remunerative doesn’t mean they have no interest in those topics or could not easily be academically successful in them.

In fact, it is probably easier for an accountant to study most liberal arts topics on their own time than for a History grad to sign up for the required accounting courses.

49

Without getting too deep into this, and with apologies for sidetracking the thread, it’s not that common a major, especially once you get past the top 25 LACs. Yes, some schools may have a ‘mechanism’ by which you can major in it, but I bet the vast majority don’t list it as a department or full-fledged program. Even these don’t:

Amherst: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments
Carleton: https://apps.carleton.edu/academics/
Earlham: http://www.earlham.edu/academics/#filterSet[programs]=

I agree, however, with @blossom that if we count double majors in two lang/lit departments then pretty much all LACs offer the option. Obviously LACs that DO have a stand-alone dept. would argue that it’s not the same thing.

50

100 million people wished his name had been forgotten long, long ago.

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@MiddleburyDad2 , his father was concerned for a reason - Karl Marx ended up living his life in poverty. We do not want that for GMU graduates.

52

Not really. Especially considering there’s plenty of public 4-year universities and community colleges offering accounting classes for anyone looking to fulfill the 150 hour credits required to be eligible to take the CPA exam.

And one doesn’t necessarily need to major in accounting as an undergrad to become an accountant as two folks I know who are accountants…one an Asian lit major at Barnard and another…a Philosophy major at a university ranked somewhere between 50-100.

Both fulfilled their accounting requirements after undergrad…especially since they needed 22-30 extra college/grad credits to fulfill the prereq to even be allowed to take the CPA exam.

53

@CCDD14 - approaches to higher education in recently immigrated families and in families that are not recent immigrants to the US are VERY different. As are the approaches to determining the life path for the child, expectations regarding professional paths and expectations regarding “suitable” ways to live your life. It is apples and oranges in many areas. I agree that it would be an outlier to find a child in an immigrant family who had the inclination/freedom to take time off to do something perceived as frivolous by the family. However, for many people from non-recent immigrant families…we did just that for a few years until we found our way.

54

YES - this ^

This is the working class background perspective I was referring to. If you are coming from a wealthy background and attending a elite school, ALL your options are good.

What if your kid wants to be an engineer, @MiddleburyDad2 ? Still better to major in English in undergrad?

55

Really? If I want to take accounting classes, I have to sign up at a CC or four year college, pay the fees, sit through interminable night classes while I balance the day job, and then take a variety of tests that, if I fail, will have to be repeated.

If I want to study the ancient Greeks, all I have to bring up YaleCourses on Youtube and listen to Donald Kagan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FrHGAd_yto&list=PL023BCE5134243987

If Donald Kagan is too much of an old, white male for you, I can listen to Jonathon Holloway in his class “American History: From Emancipation to the Present”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp6mjKumW2g&list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyqnC6Gj5VCZERhhy9CC1S6

It’s alot easier than sitting in a community college.

56

@Zinhead you are working too hard, and all the while managing to miss my point almost entirely. Not 100%, but close. I’ll say this: I think obtaining a well rounded education on one’s own is a bigger challenge than you think, and taking the accounting sequence at your leisure, which can also include online resources, is likely not as hard as you imagine.

Am I imagining that the typical student majoring in something super career focused isn’t pursuing intellectual interests outside of that area? Yeah, for the sake of discussion, I am. For the most part, that would be more the exception than the rule in all practical likelihood. But there are always the exceptions.

@suzyQ7 if one of my kids wants to be an engineer then I’ll support it. Is there a point to that question? Or are you just trying to show that you didn’t read my posts in this thread?

In all of this discussion, the thing that eludes some of you is this: not everyone in society wants to, or can, have a financially lucrative career. Education has always been, is, and will always be, about more than just that goal. Education, properly conceived, has a value in and of itself. What’s wrong with office manager? With HR? With teaching? With about 1,000 other occupations I could fathom that don’t require a specialized degree at the undergrad level? And not every science kid is going to do science. In fact, most don’t, which also supports my point. How many kids who study molecular bio actually do that for a living?

Someone did make the point about obtaining a liberal education at a non-elite school. I don’t disagree entirely. I still think that the education, wherever it is obtained, has value for its own sake. Whether the degree in English works better from a school like Middlebury than it does at Eastern Illinois is probably its own thread.

And, as I said, the economics of college are certainly more complicated today than they were 10 or 20 or more years ago. I completely understand that point.

Indeed, if only Marx had been a practicing lawyer … If you are at all serious about that, then that alone makes my point better than anyhing I’ve said ever could.

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@MiddleburyDad2 -

I got your point. I don’t think it is valid beyond a small sliver of students.

58

I completely agree with Al2simon’s post #34. The strength of the student and prestige of the schools matter a lot.

I strongly believe that a good liberal arts education will greatly benefit an individual no matter what his eventual employment–both personally and career-wise. Having all those skills middleburydad touts are indeed important and will help one advance into more complex roles that require greater analytical skills. However, one has to get hired first! With computer resume submission very common, and given our economy in which HR departments receive thousands of applications for each position, eliminating and sorting resumes by key words such as the title of one’s major, likely happens more often than not. Furthermore, I’ve been watching job ads for a while in order to help my youngest plan, and specific major designations, even within liberal arts, are typical. Apparently there was a study that showed employers don’t care much about major, but I’d contend that resumes aren’t even going to reach the boss if they haven’t met a checklist of qualifications that include major / curriculum. That’s how HR sorts.

Besides, if you want to hire an undergrad with an anthropology background, isn’t it more practical to first select and interview the kids who majored in anthropology rather than the ones who majored in philosophy but took some anthropology classes on the side? And if you need someone with quantitative skills, I doubt you’re going to look at classics majors before you check out all the math majors and engineers who also applied. Blossom, having been a classics major herself, may do hiring differently. But based on what my family have seen in the job market, I am not convinced her methods are the norm.

59

This is true in on-campus recruiting systems as well. If you aren’t in one of the majors the employer asked for, the system won’t accept your resume.

60

Yes! And at my son’ college, the school career services staff decided which students to put into the interview slots for the visiting companies–not anyone from that company.