<p>Here’s someone who followed her passion graduating with a degree in Theater and Radio/ Television. OP would be rolling his eyes but I think anyone would agree she’s done very well.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sandiegomagazine.com/San-Diego-Magazine/May-2014/The-House-That-Jazzercise-Built/”>http://www.sandiegomagazine.com/San-Diego-Magazine/May-2014/The-House-That-Jazzercise-Built/</a></p>
<p>@bschoolwiz -
Actually it is quite deniable. Several recent studies, reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, have shown that while STEM majors do get higher pay initially and find jobs somewhat faster on the whole, after a 20 year career the cumulative earnings turn out to be comparable with humanities majors, on average, and the latter have a larger standard deviation. In other words, some never do earn as much, but you also have a better chance of getting the really big bucks.</p>
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Surely you can’t be that simplistic. In an academic setting you can take what you have learned and not only understand it more deeply by being in that setting, but also you can explore new theories and develop certain ideas in a way that just reading books at home doesn’t allow. Besides, a university education at almost all schools involves a lot more than just taking courses in your major. Usually your major only takes up about 1/3 of your total course load over the 4 years you attend. The exceptions would be the “trade school” type majors of engineering and architecture. I don’t mean that term derogatorily at all. Those majors, unlike any others I can think of off hand, are very focused and do not usually require the broad curriculum that other majors do, even other STEM majors (in the case of engineering).</p>
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That is a loaded statement on several levels. First of all, different people find different things challenging. Math, for example, even at very high levels is actually quite easy for some people. But that same person might not be able to communicate their ideas in a particularly intelligent way outside of equations at all. And for a lot of us, digging into subjects on a deeper level that allow a better understanding of other cultures, people in general, and the role of human enrichment on all sorts of levels is what prepares us for “real life”. You are talking about university as if it is a trade school. Guess what? If that is what you want, go to trade school! Or go to college and follow the route you suggest. But to have the gall to post what you did to start this conversation is appalling.</p>
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Actually, the main driving force of the last 20 years is that we have become a far more information based economy thanks to the tools of that technology, and what employers are finding is that students that have learned to critically read through and efficiently use the best parts from that huge amount of information are quite valuable. That is what a lot of those “useless” majors actually teach you.</p>
<p>I didn’t real the whole thread, so excuse me if I’m just repeating others’ points.</p>
<p>College is about a LOT more than just what major you choose to study. The fact is that most employers (most, not all) don’t even care what you got your Bachelor’s Degree in–they care that you have a Bachelor’s degree. They want to know that you can follow the system, that you can “play the game,” so to speak, and that you’re trainable. </p>
<p>If you’re only learning what’s in your major, not only is it impossible to graduate, but your degree is worthless. Yes, college is supposed to prepare you for the “real world”–by teaching you life skills, ie, critical thinking, problem-solving, and an appreciation for lifelong learning in various fields of studies (those GEs including the humanities you so readily dismiss.) </p>
<p>We’re also seeing higher and higher numbers of students who are going straight from undergrad to graduate school. In these cases, it matters even less what your degree is in (again, in most fields, not all.) </p>
<p>If majors were completely useless, colleges would stop offering them. This is especially true with the current state of higher education. Colleges do not have the money to offer majors that don’t in turn make them money. And in order for a major to make a school money, they have to graduate a certain number of students who will then turn around and become successful in their field–which is good PR for the school–and will donate to their alma mater–which is money directly back into the school’s pocket.</p>
<p>I have a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Student Affairs & Higher Education. Both what some would call “useless” majors. I’m in my first full-time professional job, in my field of study, and started that job 9 weeks after graduating from grad school. I had an offer on the table within 8 weeks. The same is true for all except for 1 member of my 13-person cohort. Most of us are making in the mid-high20Ks starting; HOWEVER, 7 out of the 13 of us (so a majority) are working in University Housing. We don’t pay rent, cable, utilities, internet, etc. etc. When you add all that together, we’re making low-mid40Ks starting; we just don’t see all of that in a paycheck, but it’s money that’s not going out.</p>
<p>Oh, and we got our Master’s basically for free, so none of us have additional debt from getting our Master’s.</p>
<p>But you’re right. Totally worthless.</p>
<p>One last point–you’re confusing “challenging” with “intellectually stimulating.” Education is not necessarily a rigorous major, but there is a lot of stimulating material: student development theory, legal influence in Higher Ed, the politics involved, Multicultural influences and helping minority students get through the system, etc.</p>
<p>If you think “doing what you love” is BS, you’ve never been in a job you hated. It seeps into your whole life and makes you miserable. When you’re doing something you love–even if you’re not making a ton of money–it has an extremely positive influence on all areas of your life.</p>
<p>And good luck finding teachers for your children, therapists (btw, psychiatrists go to med school), social workers, etc. when everyone is studying your suggested majors. <em>eyeroll</em></p>
<p>“trade school type majors of engineering and architecture. I don’t mean that term derogatorily at all.” You could have fooled me. If you knew more about these types of majors, you might actually understand that there are courses outside of STEM courses that are required and that critical thinking certainly is emphasized. I was a humanities type major myself in college and I never had to complete any advanced math or science courses to complete any degree. In general, STEM majors are completing very hard degrees and lots of them end up contributing a lot, as do many humanities majors. It is not an either/or type of thing. People luckily tend to gravitate to what they enjoy and contribute in, for some that might be STEM, for others the arts or humanities. </p>
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<p>What about the famous drop out billionaires? Did they plateau? Only when they are dead, I assume, and that is the same for everyone.</p>
<p>Those who like to denigrate STEM majors, put down your smart phone, don’t use your internet or TV, or kindle and see what your life is like. Please do not carry over board and denigrate any major STEM or not STEM. I have two kids in both fields. The humanities major can run circle the non-humanities major and the STEM major maybe will run circle the non-STEM major eventually.</p>
<p>Eliot 's comments about the founding of a school at Harvard to encourage the pursuit of science and engineering in 1847. “It would annihilate that absurd distinction by which the pursuits of Law, Medicine , and Theology are called professions and everything else, labor or trade.”
Yes, very absurd to ever imply that engineering or architecture is nothing more than “trade school.” And certainly insulting.
<a href=“http://www.seas.harvard.edu/about-seas/history-seas/founding-early-years”>http://www.seas.harvard.edu/about-seas/history-seas/founding-early-years</a></p>
<p>I don’t care about any study but 30% of CEOs have engineering undergraduate.
Here is the link
<a href=“Surprising Facts About CEOs”>Surprising Facts About CEOs; </p>
<p>Easy, @sevmom. All I meant (and I thought my intent was clear) was that compared to humanities majors, engineers and architects have much more “locked in” course work. All the programs I have seen for these majors, at least, don’t allow for nearly as much choice outside of their major. I didn’t say none, I am not saying they don’t usually take any humanities courses or are incapable of critical thinking, and I am not saying there is anything wrong with the more focused 4 year schedule for those majors. There is a reason I put “trade school” in quotes. I didn’t mean it literally, I meant it as a comparison. But it is a fact that those majors have much heavier demands within the major and less flexibility for those students that choose those majors, if they are going to complete the major in 4 years. Not sure why you got so upset. My goodness.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle - That means to me that 2/3 of them don’t have engineering degrees. I also suspect that quite a few of those CEO’s with undergrad engineering degrees also have MBA’s. Would be interesting to know for sure.</p>
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<p>I’m not in the “Ugh! Liberal arts majors are dumb and useless.” camp but to someone who is in that camp this isn’t especially persuasive… Not to denigrate but this is unimaginable in engineering or business. Focus on how your job is satisfying and you love what you do instead. The “our job isn’t just for money” argument is much better than the “the job prospects are still great” argument. </p>
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<p>This is probably true but it’s also true that most businesses are mom and pop shops who might employ 1 person part time as a cashier or waiter to ease their load a bit, so it’s not exactly what we should be basing major decisions on. The employers of most entry level professional jobs will care. Again, that’s not to say that it will only be from some very small set of majors, it’ll be from all sorts of majors, but I’m not going to get a job as a teacher, therapist, or social worker with an engineering degree, just like you’re not going to get a job as an engineer with your psychology degree. But to say that these jobs don’t care (which isn’t exactly what you said but if one was to say it) is extremely disingenuous, and your comments could be easily confused for something other than what you said which I why I felt the need to respond. </p>
<p>I’m lost. Must be because I’m an art teacher :)>- </p>
<p>fallenchemist, The fact that you even needed to say that you did not mean the term “trade school” in a derogatory manner shows me you know full well that you were being unnecessarily dismissive of the education that certain professions go through. Why you opened up a two year old thread to say what you did is beyond me. I’m all for the humanities and the arts but to even imply that those entering professions like engineering and architecture are going to trade school is ridiculous. I suppose you think medical and law schools are nothing more than trade schools as well. And by the way, I’m all for trade schools. They teach valuable skills. I’m all for whatever a student wants to study, is good at and that can help them contribute to society.</p>
<p>It’s really never Liberal Arts people who start this silly conversation. STEM people start it and claim it’s backed up with all sorts of cherry picked facts. One data point? daughter who graduated in the arts but also double majored in stem field, working in the arts quite successfully, high enough salary that it would be tacky to even name the number of figures. A couple of friends in Engineering having trouble getting the work they want. Two older friends who idiotically went to law school in massive debt from T14s. </p>
<p>The best major is the one you love and want to study. Life is long. Career paths change.</p>
<p>I’d hate to live in a world without engineers and scientists, but the best are also creative, very creative, and value the humanities as highly as those of us who are in the social sciences or humanities value their work, and we do. STEM major change lives. Humanities majors teach us what to do with those lives.</p>
<p>@sevmom, this thread is two months old, not two years. Plenty of discussions here pick up again after a month or two when someone discovers an interesting topic they missed previously. I’d actually bookmarked it, which is what brought me back here.</p>
<p>And I guess I’m not quite understanding the insult you’re taking on behalf of engineers. My father was an engineer and one of my sons is planning to study engineering as well. (The other is going the trade school route.) It’s not uncommon for people to categorize engineering as more of a trade/technical discipline than the humanities or social sciences. And the very rigid track one must adhere to in order to earn an ABET-accredited degree in four years means you likely won’t have a lot of time to study many of the very appealing subjects you may wish to. It’s a hard choice for many kids like my son who love the liberal arts but want to earn a degree that gives them the best chance of getting a professional position right out of college.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why the use of “trade” is considered a slight either.</p>
<p>Lucie, You’re right. Only 2 months old. I was thinking it was older when I looked at someone’s post(which may have disappeared) saying this thread was old and should RIP… I do think there are plenty of liberal arts people who also start these types of discussions and also cherry pick what they want to say and what anecdotes they want to use. I just think it is common for some liberal arts people ( and I am one myself) to use the old "trade school " comment to subtly imply their superiority and that what they are learning is so important and certainly not what those other people are learning in “trade school.” As I said, there is nothing at all wrong with trade school but as my earlier post about Harvard SEAS indicates, historically it was a leap for some people to view anything besides the original 3 professions as professions and not a trade. We’ve come a long way luckily in recognizing other professions . </p>
<p>And good luck to your son, Lucie. He will have opportunities to explore some other things he is interested in beyond engineering . There is definitely room in most engineer’s schedules to pursue other things of interest. And he also certainly has access to all his university has to offer outside the classroom, like clubs, sports, arts and theater events,etc.</p>
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OK, now you are way over the line. You have unmitigated gall telling me what I was thinking and what I meant. You have no idea what I was thinking when I said that, unless now you are claiming to be a mind reader. You actually couldn’t be taking what i said any more the wrong way from what I meant. I explained it to you, and for some reason you refuse to accept that. Bizarre. When you can prove your ESP abilities to me, then I will listen to your analysis of my thoughts.</p>
<p>In reality, the fact that I realized how it might sound and took the time to point out that I didn’t mean it that way makes it far more obvious that I didn’t mean it the way you are taking it, and baffling that you remain way over the edge on this. Let it go, you are simply wrong. And I can say that with certainty since I am the one that wrote it. And since Lucie already corrected your time frame, I will say no more about that except that two months is indeed nothing. I am not sure why you think you are setting the rules on when threads can still have posts added.</p>
<p>Med school and law school are commonly called professional schools. That is, in fact, pretty equivalent to a trade school, they are learning a singular profession. If you look up the word “profession” on thesaurus.com you see the word trade listed, although in fact I doubt I would ever call medicine, law, engineering or architecture trade schools. And I didn’t, because I put quotes around it. That means something to people that know how to read that. But in the end, I agree with you, there is nothing wrong with trade school. And since you feel that way, it remains strange that you took it as such an insult, even if you did misunderstand the meaning of my post.</p>
<p>You do realize that I am a chemist by education and had a lot of friends in school that were engineers and worked with many as well, right?. I think I have a very good idea what I am talking about. Now I suggest you just let it go, this is very off topic and I will just remove any further discussion of it. I would have just removed your reply above except that Lucie already responded. You are treading very close to being rude and calling me a liar, since I did in fact explain to you what I meant. You don’t have to accept it (although why you wouldn’t is a mystery) but if you don’t want to then just move on instead of being derogatory towards me.</p>
<p>Sorry if I said something that offended you. Thank you for taking the time to explain what you meant further.</p>
<p>Further off topic posts will continue to be deleted.</p>