<p>monydad and momwaiting - I guess we’ll agree to disagree. Sounds like your knocking vocationally-oriented education. Is there something wrong with wanting to be an accountant or electrical engineer? It’s NOT a myth that these students will have an easier time securing employment with reasonable pay when they graduate. Look at average salaries for different types of degrees - eng and accounting are always at the top of the list. Of course, those from families with deep pockets (and the connections that usually come with money) don’t need to worry about such things. By the way, I worked for a top US Inv bank - the only economics majors we hired were the ones from the elite schools. Always seems to work that way…</p>
<p>I don’t know what schools others are looking at, but my d. hopes to become an international accountant. EVERY SCHOOL we have looked at has liberal arts distributional requirements, some of them far in excess of the distributional requirements at elite liberal arts and Ivies like Amherst and Brown. And at my d’s school (Smith), every engineering graduate MUST meet all distributional requirements for Latin Honors, something that is not required for any other student.</p>
<p>It’s not like it was 30 years ago</p>
<p>Well, as most people eventually do end up working for some business the chance of downsizing has nothing to do with UG degree. It is the same for everyone. Ask all the liberal arts majors who went out on their ears when the dotcom boom busted.</p>
<p>Mini, I didn’t know that getting Latin Honors (or at least qualifying for it via distribution requirements) was required of engineering majors at Smith. I suspect the rule has a lot to do with Smith being a liberal arts college and still offering a professional undergraduate major. Without those distributive requirements, I doubt Smith would be a feeder to engineering grad schools like Dartmouth and Princeton since those Ivies tend to value a broad education over a highly specialized one.</p>
<p>Engineering is perhaps the most difficult discipline to integrate into a liberal arts education since there are so many requirements that must be met before graduation. With business, you can take economics. With law, you can major in government (or just about anything else). But engineering is engineering.</p>
<p>People from all sorts of backgrounds find themselves unemployed during major economic downturns.</p>
<p>Even Ivy grads.;-)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.science.smith.edu/departments/Engin/courses_major.php[/url]”>http://www.science.smith.edu/departments/Engin/courses_major.php</a></p>
<p>They also have, for students with a 3.5 gpa, guaranteed graduate school admissions at the engineering schools of Michigan, Notre Dame, Dartmouth, Princeton, Tufts, and Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>I agree that downsizing happens to folks from all majors. My point was that students who see their parents downsized or struggling financially may be more anxious about future career prospects. The average starting salaries they see posted for systems analysts, engineers and accountants may give them a push toward the more vocational majors. </p>
<p>One last item…seems many are painting engineering, accounting and other vocational type majors as narrow-minded souls with poor communications skills and a lack of intellectual curiosity. Sounds like our president…what was his degree in?</p>
<p>A couple of other factors at work…students at elite high schools complete in-depth liberal arts educations before they get to college. They are bored to death sitting in 101 classes re-learning material, or worse–rediscussing material–they learned as 14 year olds. This was a true in 1975 too. Students from top high schools were bored in humanities classes.</p>
<p>Also, in 2006, students are instantly connected to vast amounts of information. They move around that information like internet crackheads. Small colleges with limited resources and limited faculty cannot offer enough information or a comparable variety of information. The information age has superceded the traditional LAC.</p>
<p>“students at elite high schools complete in-depth liberal arts educations before they get to college.”</p>
<p>If that were true, why bother to be a top student and go to an Ivy? The depth one gets in a college class exceeds anything done at an elite high school. All one has to do is peruse a college course catalogue and compare it to an “elite high school” to see this truth.</p>
<p>“Students from top high schools were bored in humanities classes.”</p>
<p>Um . . . wrong? </p>
<p>What about those student who actually wants to major in the humanities? What about the student who wants to major in biology but who has never studied art history despite a love for art? Or the economics major who is dying to learn Korean? The pre-med student who loves medieval literature? </p>
<p>It’s one thing to NOT want to learn these things (and to choose a more technical or professional type education) and quite another to say that good high schools teaches the totality of humanities. Or did I misunderstand you? Are you saying instead that elite high school have boring humanities classes and therefore their students don’t know what they’re missing in college? Either way, it strikes me as wrong.</p>
<p>“By the way, I worked for a top US Inv bank - the only economics majors we hired were the ones from the elite schools. Always seems to work that way…”</p>
<p>By the way, so did I- and the only people they hired period were from elite schools- whether they be philosophy majors or engineers. So point…?</p>
<p>I wasn’t intending to “dis” any particular major, mostly trying to “counter-dis” the rap on liberal arts. Nothing wrong with vocational training. Last I heard, lawyers, doctors are all vocations of one sort or another. Anyone can apply, but the most typical background, I believe,for these vocations is a degree in liberal arts (& sciences, let’s not forget that part). These vocations are more lucrative, on average, than the vocational fields available to undergrads usually are. At least in the case of law, but probably both, I believe that the undergrad training received is not completely incidental to qualification for entry to these vocations, or success in them thereafter. YMMV.</p>
<p>Aside: at that investment bank, the engineers generally wound up working for the liberal arts grads. Actually my views on this matter were pretty much molded by this employment experience.</p>
<p>Chedva, about your comment,</p>
<p>Finally, given the service nature of the American economy, the ability to speak and write concisely and persuasively, and to deal effectively with people, is often the most important quality to success in any business –</p>
<p>I work as a writer in the marketing and creative services department of a Fortune 300 company. There is 1 writer. And 45 people with business degrees. Yes, you can get a job if you can write. But it’s a heck of a lot easier if you can crunch numbers. Fact is, monder society values numeracy more than literacy…</p>
<p>Chedva, about your comment,</p>
<p>Finally, given the service nature of the American economy, the ability to speak and write concisely and persuasively, and to deal effectively with people, is often the most important quality to success in any business –</p>
<p>I work as a writer in the marketing and creative services department of a Fortune 300 company. There is 1 writer. And 45 people with business degrees. Yes, you can get a job if you can write. But it’s a heck of a lot easier if you can crunch numbers. Fact is, monder society values numeracy more than literacy…</p>
<p>Chedva, about your comment,</p>
<p>Finally, given the service nature of the American economy, the ability to speak and write concisely and persuasively, and to deal effectively with people, is often the most important quality to success in any business –</p>
<p>I work as a writer in the marketing and creative services department of a Fortune 300 company. There is 1 writer. And 45 people with business degrees. Yes, you can get a job if you can write. But it’s a heck of a lot easier if you can crunch numbers. Fact is, monder society values numeracy more than literacy…</p>
<p>Sorry for the TRIPLE post!!! Moderator feel free to delete 2 of them…</p>
<p>“society values numeracy more than literacy…”</p>
<p>So, true, Katliamom - which is exactly why the liberal arts education is falling out of favor in many quarters. </p>
<p>Like, Monydad, I’m more interested in a “counter-dis” than I am in a “dis.” After all, bright students abound in all kinds of colleges/universities. including the much maligned community colleges. However, I <em>would</em> like to see more students interested in a broader education instead of being purely concerned with projected salary; I think it makes them into more interesting people. I also would like people to accept that both kinds of education have value - not just the one that is vocationally oriented.</p>
<p>Naturally, since I received a liberal arts education, I see its value. I <em>chose</em> it after all. My husband, who is a scientist, chose it as well. Not surprisingly, our daughter attends an LAC. We are not rich, and we also don’t expect to support her after her graduation. </p>
<p>Both DH and I teach at a research university, and we love the students. Still, it <em>is</em> disconcerting at times, given our backgrounds, to interact with students who are less interested in exploring a variety of courses than in selecting those courses that will get them “good” jobs.</p>
<p>There is plenty of time in life to add enrichment classes and read books outside your work interest–it does not end in four years. I spent much more time in museums and reading lit books after college than in college–and all without having to listen to the latest abstract theory of literature from some leftie who wishes they were in Paris or at least NY.</p>
<p>I had to collect data from a number of British Univ - the big names. They all joked about our constant debate over liberal education. “Isn’t that what you were supposed to do in your High School curriculums?” they joked. “The purpose of college is to specialize, whether it be history or economics”. Perhaps an arrogant response. It is interesting nevertheless that they are not as hung up on this debate like we are. ‘Management’ has been welcomed with open arms (at the undergrad colleges) in these big-big Brand name schools (though it may be housed within economics, sociology, and psychology). I am a Bus prof at a small liberal arts college and find the rather late-19th century and outmoded notion of ‘intellectualism’ (as if they are engaged in ‘saintly labor’) of my supposed ‘liberal arts’ peers amusing. I majored in classical Greek and I still embrace liberal education, but the LACs may be having problems because they have not re-defined and re-invented liberal education for the 21st century. The great debates at the turn of the last century between Hopkins, Elliot, and various Presidents of the LACs was fruitful. We again need such debates. Ours is an ‘organizational society’. We live in new times and no longer can we design LAcs on old notions of the gentleman-aristocrat. Why not ask radical questions and see what we come up with; like, what would a business program look like that was delivered in ‘liberal education’ mode? Can we get rid of the 100 year old demarcation between political science, sociology and economics- not via interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary studies, but by eliminating the Departments. Put them together and let’s have a good fight. It would be fruitful. Why are we hiring late-20s PhDs who have never done much other than go to school? It is not that they do not have adequate management skills. The problem is that when they take upon management duties they adopt rather non-progrssive 1950s management styles. The academy is not what I would call an exemplar of progressive management. To paraphrase the recently deceased sociologist/philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu, the academy claims competence in critical reflection, yet they fail to envelope within their reflexive scope their own work - how they conduct their own business, how they manage their enterprise, and the influence of their commerce on the commerce of others.</p>
<p>Re #37:
Maybe there’s also plenty of time to defend your positions about these works in a classroom discussion setting, and write a series of papers about them. And maybe there’s plenty of time to become fluent in one or more foreign languages. And maybe it’s possible to expose yourself to a host of subjects, later on, outside of a classroom setting.</p>
<p>By the same token, nothing’s stopping me from pulling out a thermodynamics textbook, reading it, and doing the problems at the end of each chapter. Or reading an accounting book myself, cover to cover, doing the exercises right along.</p>
<p>I think completing either set of activities, at the level of intensive effort required in the setting of an academically challenging college, is about equally likely.</p>
<p>Enrichment is one aspect. Another is the actual improvement of nascent skills through frequent use and repetition.</p>
<p>To take a personal example which has influenced my views on this: My wife’s an attorney. I see the crap she has to read, and make sense of. and I see the amount of stuff she has to write, and mark up. And the speed/volume that she is required to process this. I know I couldn’t do her job nearly as fast as she can, or as well. Though I bet coming out of high school my verbal SATs were higher.</p>
<p>I believe the shear volume of dense, boring or incomprehensible text material she has had to read with good comprehension over the years; the amount of papers she has had to write; the amount of time she has had to spend defending her opinions on this stuff- all this practice has actually made her better at doing activities of this type, with less effort, than she was capable of starting out. And this development process started in her undergraduate studies.</p>
<p>It’s pretty hard to make up for this intensive effort over four years time. You may prefer to spend the time differently, but one really can’t do everything.</p>
<p>Nah. I like it the way it is . D called tonight very excited about her interdisciplinary (religion, literature, philosophy, history) “Search” class (D is a science/math kid) . </p>
<p>"Dad. I know the point of a liberal arts education is to broaden your mind but I never thought it would really happen. " She’s pumped. “My prof is excellent and he doesn’t care if we jump from Plato to the Bible to Thucydides when we are discussing a point.” “When I get ‘it’ I feel soooo smart. Like I really understand. It’s an amazing feeling.” </p>
<p>I may be an easy sale but this is what I was hoping would happen for my kid. At my top 100 research U we were told that kind of thinking was for upper division courses and grad students. Our job was to learn the materials provided before we went off on tangents. I think a good school should do both from the start. So far, so good.</p>