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I think it’s meaningful in that it points out the extent to which kids today look on college as job training. (Born out by all those other tidbits about popular majors.) What happened to the idea of a liberal arts education?</p>
<p>It’s WAY overrated. It’s dogfood few want to eat given the cost and need to compete for jobs. In the old days your family name and status were enough to get you a job with an English major and the rest worked in factories. We no longer are a country of factories run by the old families.</p>
<p>My soon to be NYU freshman son said “college will be like overnight camp with books”</p>
<p>The basis for this statement is the 10+ years he has gone to (the same) overnight camp. From first time camper to Counselor. He already got his first college assignment (book to read for all incoming freshmen to the college of arts and sciences). I wonder how many people major in Math?</p>
<p>mathmom, that was my feeling when reading the article, too, and it’s probably not just the kids who look on college as job training, but lots of parents, too! </p>
<p>I did find some of the numbers cited interesting and would be interested in seeing where the author got his figures. Studying languages is always an asset, and not just Arabic, either. Being fluent in a second, or third!, language is often the tipping factor in a job interview.</p>
<p>Sue, good luck to your son at NYU. My D just graduated. Tell him to do the summer reading assignment, it WILL be discussed at orientation, regardless of what other kids tell him. :)</p>
<p>Well even thinking back to my days in college I can’t think of any friends who majored in a language though I know many who took languages courses - including many of the same language at advanced levels. The closest I can think of is one who might have double majored in Near Eastern languages, but I’m pretty sure he was a linguistics major. And I had a boyfriend in East Asian studies who took a lot of Chinese, and is now a lawyer in Hong Kong. I suspect there are still plenty of kids taking languages, just not majoring in them.</p>
<p>We recently got sent a book from Harvard that included five year enrollment histories in the various majors. It was interesting flipping through. Who were the four students majoring in German? Which majors were increasing? (Economics for one - even Harvard students seem to be looking for the practical.) Computer Science grew and then busted with the dot com bubble.</p>
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How true…</p>
<p>This article is recycled from Louis Menand’s commencement speech at Pomona (his alma mater) in 2003. I would know, I was one of the graduates, and reading this article, it all sounds very familiar. Or maybe it was recycled then too…?</p>
<p>Interesting, Irene. Now that you mention it, the article does have a speechy tone to it.
I guess if it was true then, it’s even more true now.</p>