What is the ultimate 21st Century degree?

Classicskid
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:43:37 +0000

That was the point of the article, anyway. I certainty didn’t agree with the entire argument, but it raised interesting points. I didn’t mean the suggestion as an attack on hard science majors, which I hold to be just as valuable as a humanities education (if combined with some liberal arts classes, as a humanities degree should be combined with quantitative courses), though you seem to have taken it that way, so I’ll attempt to defend the humanities.

You have a very narrow view of what is accomplished during a humanities education, I’m sure that the student that read those “Five Russian Novels”, assuming they were in, say, a Russian Studies course, would have more experience with Russian or other Slavic cultures than a physicist who “interacts with foreign students and faculty” - as if a humanities major wouldn’t talk to foreign students anyway. This experience would obviously be valuable in the wider world outside of physics, as many multinational corporations have strong ties to these regions, as do governments and charitable organizations, and I am sure they would look on a familiarity with them as a huge bonus to a potential employee; that is, assuming we must degrade the value of an education to how many doors are opened by your degree.

As to the portion about Science majors outperforming humanities majors on the LSAT, that is true, if you ignore the fact that the difference is about one point, and the second spot is held by students of Philosophy or Theology.

You would also have to ignore the fact that Humanities majors, especially classics, religion, philosophy, even English, regularly outperform hard science majors on the MCAT and the GRE, and that the majors with the highest acceptance rates to medical schools are Classics, Economics, History, Political Science, Religion, and English, in that order, with chemistry coming in seventh.

Source: The author may be biased, but the numbers don’t lie, so I suggest you scroll down to the charts:
http://canes.creighton.edu/Student_page/careers.html

Of course, we could try to be reasonable about these graduate school admissions tests and realize that those that succeed on the tests, and in the field of their choice, are probably already fantastically bright, logical thinkers, and that these test results should not be imposed on their respective majors at large. I certainly do not subscribe to standardized tests as any sort of reliable predictor of intelligence.

All in all, the question posed by the OP is rather ridiculous; you can’t define an era on one degree, as many arguments here have shown.