<p>And here I thought the 20th century was marked by technological, medical and political advances, but now I see that I should really be bowing to the almighty MBA.</p>
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The entire world - including China - is learning English. English is the lingua franca of the business world and the international political scene. What makes you think that this will change anytime soon?</p>
<p>What about Men’s Studies? Heck, there are more women than men in schools and education, and even women earn more than men. Am I seeing a mirage?</p>
<p>I think Men’s Studies is already quite popular under different names: history, political science, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t know they examine the relationships between men and society! What about Queen Victoria and Margaret Thatcher then?</p>
<h2>The entire world - including China - is learning English. English is the lingua franca of the business world and the international political scene. What makes you think that this will change anytime soon? ~ Bor!um</h2>
<p>It was a joke, that you didn’t get.</p>
<p>It was a satire on the notion that we are so indebted to the Chinese, that they will own us in a few years.</p>
<p>Yes, I didn’t get it. Thanks for pointing it out.</p>
<p>Way too many kids on this forum actually seem to believe that studying Chinese will help them with a career in business.</p>
<p>Math. Why? It’s math, that’s why.</p>
<p>Sociology or Hotel Management, obviously.</p>
<p>I think Genetic Engineering (or whatever the correct term) is going to be extremely important, as will other specialties like Bio Engineering, and tech disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence (Intelligent Systems).</p>
<p>Another important major, that may surprise people is Agricultural Engineering, or BioAgricultural Engineering (again, don’t know the correct terms). As we know, a major issue our country will face is energy independence, and environmental issues. I think BioFuels will grow in importance, as well as genetic manipulation of certain plant species to produce needed resources.</p>
<p>For example, there is a scientist (just saw this the other day on Discovery) who is genetically engineering plant species so it is able to burn at a higher rate when turned into Ethanol. I think you will be seeing much more of this, including things like “super crops” that can be genetically designed to yield high crop returns.</p>
<p>I also see a major push back into space, which will create new technologies. NASA’s initially space program had a very unexpected but very real affect on our nations tech industry, all kinds of new discoveries were inadvertently found while pursing space exploration. So, physics and other math disciplines will continue to have major importance.</p>
<p>Students need to take a look around and figure out what is, and what will be in demand - hence, why I’m so critical of many humanity majors, which are not only not in demand now, but their relevance is decreasing by each other.</p>
<p>I think that if students want the broad education LA majors provide, they should really double major. I think that makes for a really strong education. For example, English & Engineering, or Philosophy & Biology, Political Science & IT, ect.</p>
<p>“I think Men’s Studies is already quite popular under different names: history, political science, etc.”</p>
<p>I think that’s the first time I started uncontrollably laughing while on this website…</p>
<p>Same here. That’s why I said Men’s Studies. What will be the position of Men in relation to Women? Will we see more Kevin Federlines…?</p>
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<p>Well it can’t hurt! We just spent 5 years in China on an expat assignment and knowing the language would have been a big help!</p>
<p>It’s not just the language, it’s the culture.</p>
<p>Wildlife & Fish Management. We have to be ready for when the fish invade.</p>
<p>PS: This is a ridiculous question.</p>
<p>A degree in the applied sciences (computer science, engineering, applied math, etc.) will serve you well during this age. </p>
<p>The humanities are growing more and more obsolete.</p>
<p>I read a Newsweek or Time article a while back that asserted, with the coming age of globalization and ultra-specific technical disciplines, the broad based global and cultural skills, as well as the reasoning and writing skills, that one learns in a humanities degree are due for a major comeback.</p>
<p>Since when are humanities degrees teaching reasoning or inter-cultural skills? </p>
<p>The average science major at my college, who interacts with foreign students and foreign faculty on a daily basis, seems to have more intercultural skills than the average humanities major, who might have read 5 Russian novels or studied the Ancient Greek. (About 1/4 of our science majors are international students, but very few of the humanities majors.)</p>
<p>Science majors outperform humanities majors on the LSAT, which is designed to measure critical reading and reasoning skills. Humanities majors are trained to produce 20 pages of fancy-sounding exposition on demand, sometimes with very little substance.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Source: The author may be biased, but the numbers don’t lie, so I suggest you scroll down to the charts:
<a href=“http://canes.creighton.edu/Student_page/careers.html[/url]”>http://canes.creighton.edu/Student_page/careers.html</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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The more questionable leap is in assuming that academic knowledge of Slavic artistic culture provides experience useful when dealing with individuals of Slavic ancestry.
Citation please. I don’t doubt that your claim is true, but I’d be interested to see the data.</p>
<p>More to the point, I think there is probably strong self-selection bias at work here. Attending med school is not generally the primary stream for graduates in the subjects you name. Students going out of their way to pursue an abnormal course of action probably have strong incentive to select that option and therefore succeed at a higher rate. Just a possibility.</p>