<p>I have a sister who goes to UChicago and I have noticed that the school offers no nursing, engineering, or business degree programs for its students. These are typically the degree programs that lead to a student being able to get a well paying job upon graduating with a bacherlor’s degree. Why does UChicago lack these degree programs for these student? I know they focus on a more theoretical form of education and emphasize a liberal arts and sciences curriculum with core courses but do you think they will move towards offering more practical based undergraduate degrees?</p>
<p>How many top schools offer nursing business and engineering degrees for under grads? I can think of maybe one or two. The vast majority don’t. (Although most do have engineering schools - a trend uchicago May follow in the future.</p>
<p>A UChicago business major…<em>shudder</em></p>
<p>Let me start just by identifying a few assumptions in your first post:</p>
<ol>
<li> Engineers, business professionals, and nurses make a lot of money. (Let me include research scientists in this bunch, too.)</li>
</ol>
<p>-- It really depends who, what, when, and where. </p>
<p>There are people who study biology and chemistry in undergrad, go on for a PhD, and then go for a postdoctorate position at a very well-respected institution, and this person may be making less money than a first-year schoolteacher in New York City, in other words, somebody who might not be in the sciences OR have a PhD. There are engineers who make a lot of money and those who make a solidly middle-class living. There are nurses who make a lot of money and those who don’t make “a lot of money” (or, a lot more money than somebody who isn’t a nurse.) Etc. etc. etc. </p>
<ol>
<li> One needs to have a major with a career title in it to go into that field.</li>
</ol>
<p>Probably the best way to refute this one is through some linkedin searches. My network is probably more robust than yours… but I can search for “business analysts” or other business-y sounding titles at businesses, and for those who list their undergraduate majors, you’ll see a whole bunch of things… music, Slavic Studies, political science, sociology, the list goes on and on. Students can apply to engineering graduate programs without an engineering undergraduate major.</p>
<ol>
<li> UChicago probably lacks these programs because most highly selectives don’t have them, either.</li>
</ol>
<p>You can call it historical snobbery if you want, but unless Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, Columbia, and Brown develop business and nursing undergrad majors, I wouldn’t expect to see it at Chicago. </p>
<p>Penn and Cornell strike me as highly selectives with some of these kinds of majors… for Penn, business and nursing, and for Cornell, accounting, textiles, and on and on. Cornell’s an interesting historical case, and I don’t think Chicago aims to replicate Cornell in the ways that Cornell’s unusual, just the way I don’t think Cornell is interesting in a Chicago esque common core program.</p>
<p>If you are looking for good schools with a variety of professional undergraduate programs, colleges like New York U, Boston U, George Washington U, and University of Southern California strike me as a little more full-service.</p>
<p>When people talk about a “liberal arts education,” that is generally understood to be mutually exclusive with things like nursing, engineering, accountancy, actuarial, and business degrees. It’s not entirely – Swarthmore has an engineering program that works in a liberal-arts frame, but that’s the exception that proves the rule, and it’s a very small program.</p>
<p>Chicago is very, very committed to a liberal arts framework for undergraduate education (as are most elite institutions, although many of them fudge that with their engineering programs). That is not going to change anytime soon. It would be a huge change in Chicago’s brand – you might as well ask why Chik-Fil-A doesn’t serve cheeseburgers. It doesn’t because if it did it would be a totally different institution. </p>
<p>So, if what you want is a totally different institution, you need to look elsewhere.</p>
<p>UChicago has a “Chicago Careers in… [insert field]” program to supplement the liberal arts curriculum. </p>
<p><a href=“https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/uchicago-careers-in[/url]”>https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/uchicago-careers-in</a></p>
<p>IMO, I’d rather take three classes at Booth and get the job I want rather than spend my entire UG studying business to get the same job.</p>
<p>To the extent that a career in business requires a business degree, it’s an MBA degree that matters. Many UofC undergraduates go into business careers, and the undergrad econ degree (with its rigorous requirements in math and stats, among other things) serves UofC grads well for that purpose. Keep in mind also that MBA applicants are typically expected to have 3 to 5 years of post-baccalaureate work experience before they enter an MBA program.</p>
<p>Cornell is a state funded school so that is why they offer the more practical degrees, like all state schools.</p>
<p>^ Cornell’s a little more complicated than that. Some of their divisions (with the more practical majors) have in-state tuition opportunities, but the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering, the most academically selective divisions, do not have in-state tuition opportunities. This is based on Cornell being one of two private colleges designated a land grant school by the Morrill Act in the 1860s. (The other private land grant college? MIT.)</p>