<p>I so agree Shawbridge…in addition, it’s not only learning how to learn but it’s about learning how to ask the right question and not necessarily about having the right answers. Those concepts will take one far in life.</p>
<p>wsj author’s name is Joe Light. Why does that make me giggle?</p>
<p>“If, on the other hand, you are majoring in liberal arts to prepare for law school or business school and do not care about ever actually being paid for doing something related to Art History or Anthroplogy, or whatever else you spent the last four years studying, then great - you are on the right track.”</p>
<p>I know an art history major who works for an auction house. makes a pretty decent living. She DID attend a name school. Anthro, if its about understanding cultures, well international business or marketing could be seen as related. </p>
<p>And as the article mentions, no small number of engineers do other things. Lots of engineers at B school, certainly. Some of those end up in tech firms where they still use their engineering to some degree, but many do not.</p>
<p>[Op-Ed:</a> ‘Higher Education’ Is A Waste Of Money : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128933357]Op-Ed:”>Op-Ed: 'Higher Education' Is A Waste Of Money : NPR)</p>
<p>NPR story on this topic- Professor Hacker supports a liberal art education for undergrads and goes on to state toward the end of the article that half the engineering students change majors because it is not what they really wanted. Sometimes a good rounded education is what is most important. It is a solid foundation and then one can find their strengths.</p>
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<p>I know lots of undergrad poli sci majors who went to law school and ended up, over time, with important positions in politics and government. I know undergrad econ majors who went to business school and ended up with careers in corporate finance or I-banking intimately tied to their undergrad econ training. I know undergrad English majors who went on to law, medical, or business school and ended up as writers, editors, and publishing house executives in those fields. And most of the medical doctors I know were liberal arts majors as undergrads, many in sciences directly related to their later professional training and professional practice. My guess is a pretty high percentage of undergrad liberal arts majors end up doing something related to their undergraduate education. It may take some additional professional training and certification; it may take some time; but many, especially those coming out of top colleges, do find that sweet spot that combines their genuine academic interests with a real and substantial paycheck. Others end up doing things they never imagined, like the English major who ends up as CEO of a major corporation. But I’d be willing to bet that many of those who end up in unexpected places wouldn’t trade their undergraduate liberal arts education for anything, and would say it gave them skills and ways of thinking and ways of learning that proved invaluable in their subsequent careers.</p>
<p>Besides, for the English major who has no interest in engineering it would be a pretty foolish choice to choose mechanical engineering on grounds that a higher percentage mechanical engineering majors end up in jobs closer to their genuine academic interests, don’t you think?</p>
<p>^^Yeah, I can think of some exceptions myself. Not every liberal arts major has to go to law or business school to get a job. And some of the liberal arts are more directly employable than others. </p>
<p>I think it’s wonderful as a society that we have people who spend four years parsing the poems of Pindar or what not. But I also know several successful, well-paid attorneys who are miserable being lawyers and wish they could do something else for living, but law school was one of the few paths to a job open to them when they graduated with BA degrees in Archaeology or Ethnomusicology. Thus, I think it is important for high school kids going into those majors to understand what their realistic prospects are for getting a job IN THEIR FIELD OF STUDY. I’m not saying they should all major in Engineering. But I am pointing out that kids who want to be engineers or computer scientists won’t face that same problem or will face it to a much smaller degree.</p>
<p>My younger s may or may not apply to med school or grad school. But he decided to change his major form chemistry to chemical engineering to keep his employment options open. He thought he’d have more options with the latter degree than the former.</p>
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<p>Pretty much all the people I know that chose engineering for the money washed out in the first year or two into liberal arts and business.</p>
<p>“The PayScale survey was done as part of The Wall Street Journal’s Paths to Professions project, which looked at a selection of jobs in careers deemed satisfying, well-paid and with growth potential. PayScale surveyed people who hold jobs in industries such as health care, finance and government.”</p>
<p>Think it might bias the sample set a little bit to exclude those who couldn’t land a satisfying well-paid job with growth potential? Do these first jobs include those who went to grad/med/law/business schools or just an undergraduate degree? Are the surveyed industries representative of those where college graduates are actually finding jobs?</p>
<p>Gee. Let’s start with a generally accepted truism, add the ambiguous results of an poorly execute survey, sprinkle in an anecdotal quote, and we can get it published in the WSJ. Critical thinking and communication skills, my @$$. Perhaps the average journalism student would benefit from a course in statistics or data analysis, even if he/she has to take one less course in Greek Poetry. But that’s just the right-brained engineer in me talking. </p>
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<p>Please elaborate–I’m genuinely interested, as my circle of acquaintances is pretty skewed. What do people do when they graduate with a non-engineering degree if they don’t go to grad school? A couple of years ago, I asked for real-life examples of career paths that people had undergone with an undergraduate liberal arts degree. (I was thinking primarily about the humanities and social sciences, but now I even wonder about math and the sciences.) I didn’t get a whole lot of good examples.</p>
<p>I think the overall health & success of our country requires a mix. Thank goodness we’ve got people driven by material success. We’d all go broke without them. And thank goodness we have people driven to create the books, art, music, dance and theatre and all those things that make the journey fun. Thank goodness for the historians and the philosophers without whom we’d live solely in the present with no context of what has been and what can be. And where would we be without teachers, public servants, research scientists, doctors, carpenters,… ? </p>
<p>We now know the earth isn’t flat. Not so sure we understand that neither is the society that dwells on it. Yup, I’m one of those liberal arts grads. :-)</p>
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<p>Let me add one more anecdote to the collection presented here.</p>
<p>Where I work, a public agency in the energy arena, there are basically two professional career paths. The engineering path, and the analyst path. THe top salaries and entry salaries are comparable. And we are not talking about a king’s ransom here, I think the top guy in the whole agency makes under 200K. But it is fairly easy to make it to 100K if you hang around long enough, whther you are in the analyst or engineer’s path. So a decent income.</p>
<p>When it comes to hring, the major difference between the two paths is that to be an engineer you need a degree from an ABET accredited program. To be an analyst you just need a degree, basically a degree in anything, including engineering. So although relatively few engineers are hired as analysts, there are some.</p>
<p>Let me just add that I think aside from debates over the U of Chicago, and the validity of college rankings and standardized testing, I have read more threads on this subject than almost any other here on CC. It seems to pop up every time there is a Payscale, Monster, or Salary.com survey on this. Everyone has different experiences and there are good arguments on both sides. But I suspect this will not be the last to broach this subject.</p>
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I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Does everyone in your town or county or state hold an engineering degree?</p>
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While I agree, I also suspect (I don’t have data on this) that the majority of liberal arts undergrads will pursue grad degrees. I’m not so sure that means they’ll “need” to pursue grad degrees, since that very much depends on what they ultimately decide to pursue, which often is determined during or after undergrad studies.</p>
<p>"Thus, I think it is important for high school kids going into those majors to understand what their realistic prospects are for getting a job IN THEIR FIELD OF STUDY. "</p>
<p>I think it is important for HS kids to begin thinking about careers, and how their potential fields of study related to them.</p>
<p>We had that talk with my DD, who enjoyed her HS class in Anthro, and has expressed interest in Anthro. She asked us directly “well what do anthro majors do”</p>
<p>Answers - 1. A small number become professional anthropologists, teaching, working for museums, working for the CIA, whatever. Mainly ones who get Phd’s, mainly ones who go to top schools.
2. They go on to professional school - Law, business, medicine, social work, clergy. I pointed out that anthro would be a particularly good fit, imo, with medicine or social work. I pointed out the relative income prospects between medicine and social work
3. they go into some generic “management” field, like many other LA majors. Sales, HR, non-profits. Again, that its a particularly good fit for international NGO type organizations, though they dont pay that well. And that for that, you need a reasonably outgoing, entrepreneurial personality, both to get a job, and to succeed in one. </p>
<p>She decided to pursue a degree in Architecture (she will start in Sept, after completing a gap year). Not lucrative, but a fairly direct path from degree to career.</p>
<p>IF she changes her mind about Arch, she will have to consider a second best. Probably either Civil E or Anthro. In which case she will have to reexamine these questions.</p>
<p>Consider the source here: Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. Murdoch was a philosophy major and then took over the family business. [Rupert</a> Murdoch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch]Rupert”>Rupert Murdoch - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer. And the world would be a smaller and more dismal place without artists and theater majors.</p>
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<p>No, thank God, but I’m having trouble identifying where the 4-year liberal arts grads are. Hence, my question.</p>
<p>I work in an engineering environment, which is mostly engineers with a few physicists and mathemeticians thrown in the mix. I also know people with post-graduate degrees–doctors, dentists, lawyers, and a few PhDs. I know teachers, nurses, accountants–usually with non-liberal-arts “preprofessional” degrees. I know people without a college eduction–mechanics, retail salespeople, restaurant workers, drug dealers (kidding!). </p>
<p>So where are the non-grad-school liberal arts grads who don’t take over the family business? I’m sure they are out there and I just don’t realize it.</p>
<p>I doubt Rupert has the timne or inclination to edit or suggest articles for his many papers and stations. Ownership has nothing to do with the article which is at least something to consider when choosing a major/career. Also I think times are very different today. Companies don’t train anymore and want plug and play people. It once was very possible to have a liberal arts degree and get hired at many companies. Now it’s either the very top jobs to a relative few elite school grads or the Peace Corps, etc.</p>
<p>Many physics majors end up in banking because of their math background and critical thinking skills. When I was in college (a LAC) many took intro jobs in sales, became buyers for department stores, and also many even without physics or math degrees went into banking. The correlation between LA degrees (ie non professional degrees) and career paths is probably pretty darned low.</p>
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<p>Well, Harvard College did a survey of its 2010 grads shortly before graduation. These are virtually all liberal arts majors. According to the survey, 23% planned to attend graduate or professional school directly after undergrad. Of the 67% who expected to be working, 31% said they’d be working in financial services, 18% in consulting, 13% in education, 7% in “health or medicine” (but presumably not as docs), 5% for non-profits or NGOs, 4% in “business(other),” 4% in IT, 3% in “law” (presumably as paralegals), 3% sales & marketing, 2% government, 2% communications/media/the arts, 1% engineering, 1% sports/hospitality/recreation, and 1% military.</p>
<p>A hefty 12% of the graduating seniors said they planned to spend the next year traveling; must be nice! Another 8% said they were planning to spend the year in "volunteer activity (e.g., Peace Corps, Americorps); 5% said “engaged in another educational program” (but presumably this does NOT include graduate or professional school, which was listed as a separate category); 6% said “other activity”; and 15% said “undecided” which probably means they either didn’t have a job, didn’t get into graduate school, had a job offer they weren’t entirely happy with, or had multiple job offers and/or graduate school admissions and hadn’t yet decided.</p>
<p>I’d imagine the profile at other elite schools looks pretty similar. A lot of these jobs, especially the I-banking and consulting jobs, are high-octane entry-level jobs intentionally structured to have a high burn-out/attrition rate; most of those kids will eventually end up in business school or law school, but with undergrad loans paid down, maybe some cash left over, and some valuable work experience under their belts. Many of those in “business (other),” the Peace Corps, non-profits, “other activity,” paralegal, and education jobs will also eventually end up in law school or business school, and some probably in medical school. Most of the travelers will also eventually return home and end up . . . guess where? I believe something on the order of 85% of Harvard College alums will eventually end up in graduate or professional school.</p>
<p>Is this so tragic? Some may be surprised to find themselves there, but by now I suspect most go down that path with their eyes wide open. In fact, I recall seeing exit surveys of Harvard undergrads in which 90% say they expect to go to graduate or professional school within a few years after graduating—a slightly HIGHER percentage than those who actually do, because some find attractive career opportunities that don’t require an advanced degree.</p>
<p>[OCS-Students:</a> Jobs / Senior Survey 2009](<a href=“http://www.ocs.fas.harvard.edu/students/jobs/seniorsurvey.htm]OCS-Students:”>http://www.ocs.fas.harvard.edu/students/jobs/seniorsurvey.htm)</p>
<p>Probably the most common non-grad-school, non-inherit-the-family-business career path for people I know, both those my age and those closer to my kids’ ages, has been journalism. Lots of people in my cohort did that – both print journalism and the production side of TV news. It’s much, much tougher now, although I know a fair number of kids who are trying and two (now about 30 years old) who have honest-to-God careers happening (i.e., stable, full-time jobs with decent pay and benefits).</p>
<p>Another field that seems to have provided careers is advertising/marketing/market research. And, of course, K-12 teaching. </p>
<p>One of my favorite stories involves one of my high school French teachers, a college French major and excellent amateur musician. He developed a good reputation as an accompanist for singers and instrumental soloists coming through our provincial city (obviously those whose careers did not yet support touring with their own accompanists). One of them convinced him to move to New York as an accompanist. Within a few years, he was acting as her manager, and then he was managing five or six artists whom he accompanied on a regular basis. And then . . . he wound up as CEO of one of the largest artist-management companies in the world.</p>
<p>My sister #1 started out as a geology major, but failed to get past the required physics course three times. So she became a Spanish major, but needed an extra semester to get all of her requirements done. During that semester, she started working part time as effectively a gofer in a stock brokerage office. One thing led to another, and 30 years later she has a significant track record as a mutual fund manager, and compensation to match.</p>
<p>My other sister is a doctor, but she spent 12 years working in management for a regional stock exchange before an early mid-life crisis sent her into a post-bac pre-med program. (Good thing, though, because she would have lost her job when the exchange effectively vanished a few years ago.) She started working there after graduating from a state university as a History major.</p>
<p>My wife got a law degree, but except for a few years in her late 20s has done nothing with it. Right out of college, she wound up working for a nonprofit low-income-housing developer. She was good at that, and could have stayed at it. After our children were born, a volunteer board position with a women’s-health advocacy group led to a public health job in municipal government, which led to a job at a large foundation dealing with children’s health and welfare issues, and ultimately a wonderful career zigzagging between government and NGOs as a policy wonk/advocate/official.</p>