You just can’t make it up.
Hella-cool (though optional) economic analysis here.
44 Replies to “Liberal Arts Majors Demand More Help at Job Fair”
Too funny,—“Even local companies that aren’t hiring could meet with liberal arts majors and provide them with advice on how to find jobs.” — Yeah,like tell them to learn a marketable skill.
Liberal Arts majors need to suck it up and deal with the truth: your decision to not learn a marketable skill in college leaves you with the choices of going to law school, getting a Ph.D. and publishing frequently, or learning to ask “would you like fries with that?” Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to trust a philosophy or poli sci major with ANYTHING critical or important.
The Captain is right! Unfortunately though too many liberal arts grads end up working government jobs. I’ve held a government job for 37 years. I was hired for my technical knowledge and skills learned from my engineering classes. I’ve seen the liberal arts grads take over all most every department and now mostly only liberal arts people are hired (Highways still hires some engineers but budgets & politics keep them from doing their best). I am so sick of trying to train the liberal arts people we’ve hired – they just don’t come with the basic skills needed for the job and aren’t interested in learning them. All they want to so is write self serving reports for other liberal arts grads to read & rewrite that get sent to people who don’t need them. These people don’t get the concept that they should be performing some function that produces results and makes life easier for the public (i.e. the people paying our salary). All they are interested in is “personal career advancement” and “professional development” – helping people and public service are no longer priorities for these people.
So you decide to major in something kids do everyday for free and it’s the fault of job fairs and employers that you can’t find work?
Only liberals would come to that logic. Viva la personal responsibility!
Should’ve got a library card instead of an Arts degree.
There’s always creating Obama propaganda art for the NEA.
ACORN is hiring to fill some recent vacancies.
Degrees in Victimology of Social Justice are preferred.
“Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to trust a philosophy or poli sci major with ANYTHING critical or important.”
That’s not what the Captain’s second graph shows. It shows that 81% of the House of Representatives in the state of Minnesota have crap degrees. So the electorate trusts these guys to govern them and that’s the problem.
I think that many students don’t take programs that lead to well paying careers is because they aren’t driven by the economic necessity to do so, as past generations were. Mom and Dad are well set up financially and can afford to keep looking after them. Generally speaking, these kids aren’t rushing off to start their own families but are content to continue being dependants of their parents.
The parents that mini-vaned them to and from school, hockey, dance classes and play dates with friends, etc. for 18 years have launched a generation of adults that still have their training wheels on.
Our society, so wealthy that it has funded ever increasing fluffy programs for thirty years is now reaping the rewards of those programs.
justsaying – you are exactly right. The liberal arts grads move ‘en masse’ into the public sector. We, the taxpayer, are paying them to do nothing; to join the public sector union and spend their days writing irrelevant reports, to go to endless conferences and meetings..and focus on their salaries, benefits and pensions.
Liberal arts major here who married a liberal arts major. Course we both had significant education in technical skills, her accounting and me engineering. But neither of us got B.S. degrees. We are doing just fine, thank you. College doesn’t need to be tech school.
Cal said “The parents that mini-vaned them to and from school, hockey, dance classes and play dates with friends, etc. for 18 years have launched a generation of adults that still have their training wheels on.”
Very true. That’s why I like number 4 on the Captains list. Increase the voting age to 30.
“In our century’s second worst economic downturn”
I thought this was the worst one? So last millenium.
There is really nothing wrong with liberal arts degrees in general, the problem is the vast number of people who graduate with these degrees without any consideration of developing skills for the “Real World”. One of the degrees I have is in Pure Mathematics which is universally respected and is still about as useful as a philosophy degree; there are a handful of jobs that look for people with the degree, most of which are looking for someone with a PHD.
I realized how little demand there was for a Pure Math major in the real world in University so I decided to get a Computer Science degree at the same time; which opened up a lot of doors in the “Real World” for me. The interesting thing with Pure Mathematics was how many like-minded people there were, and about 2/3 of my graduating class was getting an Engineering or Computer Science degree (or doing a double major) at the same time; and the remaining 1/3 tended to already be accepted to a post-grad program or were entering into education. The end result is a class of (roughly) 20 to 25 people who all had a viable plan for future employment and success.
When you contrast Pure Mathematics with a typical liberal arts degree you will find that most of the liberal arts degrees are graduating several times as many students (often 10 times as many students) and very few of them have developed any skills to aid in them finding a job after graduation. What this means is that for every student in Pure Mathematics who “Falls through the cracks” and doesn’t get accepted to higher education (or dislikes/fails at their back up plan) there are hundreds of liberal arts majors who are working at Starbucks or Chapters doing low paying jobs that they feel are acceptable.
My niece will soon be a teenager, and not long after that will probably be heading to college. The advice I will be giving her is that she should pick the career she wants to have and not let the world pick one for her; and if she wants to study something for personal enjoyment on the side that is fine.
Well Tim, it used to be that liberal arts were about making people think critically and question their preconceived notions and ideas. It was about appreciating art and literature and being able to identify masterpiece and the elements that made them so.
Unfortunately modern liberalism has been hijacked by a group of motely, ammoral homosexuals, vegetarians, atheists and antisemites that no longer think about the issues they protest. Don’t even get me started on what passes for ‘art’ and ‘literature’ for these latte and tutu types.
The fact is that while most of these people lack real-world skills…they also lack the ethics and morals to make fair decisions, they have no concept of team work, and a grossly inflated view of themselves. The best way I heard it said was that most liberal arts types are really stupid people that have been educated beyond their intellects.
Look at the financial markets. We took a bunch of physics and math majors with pure technical degrees and trusted them with our economy. I think that a little study of history might have been useful for those guys.
“With such a huge segment of the student population excluded, what’s the point for liberal arts students to attend?”
That’s not the question. The question is simply what is the point of liberal arts students?
Liberal Arts grad here, with a double major in history and anthropology. This will I suppose earn me the derision of the (usually) erudite Captain, and many others. I went on to get a Masters degree in divinity, and have been working as a Pastor ever since. Again, I imagine that many here will only double down on their derision having learned of my chosen career, as I have never built a bridge, and do not produce widgets.
Full disclosure: I acknowledge that many (most?) liberal arts grads can be a mite on the loopy side. But many of us are not. I credit my education with my current philosophy of life.
For instance, it was by studying Karl Marx that I saw the folly of Marxism. Granted, the excellent christian education I received from my pastor helped me see through this.
It was by studying sociology that I decided that the basic sociological understanding of the world (nurture over nature) was flawed.
And it was through the study of history that I came to appreciate the glory of western civilization, and also came to be critical of those self loathing forces within western civilization which would bring it down.
Do all liberal arts grads come to this? Nope. Not by a long shot. I lament the fact that liberal arts has strayed from it’s roots, away from what used to be called “a classical education”. I am not denying major problems.
But there is good and bad everywhere. The captain is big on studying economics. Has he never encountered a loopy leftist economist? Galbraith for instance?
What about an evil engineer? I suppose there were a few of them who built the death camps. You know, like Auschwitz. Where Dr. Mengele worked. Thought to be fair, he had two doctorates. One in medicine, and one in anthropology. So I guess we’ll call that one a draw.
I am not defending self entitled whiners, and people who can’t seem to grasp the concept that a liberal arts education merely lays the groundwork for training that can lead one into a career. But neither will I fail to mention the myriads of tech and science grads I have met who slavishly accept such howlers as “Nazism is a right wing movement” and “Christians launched crusades, but Islam never did.” and (everyone’s favourite logical contradiction) “Everything is relative.”
I credit my liberal arts education with teaching me to think. And I learned to think by daring to question my professors. I will grant you that there were lots of sycophants in my classes. But not all of us were.
Anyway, I disagree with the Captain’s contention that there is no value in a liberal arts background. It is simply a sophomoric analysis.
After all, where would we be if Churchill had not studied history, and English?
“Unwanted: editorial interns, philosophers, writers, history majors, sociology researchers and publishing interns.”
ughh wait a minute here… that is a satirical piece right?
When I worked for the Feds we needed a Chemistry degree or experience as a technician. As the years went by it was more difficult for experienced people and a higher emphasis on a ‘degree in the sciences’. What we got was a bunch of Bachelor’s in biology. The target group for employment changed to reflect what they wanted to hire, not what was required for the job. As a result the lower managers and supervisors couldn’t really solve the problems they were required to solve. It became more about management of human resources than getting the job done. A lot of good people took early retirement because they just could not get things done or cover for those that couldn’t. Technique was terrible and being passed on to new people as the way to do things. Bad results.
ET: Your additions are correct too.
Jim: Your last paragraph is dead on.
Karl: It wasn’t engineers who made the decision to build the death camps – mad dictators and evil scientists are another matter. Nice to see a liberal arts guy doing good in the world.
interpretive dance students required !!!
seems it would make laying out geophones or even surveying much more entertaining for the rest of us.
oh, I dont want to pay for it , hell no, Ive been paying the system for years to bring this horrid spawn through. but certainly the federal infrastructure program could subsidize us.
I recall going to a job-fair as a 3rd-year undergraduate, and meeting an HR rep from a company who was almost explosive in her disdain for the B.A. I would get. “What use is that” she very nearly shouted at me. My response was truthful: I thought that the purpose of university was to get an education, and that if I wanted vocational training I had plenty of better and cheaper options open to me.
I do think that universities are selling degrees as “access to jobs with higher income”, and that many students need better consumer skills in order to know that this is true only if you select the right course of study. Even then, my friends who studied engineering because they loved engineering have done much better in life than the friends who chose engineering because that was the one major with good job prospects at the time.
I think you are right about one thing jim, our educations are thirty years old, and while the adulteration had begun, it wasn’t as incessant.
Also, if you look at the people who had most to do with the investment banking side of messing up our economy, they were people who were hired into the business without an appreciation of history, and hypertrophic math skills. Here is a pre-crisis piece on the subject from 2003
*Bond Traders With Math, Physics Degrees Rise in Pecking Order* http://www.cba.uh.edu/rsusmel/7386/bondtrading.htm
Further to Karl’s posting, I’m an arts graduate myself (languages). And I agree with Karl that the Captain is essentially talking nonsense in saying there’s no value to a liberal arts background. The Captain seems to think the world should be run by technocrats. No thanks. We need a blend of academic disciplines.
But here’s the rub: there’s a bizarre irony about liberal arts grads whining about job prospects. There are all kinds of satisfying careers for arts grads out there if they would only be more flexible in their expectations – and by virtue of being arts grads they should be more flexible by default.
In my own case, I more or less faced three choices at the end of university:
1. Continue into post-grad work in which case I pretty well would have had to have sought a Ph.D. to achieve any kind of sinecure.
2. Become a schoolteacher. (Doing supply teacher work while at university cured me of any desire for this! Not because of the kids, mind you; because of the mindset of the education system.)
3. Do something entirely different which might not appear, at first sight, directly related to my academic background.
I chose Number Three, entered the Canadian Forces as an officer and subsequently enjoyed a long and rewarding career where my arts background stood me in surprisingly good stead.
Too often, I find arts grads unwilling to think out of the box. Indeed, I myself have young relatives whose complaints that “they can’t get a good teaching position” really just mean they don’t want to leave Toronto for a job in Sudbury.
Just wondering – how would the different professions and workers and weavers fair in a barter-system world?? The ultimate in determining what a person and his services are worth.
How would they “fair” in a barter system world? Fairly well I think.
Karl says “How would they “fair” in a barter system world? Fairly well I think.”
The contents of the article of this piece would suggest otherwise.
Actually, I was poking fun at Ron’s unintentional misuse of the word “fair”. I think what he meant was “How would they FARE” …
BTW, “The contents of the article of this piece….. ????”
Oh grammer. We hardly knew ye ….
Seems the private sector employment market is flat for the modern ‘liberal arts’; subverting culture group interventionists, politically correct moralizers, amoral scolds, public sector butt sniffers and professional fomenters, sycophants and busybodies.
I took liberal arts for the first two years of my post-secondary schooling. There is nothing wrong with it, per se. However, students must be strongly advised that the market (often changing) will demand something more of them.
As others have said before me, most kids are spoiled and the education system has set a bar for mediocrity. I’d say those are bigger problems than reading Great Books.
Just my thoughts.
Once upon a time there was value in a liberal arts education. A time before cultural relativism, victimology and infestation of other leftist ideas. My understanding is that colleges now regard liberal arts degrees as funding units for their more important programs (LA programs require less money than science and other professional studies). The more bums in seats, the better. Unfortunately, the result is a gaggle of graduates that regurgitate these ridiculous ideas in government, HR and the education system. This allows them to implement stupid policies and programs that multiply faster than rats in Swift Current
Karl:
Oh spelling, ye hardly knew it.
Who was clapping in the background? I presume this was a press conference, and it couldn’t possibly have been the journalists.
Tim, the bankers did exactly what they should have done in the sub-prime crisis: make a profit for themselves and their companies under adverse conditions.
They were forced by gov’t to make politically correct loans, and they only made them when the gov’t promised to cover them. This crisis was guaranteed the minute the democruds racialized lending practices. The hell of it is that the liberal arts types that created this mess are now the same idiots that are in charge of solving it – with the predictable results.
We all know the answer isn’t in running huge deficits, we all know that bailing out non-performers is a mistake, and we all know that blacks and minorities should pay their own way the same as the rest of us.
When president Obunghole points at a company and decides that it is unacceptable for them to profit they will either fold, take their business elsewhere – or hold their hands out for the gov’t to pay the shortfalls.
Look at what’s happening here – don’t tell me this is the fault of people with practical educations. This is the fault of liberal fart suckers that believe in the free lunch, that gov’ts can create wealth and that rich people can work for free.
Johann:
ye (yē) pronunciation
pron.
1. (used with a pl. verb) Archaic. You.
2. (used with a sing. verb) Archaic. You.
[Middle English, from Old English gē.]
“Clearly the Career Fair isn’t conducive for many. It’s time they made a change to reach out to more students in a new format, in a new way.”
Or the liberal arts majors could wake up and realize they’ve just been had by “Big Education”.
There was a time, long ago, when a liberal arts degree really meant something. It was available to the few and was as rigorous as it was well-rounded — i.e. universal, thus “university”. Of late it’s become an extended day care for the insufferably cocooned. It’s not that those with liberal arts degrees are useless. It’s that liberal arts grads are a dime a dozen and given the lack of rigor in most programs the degree is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on, failing as it does to provide an outsider with any proof of distinction, wether of industry, intellect, insight, or even a solid grounding in what may constitute our western historical, literary, philosophical, scientific or economic intellectual heritage. In short, a B.A. can be pure puff, and there’s nothing to tell it from one earned through real creativity, hard work and intellect. It’s been hyper-inflated and suffers the fate of any hyper-inflated currency — irrelevance.
Sorry, Kate, for this nitpick contest. This will be my last such post.
Karl: I was referring to your (mis)spelling of the word “grammar”.
I think it is clear here that the Liberal Arts majors that have commented here have prospered in life mainly because they used their degree as a tool or stepping stone to get where they are today. Unfortunately, a great number of BAs today expect that piece of paper to be the ticket to $$$. The culture of entitlement makes it hard for these snowflakes to see life as it really is.
Johann,
Touché.
🙂 (yes, I’ve been smiling all along)
Karl
In the words of Moses Harry Horwitz …. “Nyuk…..!”
“With such a huge segment of the student population excluded, what’s the point for liberal arts students to attend?”
That pretty much sums it up right there.
Posted by: Douglas2 at September 23, 2009 11:01 AM
……..my friends who studied engineering because they loved engineering have done much better in life than the friends who chose engineering because that was the one major with good job prospects……….
Therein lays the essence of success, doing something that you really want to do. You may want to be prepared that the financial rewards may not be what you expect, though if you stick with it, eventually you will get satisfaction. It takes patience, grasshopper.
If you do things that pay well so much the better.
Many find even well paying job less than challenging if it is not something they really want to do.
I had to laugh upon reading this…
“In our century’s second worst economic downturn, students should be receiving as much help as possible. The one-page outline of tips for liberal arts majors in the Career Fair packet isn’t cutting it…”
Our century’s second worst economic down turn?
What was the first?
Perhaps if whoever wrote this had a clue, they might be able to get a job. If this is what passes for college level writing, no wonder they will have poor prospects. Regardless of a humanities degree or whatever, stupidity is stupidity.
Liberal Art$ Major … job wanted?
Try the local Union Hall.
You are just what they want….not what they need….. just what they want.
A snivelling “I deserve MORE whiner”.
Too funny,—“Even local companies that aren’t hiring could meet with liberal arts majors and provide them with advice on how to find jobs.” — Yeah,like tell them to learn a marketable skill.
Liberal Arts majors need to suck it up and deal with the truth: your decision to not learn a marketable skill in college leaves you with the choices of going to law school, getting a Ph.D. and publishing frequently, or learning to ask “would you like fries with that?” Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to trust a philosophy or poli sci major with ANYTHING critical or important.
The Captain is right! Unfortunately though too many liberal arts grads end up working government jobs. I’ve held a government job for 37 years. I was hired for my technical knowledge and skills learned from my engineering classes. I’ve seen the liberal arts grads take over all most every department and now mostly only liberal arts people are hired (Highways still hires some engineers but budgets & politics keep them from doing their best). I am so sick of trying to train the liberal arts people we’ve hired – they just don’t come with the basic skills needed for the job and aren’t interested in learning them. All they want to so is write self serving reports for other liberal arts grads to read & rewrite that get sent to people who don’t need them. These people don’t get the concept that they should be performing some function that produces results and makes life easier for the public (i.e. the people paying our salary). All they are interested in is “personal career advancement” and “professional development” – helping people and public service are no longer priorities for these people.
So you decide to major in something kids do everyday for free and it’s the fault of job fairs and employers that you can’t find work?
Only liberals would come to that logic. Viva la personal responsibility!
Should’ve got a library card instead of an Arts degree.
There’s always creating Obama propaganda art for the NEA.
ACORN is hiring to fill some recent vacancies.
Degrees in Victimology of Social Justice are preferred.
“Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to trust a philosophy or poli sci major with ANYTHING critical or important.”
That’s not what the Captain’s second graph shows. It shows that 81% of the House of Representatives in the state of Minnesota have crap degrees. So the electorate trusts these guys to govern them and that’s the problem.
I think that many students don’t take programs that lead to well paying careers is because they aren’t driven by the economic necessity to do so, as past generations were. Mom and Dad are well set up financially and can afford to keep looking after them. Generally speaking, these kids aren’t rushing off to start their own families but are content to continue being dependants of their parents.
The parents that mini-vaned them to and from school, hockey, dance classes and play dates with friends, etc. for 18 years have launched a generation of adults that still have their training wheels on.
Our society, so wealthy that it has funded ever increasing fluffy programs for thirty years is now reaping the rewards of those programs.
justsaying – you are exactly right. The liberal arts grads move ‘en masse’ into the public sector. We, the taxpayer, are paying them to do nothing; to join the public sector union and spend their days writing irrelevant reports, to go to endless conferences and meetings..and focus on their salaries, benefits and pensions.
Liberal arts major here who married a liberal arts major. Course we both had significant education in technical skills, her accounting and me engineering. But neither of us got B.S. degrees. We are doing just fine, thank you. College doesn’t need to be tech school.
Cal said “The parents that mini-vaned them to and from school, hockey, dance classes and play dates with friends, etc. for 18 years have launched a generation of adults that still have their training wheels on.”
Very true. That’s why I like number 4 on the Captains list. Increase the voting age to 30.
“In our century’s second worst economic downturn”
I thought this was the worst one? So last millenium.
There is really nothing wrong with liberal arts degrees in general, the problem is the vast number of people who graduate with these degrees without any consideration of developing skills for the “Real World”. One of the degrees I have is in Pure Mathematics which is universally respected and is still about as useful as a philosophy degree; there are a handful of jobs that look for people with the degree, most of which are looking for someone with a PHD.
I realized how little demand there was for a Pure Math major in the real world in University so I decided to get a Computer Science degree at the same time; which opened up a lot of doors in the “Real World” for me. The interesting thing with Pure Mathematics was how many like-minded people there were, and about 2/3 of my graduating class was getting an Engineering or Computer Science degree (or doing a double major) at the same time; and the remaining 1/3 tended to already be accepted to a post-grad program or were entering into education. The end result is a class of (roughly) 20 to 25 people who all had a viable plan for future employment and success.
When you contrast Pure Mathematics with a typical liberal arts degree you will find that most of the liberal arts degrees are graduating several times as many students (often 10 times as many students) and very few of them have developed any skills to aid in them finding a job after graduation. What this means is that for every student in Pure Mathematics who “Falls through the cracks” and doesn’t get accepted to higher education (or dislikes/fails at their back up plan) there are hundreds of liberal arts majors who are working at Starbucks or Chapters doing low paying jobs that they feel are acceptable.
My niece will soon be a teenager, and not long after that will probably be heading to college. The advice I will be giving her is that she should pick the career she wants to have and not let the world pick one for her; and if she wants to study something for personal enjoyment on the side that is fine.
Well Tim, it used to be that liberal arts were about making people think critically and question their preconceived notions and ideas. It was about appreciating art and literature and being able to identify masterpiece and the elements that made them so.
Unfortunately modern liberalism has been hijacked by a group of motely, ammoral homosexuals, vegetarians, atheists and antisemites that no longer think about the issues they protest. Don’t even get me started on what passes for ‘art’ and ‘literature’ for these latte and tutu types.
The fact is that while most of these people lack real-world skills…they also lack the ethics and morals to make fair decisions, they have no concept of team work, and a grossly inflated view of themselves. The best way I heard it said was that most liberal arts types are really stupid people that have been educated beyond their intellects.
Look at the financial markets. We took a bunch of physics and math majors with pure technical degrees and trusted them with our economy. I think that a little study of history might have been useful for those guys.
“With such a huge segment of the student population excluded, what’s the point for liberal arts students to attend?”
That’s not the question. The question is simply what is the point of liberal arts students?
Liberal Arts grad here, with a double major in history and anthropology. This will I suppose earn me the derision of the (usually) erudite Captain, and many others. I went on to get a Masters degree in divinity, and have been working as a Pastor ever since. Again, I imagine that many here will only double down on their derision having learned of my chosen career, as I have never built a bridge, and do not produce widgets.
Full disclosure: I acknowledge that many (most?) liberal arts grads can be a mite on the loopy side. But many of us are not. I credit my education with my current philosophy of life.
For instance, it was by studying Karl Marx that I saw the folly of Marxism. Granted, the excellent christian education I received from my pastor helped me see through this.
It was by studying sociology that I decided that the basic sociological understanding of the world (nurture over nature) was flawed.
And it was through the study of history that I came to appreciate the glory of western civilization, and also came to be critical of those self loathing forces within western civilization which would bring it down.
Do all liberal arts grads come to this? Nope. Not by a long shot. I lament the fact that liberal arts has strayed from it’s roots, away from what used to be called “a classical education”. I am not denying major problems.
But there is good and bad everywhere. The captain is big on studying economics. Has he never encountered a loopy leftist economist? Galbraith for instance?
What about an evil engineer? I suppose there were a few of them who built the death camps. You know, like Auschwitz. Where Dr. Mengele worked. Thought to be fair, he had two doctorates. One in medicine, and one in anthropology. So I guess we’ll call that one a draw.
I am not defending self entitled whiners, and people who can’t seem to grasp the concept that a liberal arts education merely lays the groundwork for training that can lead one into a career. But neither will I fail to mention the myriads of tech and science grads I have met who slavishly accept such howlers as “Nazism is a right wing movement” and “Christians launched crusades, but Islam never did.” and (everyone’s favourite logical contradiction) “Everything is relative.”
I credit my liberal arts education with teaching me to think. And I learned to think by daring to question my professors. I will grant you that there were lots of sycophants in my classes. But not all of us were.
Anyway, I disagree with the Captain’s contention that there is no value in a liberal arts background. It is simply a sophomoric analysis.
After all, where would we be if Churchill had not studied history, and English?
“Unwanted: editorial interns, philosophers, writers, history majors, sociology researchers and publishing interns.”
ughh wait a minute here… that is a satirical piece right?
When I worked for the Feds we needed a Chemistry degree or experience as a technician. As the years went by it was more difficult for experienced people and a higher emphasis on a ‘degree in the sciences’. What we got was a bunch of Bachelor’s in biology. The target group for employment changed to reflect what they wanted to hire, not what was required for the job. As a result the lower managers and supervisors couldn’t really solve the problems they were required to solve. It became more about management of human resources than getting the job done. A lot of good people took early retirement because they just could not get things done or cover for those that couldn’t. Technique was terrible and being passed on to new people as the way to do things. Bad results.
ET: Your additions are correct too.
Jim: Your last paragraph is dead on.
Karl: It wasn’t engineers who made the decision to build the death camps – mad dictators and evil scientists are another matter. Nice to see a liberal arts guy doing good in the world.
interpretive dance students required !!!
seems it would make laying out geophones or even surveying much more entertaining for the rest of us.
oh, I dont want to pay for it , hell no, Ive been paying the system for years to bring this horrid spawn through. but certainly the federal infrastructure program could subsidize us.
I recall going to a job-fair as a 3rd-year undergraduate, and meeting an HR rep from a company who was almost explosive in her disdain for the B.A. I would get. “What use is that” she very nearly shouted at me. My response was truthful: I thought that the purpose of university was to get an education, and that if I wanted vocational training I had plenty of better and cheaper options open to me.
I do think that universities are selling degrees as “access to jobs with higher income”, and that many students need better consumer skills in order to know that this is true only if you select the right course of study. Even then, my friends who studied engineering because they loved engineering have done much better in life than the friends who chose engineering because that was the one major with good job prospects at the time.
I think you are right about one thing jim, our educations are thirty years old, and while the adulteration had begun, it wasn’t as incessant.
Also, if you look at the people who had most to do with the investment banking side of messing up our economy, they were people who were hired into the business without an appreciation of history, and hypertrophic math skills. Here is a pre-crisis piece on the subject from 2003
*Bond Traders With Math, Physics Degrees Rise in Pecking Order*
http://www.cba.uh.edu/rsusmel/7386/bondtrading.htm
Further to Karl’s posting, I’m an arts graduate myself (languages). And I agree with Karl that the Captain is essentially talking nonsense in saying there’s no value to a liberal arts background. The Captain seems to think the world should be run by technocrats. No thanks. We need a blend of academic disciplines.
But here’s the rub: there’s a bizarre irony about liberal arts grads whining about job prospects. There are all kinds of satisfying careers for arts grads out there if they would only be more flexible in their expectations – and by virtue of being arts grads they should be more flexible by default.
In my own case, I more or less faced three choices at the end of university:
1. Continue into post-grad work in which case I pretty well would have had to have sought a Ph.D. to achieve any kind of sinecure.
2. Become a schoolteacher. (Doing supply teacher work while at university cured me of any desire for this! Not because of the kids, mind you; because of the mindset of the education system.)
3. Do something entirely different which might not appear, at first sight, directly related to my academic background.
I chose Number Three, entered the Canadian Forces as an officer and subsequently enjoyed a long and rewarding career where my arts background stood me in surprisingly good stead.
Too often, I find arts grads unwilling to think out of the box. Indeed, I myself have young relatives whose complaints that “they can’t get a good teaching position” really just mean they don’t want to leave Toronto for a job in Sudbury.
Just wondering – how would the different professions and workers and weavers fair in a barter-system world?? The ultimate in determining what a person and his services are worth.
How would they “fair” in a barter system world? Fairly well I think.
Karl says “How would they “fair” in a barter system world? Fairly well I think.”
The contents of the article of this piece would suggest otherwise.
Actually, I was poking fun at Ron’s unintentional misuse of the word “fair”. I think what he meant was “How would they FARE” …
BTW, “The contents of the article of this piece….. ????”
Oh grammer. We hardly knew ye ….
Seems the private sector employment market is flat for the modern ‘liberal arts’; subverting culture group interventionists, politically correct moralizers, amoral scolds, public sector butt sniffers and professional fomenters, sycophants and busybodies.
I took liberal arts for the first two years of my post-secondary schooling. There is nothing wrong with it, per se. However, students must be strongly advised that the market (often changing) will demand something more of them.
As others have said before me, most kids are spoiled and the education system has set a bar for mediocrity. I’d say those are bigger problems than reading Great Books.
Just my thoughts.
Once upon a time there was value in a liberal arts education. A time before cultural relativism, victimology and infestation of other leftist ideas. My understanding is that colleges now regard liberal arts degrees as funding units for their more important programs (LA programs require less money than science and other professional studies). The more bums in seats, the better. Unfortunately, the result is a gaggle of graduates that regurgitate these ridiculous ideas in government, HR and the education system. This allows them to implement stupid policies and programs that multiply faster than rats in Swift Current
Karl:
Oh spelling, ye hardly knew it.
Who was clapping in the background? I presume this was a press conference, and it couldn’t possibly have been the journalists.
Tim, the bankers did exactly what they should have done in the sub-prime crisis: make a profit for themselves and their companies under adverse conditions.
They were forced by gov’t to make politically correct loans, and they only made them when the gov’t promised to cover them. This crisis was guaranteed the minute the democruds racialized lending practices. The hell of it is that the liberal arts types that created this mess are now the same idiots that are in charge of solving it – with the predictable results.
We all know the answer isn’t in running huge deficits, we all know that bailing out non-performers is a mistake, and we all know that blacks and minorities should pay their own way the same as the rest of us.
When president Obunghole points at a company and decides that it is unacceptable for them to profit they will either fold, take their business elsewhere – or hold their hands out for the gov’t to pay the shortfalls.
Look at what’s happening here – don’t tell me this is the fault of people with practical educations. This is the fault of liberal fart suckers that believe in the free lunch, that gov’ts can create wealth and that rich people can work for free.
Johann:
ye (yē) pronunciation
pron.
1. (used with a pl. verb) Archaic. You.
2. (used with a sing. verb) Archaic. You.
[Middle English, from Old English gē.]
“Clearly the Career Fair isn’t conducive for many. It’s time they made a change to reach out to more students in a new format, in a new way.”
Or the liberal arts majors could wake up and realize they’ve just been had by “Big Education”.
There was a time, long ago, when a liberal arts degree really meant something. It was available to the few and was as rigorous as it was well-rounded — i.e. universal, thus “university”. Of late it’s become an extended day care for the insufferably cocooned. It’s not that those with liberal arts degrees are useless. It’s that liberal arts grads are a dime a dozen and given the lack of rigor in most programs the degree is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on, failing as it does to provide an outsider with any proof of distinction, wether of industry, intellect, insight, or even a solid grounding in what may constitute our western historical, literary, philosophical, scientific or economic intellectual heritage. In short, a B.A. can be pure puff, and there’s nothing to tell it from one earned through real creativity, hard work and intellect. It’s been hyper-inflated and suffers the fate of any hyper-inflated currency — irrelevance.
Sorry, Kate, for this nitpick contest. This will be my last such post.
Karl: I was referring to your (mis)spelling of the word “grammar”.
I think it is clear here that the Liberal Arts majors that have commented here have prospered in life mainly because they used their degree as a tool or stepping stone to get where they are today. Unfortunately, a great number of BAs today expect that piece of paper to be the ticket to $$$. The culture of entitlement makes it hard for these snowflakes to see life as it really is.
Johann,
Touché.
🙂 (yes, I’ve been smiling all along)
Karl
In the words of Moses Harry Horwitz ….
“Nyuk…..!”
“With such a huge segment of the student population excluded, what’s the point for liberal arts students to attend?”
That pretty much sums it up right there.
Posted by: Douglas2 at September 23, 2009 11:01 AM
……..my friends who studied engineering because they loved engineering have done much better in life than the friends who chose engineering because that was the one major with good job prospects……….
Therein lays the essence of success, doing something that you really want to do. You may want to be prepared that the financial rewards may not be what you expect, though if you stick with it, eventually you will get satisfaction. It takes patience, grasshopper.
If you do things that pay well so much the better.
Many find even well paying job less than challenging if it is not something they really want to do.
I had to laugh upon reading this…
“In our century’s second worst economic downturn, students should be receiving as much help as possible. The one-page outline of tips for liberal arts majors in the Career Fair packet isn’t cutting it…”
Our century’s second worst economic down turn?
What was the first?
Perhaps if whoever wrote this had a clue, they might be able to get a job. If this is what passes for college level writing, no wonder they will have poor prospects. Regardless of a humanities degree or whatever, stupidity is stupidity.
Liberal Art$ Major … job wanted?
Try the local Union Hall.
You are just what they want….not what they need….. just what they want.
A snivelling “I deserve MORE whiner”.