Is it low brow to criticize humanities majors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

I find it ironic YOU said that.

[Anonymous]

I only knew one person IRL who said something along those lines and she was a snobby rich B who severely messed up her kids because of her behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

Yes. Wealthy people can afford to have useless degrees. Only the poor people need their degrees to have an ROI.

The riff raff treats college like a high end trade school. They see college as a means of gaining access to opportunities.

[Anonymous]

I'm an art major mom with an art major daughter. We're not wealthy, we're just artists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

My experience is that the same person who is educated, wealthy and well spoken is quite congratulatory of someone studying history at Harvard, but has no problem telling the history major at Salisbury "have fun working at Starbucks".

Well yes, but as a history major from a low end state school, they aren’t wrong. It’s a dead end. My classmates I know about work as cashiers or customer service, or went on to law school. That’s OK…for many people a degree is a degree, but it wasn’t ever leading to a career in history.

[Anonymous]

You can only major in these sorts of things if you are at at "good" school...bc the career services/alumni/name help with that consulting/PR/comms/advisory job.....

- T10 humanities major who makes a healthy 7 figures a year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

It's not when humanities majors are criticizing STEM majors generally and CS majors specifically.

[Anonymous]

Yes, people who don’t understand the value of humanities majors are less educated/low brow in my experience

[Anonymous]

I had an employee once deride ‘liberal arts’ in general. She thought one majored in, and received a degree in, ‘liberal arts.’ She didn’t understand the difference, nor did she care to understand. She was so low-brow it wasn’t worth my time to try to explain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CNN and NBC have pieces this weekend about how the high numbers of young men with CS and Finance degrees are having trouble finding jobs while women in other areas (esp health-related majors) are doing well.

Unfortunately, they’re verging close to “women are stealing jobs” as opposed to talking about the lack of variety in majors among the men.

Most majors related to health care aren't in humanities, though. It's usually like nursing.

Most of DC's CS friends who are smart and good at what they do are employed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had an employee once deride ‘liberal arts’ in general. She thought one majored in, and received a degree in, ‘liberal arts.’ She didn’t understand the difference, nor did she care to understand. She was so low-brow it wasn’t worth my time to try to explain.

Many people only believe it’s STEM vs Liberal Arts and fail to realize Math, Biology, Chemistry, etc. are part of the liberal arts. I think the word arts just confuses people.

[Anonymous]

Among other things, yes.

[Anonymous]

The culture, mission and attitudes regarding majors at many SLAC’s and T-25’s (public and private) is just different when it comes to majors. There’s also a socioeconomic component as well. Many people who attend a less selective state university that offers majors like nursing, accounting, criminal Justice, etc. often approach their college experience with a very practical mindset and that’s commendable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

My experience is that the same person who is educated, wealthy and well spoken is quite congratulatory of someone studying history at Harvard, but has no problem telling the history major at Salisbury "have fun working at Starbucks".

Yep, that's it. Not an irrational view, either.

[Anonymous]

Why stop at Humanities? We (CS/EE majors) made fun of the Math and Physics majors on our floor - we kept joking what are you qualified to do? We'd probably go after biology as well but only had one.

One math grad joked after getting his first job that UPS truck drivers were making slightly more - this was in the 90s just before the Internet explosion.

Working at NASA - Physics/Math majors looked down on everyone else. Think Sheldon and Wolowitz. They ran the place. They even listed on open positions "hard science" they didn't care which one. That was for something that required hard coding.

The Business majors keep telling use we're the "smart guys" while significantly making more than us. Off course they only hired Humanities as they moved up. One even told me Humanities start low and finish high. Tech start high and level off. Yes. I understand the comp plan for FANG and the ludicrous salaries are not the norm.