So few liberal arts majors

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

False dichotomy. You can have a rigorous liberal arts education AND major in something “practical”.

+100

I don’t understand why people think they can’t get a good job or meaningful career with a liberal arts education. I would hire a liberal arts graduate over a business degree undergrad any day.

+100. Early specialization is not necessarily good. Many LAC graduates build foundational skills in writing, critical thinking, math, presentation, communication etc and go on to be senior leaders of multi national companies.

The top undergraduate majors by far for top execs are business and STEM.

I don’t really get why there is this argument when it comes to average outcomes or what humanities folks end up doing for a living.

The reason STEM is a donator and 70% of people leave the STEM workforce, is because the work life sucks and employers are ruthless--burn and churn, replace older workers with new graduates rather than train, etc. People with STEM degrees, *and* people skills get out. Non-STEM course work often helps with this.

I have read that 50% of women leave the STEM workforce and far fewer men do the same (probably for obvious reasons around tech bro culture)...where are you getting your 70%?

E.g. referenced here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/2024/02/09/few-stem-graduates-pursue-jobs-or-careers-related-fields. Regardless, point is management is the more valued job, people who can get out do.

I am not sure you are drawing the correct conclusion. As an example, only 50% of UPenn engineering grads work in engineering. The others go work at quant funds or consulting or banking. These jobs pay a lot...but have long hours and are stressful.

Also, the management folks you are even referring are management people at STEM companies. I think anyone that wants to move up in an organization has to become management at some point.

You’re deluded. There aren’t quant jobs for half the Penn grads, and the bulk of STEM grads are state school schmucks, who certainly aren’t getting those positions. When industry says there’s a STEM shortage, it translates we need more people to punch in the face.

There are for consulting plus banking plus quant. The school only awarded a total of 242 engineering degrees (not talking about CS or any other degrees awarded by the School of engineering) last year. So, that's 121 kids.

Not talking about 50% of all Penn grads each year.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

False dichotomy. You can have a rigorous liberal arts education AND major in something “practical”.

+100

I don’t understand why people think they can’t get a good job or meaningful career with a liberal arts education. I would hire a liberal arts graduate over a business degree undergrad any day.

+100. Early specialization is not necessarily good. Many LAC graduates build foundational skills in writing, critical thinking, math, presentation, communication etc and go on to be senior leaders of multi national companies.

The top undergraduate majors by far for top execs are business and STEM.

I don’t really get why there is this argument when it comes to average outcomes or what humanities folks end up doing for a living.

The reason STEM is a donator and 70% of people leave the STEM workforce, is because the work life sucks and employers are ruthless--burn and churn, replace older workers with new graduates rather than train, etc. People with STEM degrees, *and* people skills get out. Non-STEM course work often helps with this.

I have read that 50% of women leave the STEM workforce and far fewer men do the same (probably for obvious reasons around tech bro culture)...where are you getting your 70%?

E.g. referenced here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/2024/02/09/few-stem-graduates-pursue-jobs-or-careers-related-fields. Regardless, point is management is the more valued job, people who can get out do.

I am not sure you are drawing the correct conclusion. As an example, only 50% of UPenn engineering grads work in engineering. The others go work at quant funds or consulting or banking. These jobs pay a lot...but have long hours and are stressful.

Also, the management folks you are even referring are management people at STEM companies. I think anyone that wants to move up in an organization has to become management at some point.

You’re deluded. There aren’t quant jobs for half the Penn grads, and the bulk of STEM grads are state school schmucks, who certainly aren’t getting those positions. When industry says there’s a STEM shortage, it translates we need more people to punch in the face.

There are for consulting plus banking plus quant. The school only awarded a total of 242 engineering degrees (not talking about CS or any other degrees awarded by the School of engineering) last year. So, that's 121 kids.

Not talking about 50% of all Penn grads each year.

Dice it however you want, should a Penn grad go further its their soft skills more than technical prowess. These are CS majors who can carry on a conversation, write, and cleanup nice (i.e. emulate a liberal arts grad). Regardless it doesn't scale, the more typical STEM job is both miserable and unreliable. Jumping from tech to management isn't automatic. It usually requires an outside position. Cordoning off internal technical talent is the norm, if this is such a pool of raw talent, layoffs would be less frequent. For non-Ivy, never working in STEM in less glamorous ways is common.

[Anonymous]

I’m predicting that for RD this year kids who are not stem will do better than those in stem for admissions.

Their “research” doesn’t involve labs or funding - it’s going to the library and reading old documents and manuscripts and writing.

I see this wave of government funding cuts to stem research inadvertently pushing up the liberal arts.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

False dichotomy. You can have a rigorous liberal arts education AND major in something “practical”.

+100

I don’t understand why people think they can’t get a good job or meaningful career with a liberal arts education. I would hire a liberal arts graduate over a business degree undergrad any day.

+100. Early specialization is not necessarily good. Many LAC graduates build foundational skills in writing, critical thinking, math, presentation, communication etc and go on to be senior leaders of multi national companies.

The top undergraduate majors by far for top execs are business and STEM.

I don’t really get why there is this argument when it comes to average outcomes or what humanities folks end up doing for a living.

The reason STEM is a donator and 70% of people leave the STEM workforce, is because the work life sucks and employers are ruthless--burn and churn, replace older workers with new graduates rather than train, etc. People with STEM degrees, *and* people skills get out. Non-STEM course work often helps with this.

I have read that 50% of women leave the STEM workforce and far fewer men do the same (probably for obvious reasons around tech bro culture)...where are you getting your 70%?

E.g. referenced here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/2024/02/09/few-stem-graduates-pursue-jobs-or-careers-related-fields. Regardless, point is management is the more valued job, people who can get out do.

I am not sure you are drawing the correct conclusion. As an example, only 50% of UPenn engineering grads work in engineering. The others go work at quant funds or consulting or banking. These jobs pay a lot...but have long hours and are stressful.

Also, the management folks you are even referring are management people at STEM companies. I think anyone that wants to move up in an organization has to become management at some point.

When did it become students dream to work 100 hours and have no time for yourself?

Maybe when we abolish Fed jobs and trolls like musk teeny crew take over

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m predicting that for RD this year kids who are not stem will do better than those in stem for admissions.

Their “research” doesn’t involve labs or funding - it’s going to the library and reading old documents and manuscripts and writing.

I see this wave of government funding cuts to stem research inadvertently pushing up the liberal arts.

When RD decisions come out, start a new thread and people should list the school along with the major. It will be interesting to see.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was just trying to read my car manual this weekend because I had a question about something and it was gibberish. Clearly, the world needs more English majors who can write clearly. It was just shockingly bad.

That is why someone with a STEM background with very strong communication skills and writing skills can go far. Every company needs a strong marketing team, someone who can write the manuals, etc. But it's hard for an English only major to be strong in the products of many companies . Hence by both skill sets are important

LOL I’m but a lowly English major but I’m pretty sure I could write a car user manual without an extensive background in STEM. Of course I also took advanced math and science classes because I went to a liberal arts college so maybe that qualifies me to explain what the various lights on the dashboard signify.

STEM people always think they can easily master the humanities and that humanities folks can’t do STEM but that’s just arrogance.

My guess is the "advanced math and science classes" you claim you took aren't what a STEM person would consider advanced math and sciences.

I don't think people think they can master the humanities, but they are fairly certain that if they take an upper level English course they will understand the language in which the course is taught and will be able to answer the questions.

I was an econ major (which is a liberal arts major) and took some "advanced math" classes and decided to take a relatively low-level advanced math class for STEM kids. I couldn't even understand what the professor was writing on the board. It would be the equivalent of taking an English class where I first had to learn 7th century English prior to even attempting to read the texts and answering the questions.

It's inconceivable that any English major would take such a class...if you actually did and did very well, then you would have switched majors or at least pursued a dual-major because you would have to really love the material to do well.

Maybe if you go to a trash school. The average stem student would struggle in a levinas seminar, would stumble through any upper level seminar for religious studies, would fail writing an upper level history paper with proper format, wouldn’t even have the pre reqs needed to begin coursework in the classics or comparative literature, and maybe would be okay with the demanding coursework of an upper division lit class.

Correct...they could stumble through the classes which means they would be able to read the books and answer the questions. This wasn't about doing well in the classes.

The converse is the English lit kid or religious studies couldn't even stumble through the advanced STEM classes. They might be lucky to score 5 points out of 100...but the reality is they would drop the class on Day 1.

I really don’t think the average engineering student can comprehend Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, Agamben, Hegel, Derrida, close reading of any ecclesiastical writing or the Quran or really any theology, nor could they catch up in a Ulysses seminar. Why I’m having to defend that upper division coursework is, well, upper division? I don’t know.

But, I bet they could stumble through while a humanities kid taking the equivalent Math class would get a zero on the tests. They couldn't even stumble through. They wouldn't understand a single thing written on the board.

Do you understand Derrida? Seriously you seem way out of your element right now but you are talking very boldly. It’s a bit naive thinking you can begin to comprehend fields of study you haven’t actually dug into.

A math major could bs their way to a C or a D in a Derrida seminar. Could a philosophy major do the same in Number Theory 2?

This is the whole point everybody. The math major isn't doing well, but at least they are getting a D. They aren't handing in a blank term paper or not even trying to answer questions on an exam.

I don't think you understand that the converse just doesn't hold true. The humanities major that on a lark decides to take some of these advanced Math classes will literally score a zero on the tests. They will hand in a blank piece of paper because they won't have any clue what is being asked.

Rant over!

But that’s because the humanities major would presumably be missing foundational knowledge necessary to grasp the basics of the class, not because the humanities major is inherently stupider than the STEM major, or because their existing knowledge base is less valuable. A better analogy would be considering how a STEM major would do if dropped into a 300 or 400 level foreign language class. And, for the same reason, I don’t think the STEM majors inability to comprehend the basic texts being read in the class would be that meaningful.

Is reasoning by analogy a humanities skill? Do they not teach it in STEM?

[Anonymous]

Lol, stupider.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was just trying to read my car manual this weekend because I had a question about something and it was gibberish. Clearly, the world needs more English majors who can write clearly. It was just shockingly bad.

That is why someone with a STEM background with very strong communication skills and writing skills can go far. Every company needs a strong marketing team, someone who can write the manuals, etc. But it's hard for an English only major to be strong in the products of many companies . Hence by both skill sets are important

LOL I’m but a lowly English major but I’m pretty sure I could write a car user manual without an extensive background in STEM. Of course I also took advanced math and science classes because I went to a liberal arts college so maybe that qualifies me to explain what the various lights on the dashboard signify.

STEM people always think they can easily master the humanities and that humanities folks can’t do STEM but that’s just arrogance.

My guess is the "advanced math and science classes" you claim you took aren't what a STEM person would consider advanced math and sciences.

I don't think people think they can master the humanities, but they are fairly certain that if they take an upper level English course they will understand the language in which the course is taught and will be able to answer the questions.

I was an econ major (which is a liberal arts major) and took some "advanced math" classes and decided to take a relatively low-level advanced math class for STEM kids. I couldn't even understand what the professor was writing on the board. It would be the equivalent of taking an English class where I first had to learn 7th century English prior to even attempting to read the texts and answering the questions.

It's inconceivable that any English major would take such a class...if you actually did and did very well, then you would have switched majors or at least pursued a dual-major because you would have to really love the material to do well.

Maybe if you go to a trash school. The average stem student would struggle in a levinas seminar, would stumble through any upper level seminar for religious studies, would fail writing an upper level history paper with proper format, wouldn’t even have the pre reqs needed to begin coursework in the classics or comparative literature, and maybe would be okay with the demanding coursework of an upper division lit class.

Correct...they could stumble through the classes which means they would be able to read the books and answer the questions. This wasn't about doing well in the classes.

The converse is the English lit kid or religious studies couldn't even stumble through the advanced STEM classes. They might be lucky to score 5 points out of 100...but the reality is they would drop the class on Day 1.

I really don’t think the average engineering student can comprehend Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, Agamben, Hegel, Derrida, close reading of any ecclesiastical writing or the Quran or really any theology, nor could they catch up in a Ulysses seminar. Why I’m having to defend that upper division coursework is, well, upper division? I don’t know.

But, I bet they could stumble through while a humanities kid taking the equivalent Math class would get a zero on the tests. They couldn't even stumble through. They wouldn't understand a single thing written on the board.

Do you understand Derrida? Seriously you seem way out of your element right now but you are talking very boldly. It’s a bit naive thinking you can begin to comprehend fields of study you haven’t actually dug into.

A math major could bs their way to a C or a D in a Derrida seminar. Could a philosophy major do the same in Number Theory 2?

This is the whole point everybody. The math major isn't doing well, but at least they are getting a D. They aren't handing in a blank term paper or not even trying to answer questions on an exam.

I don't think you understand that the converse just doesn't hold true. The humanities major that on a lark decides to take some of these advanced Math classes will literally score a zero on the tests. They will hand in a blank piece of paper because they won't have any clue what is being asked.

Rant over!

But that’s because the humanities major would presumably be missing foundational knowledge necessary to grasp the basics of the class, not because the humanities major is inherently stupider than the STEM major, or because their existing knowledge base is less valuable. A better analogy would be considering how a STEM major would do if dropped into a 300 or 400 level foreign language class. And, for the same reason, I don’t think the STEM majors inability to comprehend the basic texts being read in the class would be that meaningful.

Is reasoning by analogy a humanities skill? Do they not teach it in STEM?

I'm a humanities proponent but this analogy is not great. The bulk of humanities majors are in field like English that do not require advanced foreign language skill. An English or Africana studies or gender studies major dropped into abstract algebra would get a literal 0. A math major dropped into an advanced seminar for one of those fields could probably squeeze out a C. Classics, East Asian, Near Eastern studies would be different.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

This.
My daughter is graduating with her Master of Accounting. Not a fancy major, but she looked at her options and decided that she would have a decent paying job with right out of school and she could see a career pathway. She interned at a big 4 and will be full-time after graduation. So, you're correct, some kids look at college as a means to start a career. However, in undergrad she did complete the honors college program, so she got a good exposure to the classics - which she enjoyed. And her school has a 60-credit core curriculum so she's not pointy, but when selecting a major, her job prospects carried a lot of weight.

+ 1. My son is also studying accounting.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

Yet many study the sciences...Not to be anti-intellectual, but many scientific pursuits are purely meaningless, require a PhD, and pay $30k-40k

So friggin true it hurts. Studying physics was great but possibly one of the most useless things I have done in my life. It is mostly a field that generates no profit and has been consistently a mess for the pass 50 years with little progress to the fundamental questions still lurking. Overall, I would not recommend a science degree over a mathematics or engineering pursuit.

Physics majors who actually do the work and understand it get immediate starting salaries of pushing $100K at investment banks, hedge funds, and consulting companies.

Pretty sure PP meant getting a job in actual physics...like working as a nuclear physicist at a power company (in theory, a growth area these days with the amount of energy required by AI)

Also, the physics majors recruited to investment banks come from only like 30 schools. You can be a straight A physics major at the University of Wyoming and will have almost zero chance of working for any of the firms you mentioned.

However, when people mention physics or philosophy or economics they miss the much bigger picture. It's more the folks you read about borrowing $40k to attend their regional college and majoring in something like early childhood musical therapy and then struggling through life (actual person just profiled) unable to ever get
a job in the field or making just minimum wage...liberal arts degrees that honestly just shouldn't exist or at least should be funded by an employer where a decent job awaits for you on completion.

I think the whole point of that post and many comments on this thread is that you can major in something and still get a great job after even if it doesn’t directly relate to the major.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:College has gotten too expensive to justify a liberal arts major. And I say that as someone with a liberal arts BA, MA, and PhD.

We told our kids that we will fully fund their college educations, but they had to pick a major that was going to be employable upon graduation and one that could provide them with financial stability.

My nephew is an English Language & Lit major at Harvard. There is very little chance that he'll find employment after graduation that will justify the $330k-$350k my sister & BIL are paying for his education.

…but that’s not true. It’s Harvard. He can join one consulting club and with a little effort, make back that sum.

+ 1

[Anonymous]

A quick scan of the comments is urging kids to major in practical, hard, quantitative fields, but then says there's no use majoring in hard sciences because it's meaningless, that business is all getting replaced by AI, that all humanities are useless, and that social sciences is DEI. So I guess we should all just give up and become plumbers? How about this: Kids should work hard and pursue the life of the mind in math, science, and the arts, and will then be the well-rounded, competent-at-many-things managers and leaders we have so few of. The reductionist hysteria around the funding cuts, the STEM panic, DEI, etc. has got to stop. Let's make the academy a place of learning, with a healthy dose of realism (acknowledge people need to make money), and move forward.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few kids live in the DCUM bubble and can afford to major in something frivolous knowing that their school’s prestige and parental connections will ensure they do well anyway. Most kids are forced to be practical.

Yet many study the sciences...Not to be anti-intellectual, but many scientific pursuits are purely meaningless, require a PhD, and pay $30k-40k

So friggin true it hurts. Studying physics was great but possibly one of the most useless things I have done in my life. It is mostly a field that generates no profit and has been consistently a mess for the pass 50 years with little progress to the fundamental questions still lurking. Overall, I would not recommend a science degree over a mathematics or engineering pursuit.

Physics majors who actually do the work and understand it get immediate starting salaries of pushing $100K at investment banks, hedge funds, and consulting companies.

Pretty sure PP meant getting a job in actual physics...like working as a nuclear physicist at a power company (in theory, a growth area these days with the amount of energy required by AI)

Also, the physics majors recruited to investment banks come from only like 30 schools. You can be a straight A physics major at the University of Wyoming and will have almost zero chance of working for any of the firms you mentioned.

However, when people mention physics or philosophy or economics they miss the much bigger picture. It's more the folks you read about borrowing $40k to attend their regional college and majoring in something like early childhood musical therapy and then struggling through life (actual person just profiled) unable to ever get
a job in the field or making just minimum wage...liberal arts degrees that honestly just shouldn't exist or at least should be funded by an employer where a decent job awaits for you on completion.

My sibling got a physics degree from Cal and couldn't find a job. So they went back to school to get an masters in engineering, then got a job.

A friend of mine had a top PhD from MIT in astrophysics. She had to get a job turning tricks outside a Trader Joe's. Her clients were accountants, hedge fund workers, actuaries and other assorted money goblins.

Whether fake or real, how is Trader Joe's part of this story? Enquiring minds want to know!

Yeah, wouldn't it be more lucrative to hang out around the high-end strip clubs for this. I can't imagine it is great business to turn tricks outside a Trader Joe's.

She should have at least picked the Whole Foods corner, not the discount version.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College has gotten too expensive to justify a liberal arts major. And I say that as someone with a liberal arts BA, MA, and PhD.

We told our kids that we will fully fund their college educations, but they had to pick a major that was going to be employable upon graduation and one that could provide them with financial stability.

My nephew is an English Language & Lit major at Harvard. There is very little chance that he'll find employment after graduation that will justify the $330k-$350k my sister & BIL are paying for his education.

…but that’s not true. It’s Harvard. He can join one consulting club and with a little effort, make back that sum.

+ 1

I feel like the people who post these things are clueless non-US educated folks working low wage or non-corporate jobs?

"My nephew is an English Language & Lit major at Harvard. There is very little chance that he'll find employment after graduation that will justify the $330k-$350k my sister & BIL are paying for his education"

Especially today, Blackstone, Blackrock, every asset management firm from Ares to OwlRock....they like Ivy-educated liberal arts majors. Same for consulting firms like Bain and McKinsey. What rock is this person hiding behind that they think this Harvard-educated kid isn't getting a white-collar corporate $$$ job?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:While the liberal arts face a headwind because of STEM, they also hurt themselves by shifting from Shakespeare and Plato toward wokeness. It's a different kind of person who goes for what liberal arts are today and there aren't as many of them.

Anonymous wrote:I was looking up colleges on this government College Navigator site and it was somewhat eye-opening how few students are majoring in liberal arts disciplines, with the exceptions being science and psychology. I guess it shouldn't be surprising given the high cost of college and economic uncertainty, but as a former social science major it makes me a bit sad.

Site: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

Half of STEM is a liberal art.

I've been wondering why nobody has pointed this out...

Because no one here really understands majors or the job market?