Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?

[Anonymous]

Highbrow: Literature, language, economics, math, physics, art history
Lowbrow: Nursing, any allied health (nutrition, med tech), education, agricultural sciences, forestry, criminal justice, psychology, sociology

Of course I realize this is completely ridiculous. I have two "high-brow" degrees and am pushing my kids to select "low-brow" ones!

[Anonymous]

I know this thread is all in jest....but it’s annoying me anyway!

[Anonymous]

High brow: English, philosophy
Low brow: kinesiology, communications

[Anonymous]

Do people actually think like this IRL?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Low brow: education majors. Unfortunately the teaching profession just doesn’t have respect (which I think it should.)

High Brow: STEM/pre-med

then respect it and say high brow but then again this post is just one of those that makes people feel good about themselves because they have miserable jobs and have to feel good about studying something boring like economics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people actually think like this IRL?!

I know it seems silly, but people internally rank things all the time even if they don't say it.

For me, I think that there's a tendency to think that any university degree that could be obtained while playing football at an FBS university (which is grueling and difficult. Truly a full-time job) can't really be a serious course of study with lots of extra work. It speaks nothing to the intelligence of those athletes...just the amount of time they could devote to study. Which is kind of why I internally rank "leisure studies" or communications lower than I'd rank engineering. You almost never see football player engineering majors, and when you do, that person is a wonderfully rare bird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Low brow: education majors. Unfortunately the teaching profession just doesn’t have respect (which I think it should.)

High Brow: STEM/pre-med

then respect it and say high brow but then again this post is just one of those that makes people feel good about themselves because they have miserable jobs and have to feel good about studying something boring like economics

Economics is not boring. Check yourself.

[Anonymous]

I tend to implicitly think of engineering degrees as middle-brow in the educational spectrum (with areas like humanities, natural and social sciences higher brow and explicit career prep--hotel management, communications as lower. Engineering, Business, and Accounting would probably be in similar "brow" spaces in my mental map). This is likely because the engineers in my family, who went to top engineering schools, do not seem to be educated in meaningful ways outside their major. Their perceptions/interpretations of films, books, art etc. are fairly superficial. They tend to have simplistic understandings of complex political, social and cultural events. They did perfectly fine in the intro classes they took in gen ed areas, but they didn't meaningfully absorb the discourse in a way they can use outside of class. They don't write well. They think mechanistically--which is fantastic for their field and very useful for society . They are happy, skilled, and earn good wages but are less sophisticated in cultural, artistic or intellectual matters than those in our family who studied humanities, natural or social sciences. A lot of this implicit thought is built on the frame of Plato's Republic though--which has seeped into our minds even if we never read or have forgotten it.

[Anonymous]

Low Brow: Sports Management, especially if you are not a college athlete.

[Anonymous]

High brow - majors that do not lead to paying jobs. Things like art history or film. Trust fund kids can do them.

Low brow - jobs that lead to employment directly out of undergrad - nursing, respiratory therapist, etc.

Middle - engineering, business, hard sciences, math - smart kid majors that eventually lead to jobs but the path is not direct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people actually think like this IRL?!

For me at least, saying something is highbrow isn’t saying it’s GOOD. It’s just discussing its class signifiers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Electrical and chemical engineering are higher-brow than mechanical engineering. Civil engineering is the lowest-brow engineering. Humanities are usually higher-brow than social sciences but hard sciences are mixed.

Chemical Engineering is the king of engineering. And the other disciplines are as you said. I should know because I am a Chemical Engineer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Business and engineering- high brow
Social services and education- low brow
Anything science or math- high brow

Interesting because I have seen on DCUM where people claim that getting an undergrad in business is low-brow, which being from a low-brow background, I did not know previously. Apparently, high-brow kids who are interested in business get a B.A in Economics and then go on to get their MBAs. [/quote

Those are mosty the kids who went to a school without undergrad business or weren’t able to get into the business school. When that happens, the school usually recommends economics instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:High brow - majors that do not lead to paying jobs. Things like art history or film. Trust fund kids can do them.

Low brow - jobs that lead to employment directly out of undergrad - nursing, respiratory therapist, etc.

Middle - engineering, [b]business[b], hard sciences, math - smart kid majors that eventually lead to jobs but the path is not direct.

I tend to think of undergrad business as low-brow because business majors have pretty low GMAT scores and so picking the major is a poorly informed choice. Like how legal studies majors don't have high average LSAT scores. If a major is mostly populated with kids who want to go on a path that requires a specific graduate degree, it should be preparing them better for admissions into that degree program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Business and engineering- high brow
Social services and education- low brow
Anything science or math- high brow

Interesting because I have seen on DCUM where people claim that getting an undergrad in business is low-brow, which being from a low-brow background, I did not know previously. Apparently, high-brow kids who are interested in business get a B.A in Economics and then go on to get their MBAs.

Those are mosty the kids who went to a school without undergrad business or weren’t able to get into the business school. When that happens, the school usually recommends economics instead.

That's not at all true. Economics is harder than business. Economics majors do better than business majors on the LSAT, GRE, and GMAT.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/28/business-is-the-most-popular-college-major-but-that-doesnt-mean-its-a-good-choice/