So many engineering students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

Kids major in business because it's practical and interesting. Also, most don't just "major in business". They choose accounting or finance or entrepreneurship, which is much more rigorous than say "General Business" or "marketing". That's where lots of Premed/Engineering kids head when they switch majors

Accounting and finance are there own things. I don't consider that majoring in business. Accounting is a trade and a great one; not typical you would find it at LACs but much better choice than a business major. High finance can be quite complex and is a very good major if you can actually get a finance job out of it; it used to be not as complex so the specialized training wasn't needed for undergrads, but the world has changed.

Entrepreneurship is a weird major, the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs say you learn by doing the thing, not studying it.

Marketing is not rigorous for most people or most places. I could see it being a two year associates degree or a one year maters program, I have no idea why it would take four years to learn.

General business is primarily what I am criticizing, in decades past one could easily study philosophy or literature which are far more interesting and then just learn whatever general business stuff one needs to know on the fly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People study business because that’s where the money is. Duh.

Our culture is deeply anti-intellectual. Our culture worships money above all. Treating Universities as de facto trade schools (STEM! Business!) does not make for a truly educated populace.

You can't eat education. You need money.

People on here complain about how they can't make it on $200K because of student loans. Biden used taxpayer money to wipe out billions in student loans.

My tax dollars had to wipe out your loan because you thought "education is more important than a vocational degree".

Thanks for being a model American ignoramus, PP. You’re making my point beautifully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People are interested in majoring in business because there's more money to be made as a business major than an English major.

Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I am not a progressive, and I dislike that my kids had to read so much woke books in school. One year, the book choices were pretty much all about DEI.

Ok, but this was not historically true. Historically, business leaders actually went to elite, northeastern, private liberal arts colleges where they got a well rounded education learning about the intellectual history of Western Civilization. Over time, that got replaced more and more with critical theory to the point where many of these departments were almost entirely dominated by critical theorists and people started mistakenly assuming that critical theory WAS liberal arts, not just one sector of it. And of course what underpins critical theory is character assassination of anyone who pushes back on the theories, many of which are quite stupid. There is a time and place for critical theory but it's about 10x more prominent than it should be in a well rounded liberal arts curriculum. They also just started dumbing down the curriculum generally, which started to kids on the margins from failing out and getting sent to Vietnam, and really picked up steam when the colleges started jacking up tuition and treating the students (or really, their parents) as a revenue source and to be catered to rather than a pupil to be challenged.

Anyways, back in the day these well rounded students THEN went into business (some with MBAs, some without) and just picked up business on the job, which is fine because in most cases it ain't really that hard, esp. for someone that's in the top 1-5% of IQ and work ethic anyways, which is what the leadership was and is. These colleges didn't even HAVE business majors since it wasn't a real subject.

Some of their employees, who wouldn't have been able to complete those liberal arts programs back when they were actually rigorous, went to lower tier schools where they did study "business." Because they wouldn't have been capable of just picking it up on the fly, so they needed the extra training, and because they weren't being trained for leadership anyways, so having a broad education wasn't as important.

Anyways, you can think that system was great or terrible, but anyways it is 95% dead and gone and the critical theorists are the ones standing over the body with the murder weapon, desperately lecturing it about microaggressions as their disciplines fade further into irrelevance.

How old are you, and what years did you attend business school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People study business because that’s where the money is. Duh.

Our culture is deeply anti-intellectual. Our culture worships money above all. Treating Universities as de facto trade schools (STEM! Business!) does not make for a truly educated populace.

You can't eat education. You need money.

People on here complain about how they can't make it on $200K because of student loans. Biden used taxpayer money to wipe out billions in student loans.

My tax dollars had to wipe out your loan because you thought "education is more important than a vocational degree".

Thanks for being a model American ignoramus, PP. You’re making my point beautifully.

What was stated that isn't true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People study business because that’s where the money is. Duh.

Our culture is deeply anti-intellectual. Our culture worships money above all. Treating Universities as de facto trade schools (STEM! Business!) does not make for a truly educated populace.

You can't eat education. You need money.

People on here complain about how they can't make it on $200K because of student loans. Biden used taxpayer money to wipe out billions in student loans.

My tax dollars had to wipe out your loan because you thought "education is more important than a vocational degree".

Thanks for being a model American ignoramus, PP. You’re making my point beautifully.

You must be one of those who thinks taxpayers should pay for you student loans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People are interested in majoring in business because there's more money to be made as a business major than an English major.

Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I am not a progressive, and I dislike that my kids had to read so much woke books in school. One year, the book choices were pretty much all about DEI.

Ok, but this was not historically true. Historically, business leaders actually went to elite, northeastern, private liberal arts colleges where they got a well rounded education learning about the intellectual history of Western Civilization. Over time, that got replaced more and more with critical theory to the point where many of these departments were almost entirely dominated by critical theorists and people started mistakenly assuming that critical theory WAS liberal arts, not just one sector of it. And of course what underpins critical theory is character assassination of anyone who pushes back on the theories, many of which are quite stupid. There is a time and place for critical theory but it's about 10x more prominent than it should be in a well rounded liberal arts curriculum. They also just started dumbing down the curriculum generally, which started to kids on the margins from failing out and getting sent to Vietnam, and really picked up steam when the colleges started jacking up tuition and treating the students (or really, their parents) as a revenue source and to be catered to rather than a pupil to be challenged.

Anyways, back in the day these well rounded students THEN went into business (some with MBAs, some without) and just picked up business on the job, which is fine because in most cases it ain't really that hard, esp. for someone that's in the top 1-5% of IQ and work ethic anyways, which is what the leadership was and is. These colleges didn't even HAVE business majors since it wasn't a real subject.

Some of their employees, who wouldn't have been able to complete those liberal arts programs back when they were actually rigorous, went to lower tier schools where they did study "business." Because they wouldn't have been capable of just picking it up on the fly, so they needed the extra training, and because they weren't being trained for leadership anyways, so having a broad education wasn't as important.

Anyways, you can think that system was great or terrible, but anyways it is 95% dead and gone and the critical theorists are the ones standing over the body with the murder weapon, desperately lecturing it about microaggressions as their disciplines fade further into irrelevance.

This analysis was so spot-on and so eloquently written! You must be a Liberal Arts (of old) major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People study business because that’s where the money is. Duh.

Our culture is deeply anti-intellectual. Our culture worships money above all. Treating Universities as de facto trade schools (STEM! Business!) does not make for a truly educated populace.

You can't eat education. You need money.

People on here complain about how they can't make it on $200K because of student loans. Biden used taxpayer money to wipe out billions in student loans.

My tax dollars had to wipe out your loan because you thought "education is more important than a vocational degree".

Thanks for being a model American ignoramus, PP. You’re making my point beautifully.

I'm a massive liberal and I thought this was SUPER dumb of Biden. What he should have done was paid the monthly loan payments for anyone who was: 1) a public school teacher; 2) in the military; 3) a police officer; 4) a firefighter; 5) working for Americorp, Peace Corp or the National Parks service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People are interested in majoring in business because there's more money to be made as a business major than an English major.

Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I am not a progressive, and I dislike that my kids had to read so much woke books in school. One year, the book choices were pretty much all about DEI.

Ok, but this was not historically true. Historically, business leaders actually went to elite, northeastern, private liberal arts colleges where they got a well rounded education learning about the intellectual history of Western Civilization. Over time, that got replaced more and more with critical theory to the point where many of these departments were almost entirely dominated by critical theorists and people started mistakenly assuming that critical theory WAS liberal arts, not just one sector of it. And of course what underpins critical theory is character assassination of anyone who pushes back on the theories, many of which are quite stupid. There is a time and place for critical theory but it's about 10x more prominent than it should be in a well rounded liberal arts curriculum. They also just started dumbing down the curriculum generally, which started to kids on the margins from failing out and getting sent to Vietnam, and really picked up steam when the colleges started jacking up tuition and treating the students (or really, their parents) as a revenue source and to be catered to rather than a pupil to be challenged.

Anyways, back in the day these well rounded students THEN went into business (some with MBAs, some without) and just picked up business on the job, which is fine because in most cases it ain't really that hard, esp. for someone that's in the top 1-5% of IQ and work ethic anyways, which is what the leadership was and is. These colleges didn't even HAVE business majors since it wasn't a real subject.

Some of their employees, who wouldn't have been able to complete those liberal arts programs back when they were actually rigorous, went to lower tier schools where they did study "business." Because they wouldn't have been capable of just picking it up on the fly, so they needed the extra training, and because they weren't being trained for leadership anyways, so having a broad education wasn't as important.

Anyways, you can think that system was great or terrible, but anyways it is 95% dead and gone and the critical theorists are the ones standing over the body with the murder weapon, desperately lecturing it about microaggressions as their disciplines fade further into irrelevance.

This analysis was so spot-on and so eloquently written! You must be a Liberal Arts (of old) major.

It's also very old fashioned thinking (back in the day) when people (mostly white men) got liberal arts degrees and then could find a white collar job after graduating because they didn't have to compete with uneducated men, minorities and women.

Times of changed. Supply and demand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

Kids major in business because it's practical and interesting. Also, most don't just "major in business". They choose accounting or finance or entrepreneurship, which is much more rigorous than say "General Business" or "marketing". That's where lots of Premed/Engineering kids head when they switch majors

Accounting and finance are there own things. I don't consider that majoring in business. Accounting is a trade and a great one; not typical you would find it at LACs but much better choice than a business major. High finance can be quite complex and is a very good major if you can actually get a finance job out of it; it used to be not as complex so the specialized training wasn't needed for undergrads, but the world has changed.

Entrepreneurship is a weird major, the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs say you learn by doing the thing, not studying it.

Marketing is not rigorous for most people or most places. I could see it being a two year associates degree or a one year maters program, I have no idea why it would take four years to learn.

General business is primarily what I am criticizing, in decades past one could easily study philosophy or literature which are far more interesting and then just learn whatever general business stuff one needs to know on the fly.

Most business majors don't major in General Business, though. They usually pick a track. Finance, Accounting are the most popular tracks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineering has a very high crash-and-burn rate. Only a fraction of those who start that major go on to complete it. CS and MIS/IT is much easier to many may switch to those fields if they can't get through the physics and differential equations.

True only at a few engineering programs which have deliberate weed-out courses. Untrue of many other engineering programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

Kids major in business because it's practical and interesting. Also, most don't just "major in business". They choose accounting or finance or entrepreneurship, which is much more rigorous than say "General Business" or "marketing". That's where lots of Premed/Engineering kids head when they switch majors

This. They have the aptitude for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People are interested in majoring in business because there's more money to be made as a business major than an English major.

Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I am not a progressive, and I dislike that my kids had to read so much woke books in school. One year, the book choices were pretty much all about DEI.

Ok, but this was not historically true. Historically, business leaders actually went to elite, northeastern, private liberal arts colleges where they got a well rounded education learning about the intellectual history of Western Civilization. Over time, that got replaced more and more with critical theory to the point where many of these departments were almost entirely dominated by critical theorists and people started mistakenly assuming that critical theory WAS liberal arts, not just one sector of it. And of course what underpins critical theory is character assassination of anyone who pushes back on the theories, many of which are quite stupid. There is a time and place for critical theory but it's about 10x more prominent than it should be in a well rounded liberal arts curriculum. They also just started dumbing down the curriculum generally, which started to kids on the margins from failing out and getting sent to Vietnam, and really picked up steam when the colleges started jacking up tuition and treating the students (or really, their parents) as a revenue source and to be catered to rather than a pupil to be challenged.

Anyways, back in the day these well rounded students THEN went into business (some with MBAs, some without) and just picked up business on the job, which is fine because in most cases it ain't really that hard, esp. for someone that's in the top 1-5% of IQ and work ethic anyways, which is what the leadership was and is. These colleges didn't even HAVE business majors since it wasn't a real subject.

Some of their employees, who wouldn't have been able to complete those liberal arts programs back when they were actually rigorous, went to lower tier schools where they did study "business." Because they wouldn't have been capable of just picking it up on the fly, so they needed the extra training, and because they weren't being trained for leadership anyways, so having a broad education wasn't as important.

Anyways, you can think that system was great or terrible, but anyways it is 95% dead and gone and the critical theorists are the ones standing over the body with the murder weapon, desperately lecturing it about microaggressions as their disciplines fade further into irrelevance.

This analysis was so spot-on and so eloquently written! You must be a Liberal Arts (of old) major.

It's also very old fashioned thinking (back in the day) when people (mostly white men) got liberal arts degrees and then could find a white collar job after graduating because they didn't have to compete with uneducated men, minorities and women.

Times of changed. Supply and demand.

So tedious. "We can't read Milton anymore because [wokeness]." Meanwhile, there's a recent article in the Atlantic about how professors (even at really top schools, like Columbia) increasingly find their students cannot read college level books, have never read a book cover to cover at all, etc.

Btw, chat GPT told me that of the following schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore), only one of them has a business-related undergraduate major (MIT, which makes sense given it was historically more focused on trades). For all the rest, there is no major in any of business, accounting, finance or marketing. The closest approximation is studying economics, math or physics. So what I am saying still holds true at the top end of the pyramid. Interesting these schools are able to place so many into the upper echelons of business anyways and can do this even though white males are only a small fraction of their student body.

[Anonymous]

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

https://archive.is/OzvSu#selection-923.0-973.1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal arts is in theory a fantastic intellectual foundation for life and a career, but in practice its been wrecked by wokeness. Everyone recognizes this and is staying away.

If we can reform the liberal arts, it will flourish again.

It did not die out due to wokeness. Liberal arts degrees have been declining for many years in part due to the growth in the tech sector, and more students majoring in business.

And why are people so interested in majoring in "business" which typically not a rigorous degree where you learn boring things that were just picked up on the job by intelligent, well-rounded people years ago without the need for any courses? Perhaps its all the stories they hear about people signing for literature courses and having to listen to political drivel rather than actually learn to appreciate literature.

People study business because that’s where the money is. Duh.

Our culture is deeply anti-intellectual. Our culture worships money above all. Treating Universities as de facto trade schools (STEM! Business!) does not make for a truly educated populace.

You can't eat education. You need money.

People on here complain about how they can't make it on $200K because of student loans. Biden used taxpayer money to wipe out billions in student loans.

My tax dollars had to wipe out your loan because you thought "education is more important than a vocational degree".

Thanks for being a model American ignoramus, PP. You’re making my point beautifully.

I'm a massive liberal and I thought this was SUPER dumb of Biden. What he should have done was paid the monthly loan payments for anyone who was: 1) a public school teacher; 2) in the military; 3) a police officer; 4) a firefighter; 5) working for Americorp, Peace Corp or the National Parks service.

Student loan repayment is neither here nor there when discussing the benefits of a classical liberal education. Neither you nor the (American ignoramus) PP with whom you are agreeing seem capable of following an extremely simple conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:STEM is the new liberal arts. CS and engineering grads working at starbucks! Oh the irony!

Engineering grads are, by and large, not working at Starbucks.

Neither are CS grads.

Adults with very little college education? Yes.