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[quote=Anonymous][quote]I get sort of tired of this debate about which major is more difficult. It depends on a person's skills. I started out as a math major, and I found my higher level math courses easier than some of my liberal arts classes because they were pretty direct. It was straightforward what information you had to learn and what you would be tested on. The same with biology. My roommate was a bio major, and most of her courses (even through junior and senior year) were kill and drill type courses. There was a lot of memorization and regurgitation. Whereas, in some of the liberal arts majors (it varies), there is an enormous amount of reading and writing, and there is very little direction, meaning that you have to generate ideas for papers on your own. It isn't about understanding a set of problems and then demonstrating that.

I'm not saying STEM majors are easy, but I'm tired of the suggestion that liberal arts majors are. I would also add that I know a few computer science majors, and they all say their coursework was very easy. They also all insist that most of the stuff they learn in the program (and I'm talking about a well respected program) is sort of outdated, that if you really want to excel in that field, you should be pretty far ahead of what is being taught at university computer science programs.

I'll also add that I know a lot of people who majored in liberal arts majors (even art) and work in IT and make a lot of money. They insist that you don't have to major in computer science in a university setting to gather those skills, especially if it is something you are interested in and are active in online computers (I'm talking specifically about programming).[/quote]

I agree with most of this, except it varies from school to school.  My bio classes were not kill and drill, and we actually had a lot of critical thinking and projects that involved having original ideas.  I certainly felt like when I was in college I was walking on eggshells because my liberal arts major friends were so defensive, actually.  Their classes were certainly rigorous and if you did all the reading/really put yourself into the papers, it was a huge amount of work.  The only thing I am suggesting is that it was easier for someone to slide by as an English major than it was as a chemistry major.  The minimum you had to do to get by was lower, and statistically it was easier to get a higher GPA, even at our school which was known for little grade inflation.  For starters, there was less in class time, so more time to do homework--even if there was a lot of reading, it wasn't equivalent to having an afternoon in lab plus studying, problem sets, lab writeups, and reading.  Also you could get by skipping a bit of the reading if absolutely necessary.  The slacker chemists I knew generally had to do a little more to skate than the slacker humanities majors.  When you got to the really good students in either category, things were less cut and dry.

Also, most of the programmers I know were math majors who got interested in math side of theoretical computer science.  None of them learned to code in school, and if they did it was typically through doing undergraduate research that required that skill.[/quote]

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