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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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.[/quote]

You’re off your rocker if you think engineering isn’t high brow. Try completing a 4 yr engg. degree. Any engg. discipline will do. [/quote]

Difficult and for smart kids is not the same as high brow. Art history is much more high brow than engineering. [/quote]

Exactly, and top PP is correct.  Engineers work hard for their degrees but aren't educated, that's low-brow. Hi-brow + technical prowess would be math or physics--most engineers couldn't hack it those disciplines.[/quote]

I'm the top PP above and I don't discount the difficulty of the engineering major.  I helped my younger sister sweat through differential equations for hers. My own undergraduate degree is in Chemistry, but completed at a SLAC where I had rigorous requirements in humanities and social sciences outside my major that I feel significantly contributed to my sense of having a more rounded education.  I even think my own Chemistry major has more of a middle-brow feel to it more than say physics, math or biology because though challenging technically, in classes and in practice it often becomes quite narrow and applied rather than having a rich theoretical tradition.  Similarly, I think engineering and chem majors majors have in many ways harder work than art history or sociology (though not necessarily as complex), those fields are higher brow because they are more broadly intellectual rather than narrowly applied.  But I also think the whole discussion is also a bit arbitrary and dumb and based on some dated conceptions and boundaries of knowledge.[/quote]

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