Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know how most people view a nursing degree in the whole high-brow low-brow continuim.

As a nurse 2nd career hardest degree I obtained (English BA prior to BSN)

Difficulty has nothing to do with whether something is highbrow or lowbrow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know how most people view a nursing degree in the whole high-brow low-brow continuim.

As a nurse 2nd career hardest degree I obtained (English BA prior to BSN)

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

Historically, not the sharpest tools in the tool box become teachers.
Thus education majors are extremely easy.

This is incorrect. Many if not most teachers don't major solely in education--they major in their discipline and take a program in undergraduate or post-bac to get a teaching license or a Master's degree that gives advanced coursework in a specialty (e.g. literacy, assessment, science education). In Virginia for instance, it is only as of the last year or 2 that there even IS an undergraduate education major --it's been brought in to address the teacher shortage and universities are scrambling to create it.

The reason "education majors" look like low-scorers in summaries of undergraduates is that it's a subset of teachers--often those who want to teach PreK-3 who just major in education--who are often the weakest academically (though they may be very well-suited temperamentally/in "soft skills" for the earlier childhood years). Also, the states with the weakest educational systems--preK-higher ed that are more likely to grant undergraduate education majors as the primary teaching license. Stronger states have stricter requirements. The strong elementary school teachers may major in developmental or educational psychology, or in a content area (English, Biology, Math) which are far more challenging.

But the summary stats feeds the narrative that "teachers are dumb" in the US. (Note: I'm not a teacher).

This thread is low brow

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know how most people view a nursing degree in the whole high-brow low-brow continuim.

Low brow. Nursing is a trade.

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.

Environmental, industrial engineering are then No Brow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Low Brow:

Home Economics Education
Recreation and Leisure Services
Psychology
Interior Design

I would disagree with Psychology. Low-brow doesn't simply mean "easy major" but more one that is a "newer major" that is not regarded as academic in nature. While Psychology is not difficult, it is definitely viewed as an academic discipline, and has been around as a major for a long time and is offered at the most prestigious universities.

Psych is higher-brow than the others in that list but social sciences are generally not highbrow. Cognitive Science and Biology are both higher-brow than Psychology.

Again, I'm not sure I would agree with this. I think some people are mixing up difficult for high brow. High brow is something that a kid from an old money New England family might major in, and the traditional liberal arts definitely fit that bill, even though they are easier than many "low-brow" degrees such as nursing. Generally speaking, if it is offered as an undergrad degree at Harvard it fits the bill as high-brow (except for media studies, that one's a weird anomaly)

This reminds me of the line (I think it was from the Preppy Handbook) that carpentry is an acceptable profession, but you must have a PhD in Philosophy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Undergrad nursing degree is lowbrow.

Basically the more immediately useful the coursework/the more it specifically prepares you for things you will literally be doing in your job (assuming your job is not academia), the lower-brow it is. Computer Science degree where you do a ton of theory and math: highbrow. CS degree where you get really good at coding: lowbrow.

Then we get into countersignaling, which is a whole ‘bother ball of wax.

I would agree with this, but I've often wondered, how did Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Science bypass this label?

Architecture did because it’s very creative and not very highly paid. Engineering and computer science did not.

Anonymous wrote:Engineering is not highbrow, architecture isn’t an undergrad degree, and comp sci is very borderline depending on how it’s taught.

Yes architecture is an undergrad degree.

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know how most people view a nursing degree in the whole high-brow low-brow continuim.

As a nurse 2nd career hardest degree I obtained (English BA prior to BSN)

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

Historically, not the sharpest tools in the tool box become teachers.
Thus education majors are extremely easy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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

So what if I was a bio major- and then went back to school to get a masters in education? Does that get me respect?

Yes, you'd get respect, but not as much as obtaining a PhD.

A PhD in Biology, that is, not in education.

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

So what if I was a bio major- and then went back to school to get a masters in education? Does that get me respect?

Yes, you'd get respect, but not as much as obtaining a PhD.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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

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.