Anonymous
Post 03/18/2025 10:12     Subject: Re:Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Nursing is one of the most demanding majors. Sciences plus clinicals. Most “high-brow” majors could never hack it.


Have you met a wide range of nurses? The top performers are a rarity. Most are best at eating donuts while phone scrolling.

WHY did you bump a nearly SIX YEAR OLD THREAD to talk about DONUTS? Is there not enough to talk about in current threads?

Very annoying and bad for the forum.
Anonymous
Post 03/18/2025 10:06     Subject: Re:Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:Nursing is one of the most demanding majors. Sciences plus clinicals. Most “high-brow” majors could never hack it.


Have you met a wide range of nurses? The top performers are a rarity. Most are best at eating donuts while phone scrolling.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 22:15     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It *really* depends on the status of the college. You can study whatever you want an an Ivy and you’ll always have a leg up.

But at a big public U, outside of STEM, most of their undergrad departments are a joke. And at more or less open-admit regional universities, only teaching, accounting, nursing and engineering (if offered) degrees are worth it.



But going to big public U is usually not high-brow and a regional university is always low-brow. High SES kids go to private schools, even if they can't get into the most selective ones, or they go to very top public schools. That's why places like GW and NYU do well, because they're less selective than actual elite schools but they charge money as if they are elite.


How old are you? NYU was #29 with a 16% admit rate. GW was #70 with a 42% admit rate. If you are going to put school down at least correct. NYU has over 86000 applications so to say kids don’t get rejected is just dumb.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 21:19     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?


Being gay used to be highbrow. These days it’s middlebrow. African immigrants are highbrow, African Americans are lowbrow. Japanese are highbrow, Filipinos and Thais are lowbrow. Congenital or accident-induced physical disabilities are class-neutral, T2D is lowbrow. Public transportation is usually lowbrow but can be counter signaling. I hope this helps.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 20:45     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:It *really* depends on the status of the college. You can study whatever you want an an Ivy and you’ll always have a leg up.

But at a big public U, outside of STEM, most of their undergrad departments are a joke. And at more or less open-admit regional universities, only teaching, accounting, nursing and engineering (if offered) degrees are worth it.



But going to big public U is usually not high-brow and a regional university is always low-brow. High SES kids go to private schools, even if they can't get into the most selective ones, or they go to very top public schools. That's why places like GW and NYU do well, because they're less selective than actual elite schools but they charge money as if they are elite.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 19:56     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:Highbrow: literature, philosophy, art history.
Lowbrow: communications, education, criminology.


This is the correct answer.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 19:29     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:
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.

I am PP. I used to work for the University of Michigan and had access to all sorts of data on students' backgrounds, backgrounds of students in each major/college within the university, etc. Ross (business school) had far and away the wealthiest student body of all the undergraduate colleges at UMich, with the lowest percent of low-income/first generation students. Engineering was up there, too.


BBA is for morons.

Agreed. BBA is for morons, but it's also one of the hardest majors to get into. Exactly for that reason - it's for morons who would flunk out of an engineering/CS programs.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 19:23     Subject: Re:Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:Ethnic studies and gender studies are lowest brow


While these aren't traditional "high brow" majors, they are more "high brow" than "low brow" because they are purely intellectual and have almost zero financial worth in the marketplace. (I'm not a fan of these majors, fwiw.)
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 19:18     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?


Are you suggesting that your college major is innate? Not a matter of choice?


It is a choice that is highly constrained depending on your SES class.



So, you have figured out that this discussion of SES and class is a discussion of SES and class. Good for you. Do you want to pretend that SES and class differences don't exist?
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:08     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?


Are you suggesting that your college major is innate? Not a matter of choice?


It is a choice that is highly constrained depending on your SES class.

Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:06     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?


The other 16:02. Exactly.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:05     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
Anonymous wrote:This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?


Are you suggesting that your college major is innate? Not a matter of choice?
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:04     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
NP. Lousy topic.

Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:02     Subject: Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
This thread is equal to this

Is being gay high brow or low brow?

Is black high brow or low?

Is Asian hi brow or low?

Is being handicapped low brow or high brow?

Is taking public transportation high brow or low?

Get the point?
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2019 16:02     Subject: Re:Just for fun - which majors are high-brow vs. low-brow?
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.


Brow isn't based off of difficulty. Class signifiers are things that take a lot of resources to acquire and are useless enough that you'd only spend the resources on it if you truly had more than enough resources to start with.

Take for example barre classes. It works well as a class signifier because it's expensive in time and money to do it consistently enough for results and has no inherent value in and of itself.

If it's a degree field a 1st generation college student would go into, it's probably not high brow.