No, I used an even more clever non-analogy where “janitors” represent people who clean up buildings and “brain surgeons” represent highly skilled physicians.
Should Obama make a speech in which he tells janitors to do something where they will get more money by becoming brain surgeons?
My name is I Made French Toast For You and I’m an art history major (who had the misfortune of being born to non-idle non-rich parents).
Unemployment for experienced art history majors is high – higher than many other fields. But it’s also equivalent to other fields, such as: studio arts, drama and theater, pre-law and communication technologies. It’s also lower than other majors, such as: architecture, linguistics, and international business. (PDF cite here.)
I wonder if people who have disdain for the profession of art history also have equal disdain for architects and lawyers. I wonder why Obama singled out art historians rather than international businesspeople. I suspect it has more to do with personal biases about the perceived “usefulness” of degrees rather than unemployment numbers.
[Crosses fingers] Oh please oh please oh please oh please.
However 10.2% of people with art history degrees have parents in the 1% already. 
ETA: Damn, ninjaed. but mine was funnier.
Fuck them, though.
They will if they have to.
That’s only relevant if Art History majors are planning on becoming Art Historians. I happen to have an Art History degree, and few of us were planning on becoming Art Historians (most of the people I went to school with ended up in IT - but it was the late 80s, everyone ended up in IT). Its like majoring in PoliSci - a few people think they are going to go out and run campaigns with a B.A., but most will either go to Law School, Grad School, or do something completely unrelated.
I do know one person who got a B.A. in Art History and is a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She doesn’t make as much as a plumber - but she is doing something she is passionate about and makes enough money to be self supporting. I’m not sure she’d be passionate about plumbing, even if it paid more. And her student loans are paid in full.
Someone who has the opportunity to be either a janitor or a brain surgeon would probably be better off selecting the latter option.
I’m not sure what your point with this. Obama doesn’t need to give speeches touting this wisdom since it’s widely accepted by all, and is the subtext of a zillion other speeches or similar touting the success of so-and-so who was the first member of his family to attend college or such-and-such program which made it all possible, and so on.
If there was a widespread perception that being a public defender was a big step up over being a corporate attorney and this caused a glut of would-be public defenders depressing the market, then the same would hold.
The people who run the Louvre are the top 0.01% of their field. People who set out in the field of art thinking they’re going to run the Louvre are in for a disapointment.
That’s great for her - and it apparently worked out pretty well for you too, considering what you’ve said about your income in other threads - but the big picture is different.
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps;17120679That’s great for her - and it apparently worked out pretty well for you too, considering what you’ve said about your income in other threads - but the big picture is different.[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure that it is - if they have no interest in being art historians.
Liberal arts majors take longer to get off the ground than business majors - but they do launch. And when they do, after a few years of income growth, they tend to make more than plumbers (unless the plumbers open their own businesses).
The error - and its one that is made when you are a college student starting out - is believing your liberal arts major will become your career choice. The anthropology major I know is a training specialist. The sociology major an IT VP. The psychology major ran a city before becoming a consultant.
Are there fewer positions directly related to art history than there are art history grads - yep. Those with a passion figure out how to make a living doing it, even if it isn’t much of a living - one of the people I went to school with curates film festivals in the Bay Area and is an independent filmmaker - living from grant to grant. Another acquaintance is a grant reviewer for an arts organization - they aren’t jobs you’d want to raise a family on - but neither of them is choosing to raise a family. They pay their bills, and their student loans.
Well, you don’t want Democrats to jeopardize the all-important art historian vote.
The point is that it is a stupid comparison; just as stupid as suggesting that people interested in art history should instead go for bigger money in manufacturing (or whatever). Obama’s suggestion that people should simply follow the money in careers is just bad advice, period. And this is coming from a man who studied political science, another major that is fairly widely ridiculed. Maybe he should have studied engineering so he would have had a better chance at the big bucks!
Would you tell students not to play a sport in college? Do you advise pretty girls not to move to Hollywood? Do you tell chefs not to open a restaurant? Do you tell software programmers not to do a startup? The deck is stacked against all those people, and the majority of them are in for a sore disappointment.
There’s a big difference between saying “We need more plumber/engineers/whatever” and giving people crappy advice by saying that they shouldn’t do what they want; they should do something that they may have no interest in whatsoever. It is really bad life advice, period. And what does it matter to you if an art historian/actor/football player doesn’t get their dream job? So far as I can tell, whether an individual succeeds or fails in their chosen career has nothing to do with you.
They don’t have to. What are you going to do, pass a law that no one can hire a computer person unless he has never heard of C++ or .NET?
Unemployed people, mostly.
If they are expecting to make a living in the NFL or the NBA, hell yes.
Regards,
Shodan
OTOH, one potentially lucrative advantage of a degree in art history is that the knowledge and skills are, shall we say, transferable.
According to the OP, what Obama actually said was:
I don’t see him asserting that people ought to simply follow the money - rather, that if they want to follow the money, they should consider the trades.
Hos statement may be true or it may not - I’m inclined to think that it is - but one thing it is not, is a statement that people ought to look out only for the money, to the exclusion of all else.
I think you worded this incorrectly. It doesn’t make sense to tell them not to play a sport just because they probably won’t go pro. As the NCAA is fond of reminding us, most of its athletes have no designs on playing a sport full-time. But if they do want to be athletes it’s appropriate to tell them that even if they are very talented, it’s extremely difficult to make it to the pros. So you would tell them to calibrate their expectations accordingly and make other plans and (if they’re not so talented) not devote an excessive amount of their time to sports instead of the classroom. I think that’s where this brings us back to the main topic here. You don’t need to tell people not to pursue their dreams, but it’s important that they have a good understanding of what they’re getting themselves into in terms of their spending and debt, job prospects, opportunity costs of pursuing one major or career over another, fallback plans, and so on.
The two bolded statements are ridiculous. The first is simply not true and the second draws a conclusion not at all supported by the facts.