Worst Degrees

Right on, Ruffian!!

I’m very much of that frame of mind - find what you like doing, and are good at, and the money will follow.

Carl, encourage your grandkids to take the classes, and ultimately the degree, that they find the most interesting/stimulating/fun - classes that they want to talk about after class. Being interested in what you’re doing is the best guarantee that you will be able to make a living at it.

Oh, and to follow up on Miss Gretchen’s comments - when I was doing my “useless” history degree, all the smart guys and gals were doing petrochemical engineering/geology degrees, because the Alberta oil companies were hiring. By the time we all graduated, the great oil-recession of the mid-eighties hit Alberta, and none of them had work.


and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel to toe

Well, I think NightGirl’s posts are conclusive proof that an AA in Humanities isn’t the way to go …

I’m in the process of applying for a Master’s in Irish Studies, so maybe I’m a bit sensitive to the “useless degrees” issue ;), but I really think you don’t have that much to be concerned about Carl. Currently I have a Poli Sci BA and I’m a paralegal; my brother has an English Lit BA and he’s a copy editor. And we both have co-workers with degrees that bear no apparent relation to the lines of work we ended up in. It really depends on what your grandkids want to do, but for an awful lot of jobs the simple fact of having a degree is more important than what that degree is in.

Most colleges also have some sort of placement or career guidance program.

I am a bit skeptical about the Phys Ed degree though…

If you are looking for a degree that will let you move right into your field and start working at decent pay, there’s not much - Computer Science and Engineering come to mind. Even physics (my major) won’t necessarily get you anywhere in terms of a career, without a Ph.D. Most of the guys I knew who graduated from physics wound up working as computer programmers, or doing something totally unrelated. Except for the few who continued on to get a Masters and/or Ph.D.

But that’s okay. University is not supposed to be a vocational school. If you want to learn a skill and go out and make money with it, go to a good 2-year college or tech school. They’ll teach you what you need to know, and help you find a job when you’re done.

Carl,

Although I haven’t read through all the responses, here’s my take on it.

I am not a college grad. I don’t learn the same way other people do (ADD, get bored out of my skull after a couple of weeks.)

My brother #1 has a soils engineering degree, he’s the senior VP of his construction company. He has always worked in construction, 3 jobs total since graduation in 88.

Brother #2 is an English major with a minor in marketing. He’s had so many different jobs since he graduated in 92 I can’t count them with both hands.

Best Friend is a geology major. She too has had many different jobs, but currently works as a real estate broker in the mountains.

Personally, I think for a lot of people they don’t know the direction they want to take in life at 18. My brother #1 always knew what direction (started as an architectural major, switched in his second year.) Brother #2 just hasn’t figured out what he wants to be when he grows up. Best friend found her niche and is doing well by it. Me, I am a non-grad and has had a total of 5 different jobs since I graduated (er got my GED) from high school in 86, now I am self employed.

I think, and this is based on perception, college is more than a certificate on the wall. It is more about the experience (I have taken my share of college courses) of learning and growing into a thinking adult.

Honestly, and I don’t mean anything against my fellow non-college-grads, most of my friends who haven’t graduated from college or haven’t taken courses are plain stupid. I don’t mean in the academic sense I mean in overall brain power. Some of us non-grads though, love to learn even though not in a traditional setting.

My mother had a Masters in English and taught at UCCS (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) My uncle has a PhD in something and is a professor at James Madison University – he reminds me of Stephen King, that twisted and dark sense of humor.

My sis-in-law #1 has an English major, worked for several years in PR and with the city PR dept. and now is a full time mommy and is taking Latin classes.

Sis-in-law #2 is not a college grad, has numorous jobs too.

I am just rambling now, but a degree in whatever may not be what the person will end up doing. I still think it’s the experience.

BTW, LeRoy Anderson, the composer, had a PhD in Swedish! Good thing he had his music to pay the bills!..Thanks for your kind responces…Carl

Carl,

The two most valuable skills one can have going into the job market are the ability to think critically and communicate clearly. For professions that don’t require post-graduate degrees to get ahead, just about any educational experience that gives your grandchildren those two skills will put them leagues ahead of the folks who can’t write worth a damn or think on their feet (and there are far too many of those floating around these days).

The key is not so much majoring in the right topic as it is finding a quality college or university that will deliver what your grandchildren need in terms of the overall educational experience.

Good luck!

Regarding the BA in History…

Hey! I’ve got one of those and I’m doing fine… of course, after I finished my BA, I did my graduate work in Geology.

Of my friends that I earned a BA, History, with:
One became a cadillac salesman, but now works for a state representative…
One sells natural foods and homeopathic medicines…
One became a park ranger at Big Bend NP, then quit to become a boatman…
One went to UT (Austin) law school…
And then there’s me.

Not too many working in History, but we’re all doing something… and all our lives are enriched by knowing a little something about why things are the way they are.

Tell 'em not to worry about future careers… major in what you ENJOY!

If your main concern is bringing home the Big Bucks, remember that most successful law-school students majored in English or History.


Uke

  1. Education is not the same as training. Education allows one to become a well-rounded, well-informed and responsible citizen. Training prepares one for a specific job. We need both.

  2. I take exception to Carl’s assumption that one’s adult life is necessarily spent chasing $$$. Mine isn’t. I have to work to support myself and my family. However, my life is not centered around finding more and more money. I make a decent living and could probably make at least twice as much in the private sector. But money isn’t my only priority – other things (like family, art, literature, food, travel, contemplation of the navel, etc) are important to me as well.

I’m good at my job and I thank my training for that. I have a good life and I thank my education (among other things) for that.


Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.

Bear in mind that a lot of mys students have been people who went out and got “smart” degrees: anything with computers, office skills, medical fields, business. Then the market chages and they find that they’re starting over. Or they’re burned out because “there’s got to be more to life than just making money.”

A real education, college or not, should enrich a person’s life. I was going to say “prepare them for life,” but they’re already living. A truly educated person has learned how to learn. They can always pick up training and skills later.

ALthough they weren’t “practical,” I kind of stumbled kinto what I think of as the best majors if someone wants to go the formal route. I majored in communication with an emphasis in theatre and had a second major in philosophy. I not only have a great job (as in, I love it, it pays well, it does good), I’m also happy and understand most issues pretty well. Other majors can probably do this, too, but a combination of thinking, communicating, and understanding people is key.

Bucky


Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.

There’s a distinction to be made between a college degree and an education. Practically everyone in the workforce today gets the former. Based on the evidence I see around me, fewer and fewer people (as a percentage of the populace) are getting the latter.

In times past, getting a college education meant the same thing, regardless of one’s nominal field of study: acquiring a general familiarity with a broad range of knowledge, learning to assimilate new information quickly (primarily from reading), learning to synthesize new ideas and concepts from one’s store of information and observations, and learning to communicate what one had learned or created to others.

Until well into this century, the notion of a college degree as a credential for employment scarcely entered anyone’s mind. Men (primarily) attended college in order to train their minds. Even the concept of a “major” field of study is a relatively recent development. Advanced degrees, in particular, were rare, even among leading figures in the various fields.

The classical college education, however, did not readily lend itself to being scaled up to provide for practically everyone in the population, and as a greater degree of specific technical information became necessary to successfully practice certain professions, credentialization overtook education as the expected outcome of the college experience for many people. The technical indoctrination that was once the province of apprenticeships and other on-the-job training was assumed by colleges in a bid to enroll greater and greater numbers of students, and was overlaid on the traditional role of colleges, resulting in institutional factions working toward different goals in an uneasy marriage that persists today.

Which is fine, so far as it goes. However, a narrowly defined course of technical training in a particular occupational field (what most college graduates acquire today) leaves one vulnerable in our rapidly changing economy to the same fate that befell workers in any number of industries through the twentieth century: the skills and knowledge they acquired became obsolete, in some cases almost overnight, and they found themselves ill-equipped to change horses in midstream. Until recently, this type of job obsolescence affected mainly non-degreed workers in skilled trades who’d invested years in learning a trade that died, but now it’s creeping up on the degreed professionals as well.

The more traditional college education, regardless of the nominal field of study, better prepares one to adapt to changing conditions, provides a broader base of information and experience to draw from in defining and solving problems, enables one to consider a greater subset of the possible contingencies in evaluating situations, and is more likely to provide the communication skills required to direct and persuade others. In short, it is ideal preparation for even the most technical of professions today, since it’s likely that today’s students will spend a significant portion of their working careers performing jobs that don’t even exist today.

Certainly, my perspective is skewed by my personal preferences and experience, but my story might be considered illustrative of the point I’m making. I majored in English at a small liberal arts college. Immediately after college, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in English lit. at a well-regarded major university. I grew to dislike the majority of my fellow students and most of the professors as well, and decided to bail out before I got in any deeper (halfway through my second year). I began working as a proofreader for an advertising agency. At that point, I was making one-quarter to one-third of what some other recent college graduates with technical or business degrees were making. Within five years, however, I was vice-president of a successful software company, making more than those same technically trained coevals. People asked me then, and still do, whether I regret getting a degree that I “don’t use”. The premise of the question is absurd; while I rarely have occasion to discuss with a colleague the fine points of Keats’ artistry in “To Autumn” or to translate an Old English poem like The Battle of Maldon, the things I really learned in college – how to gather information, assess it, develop new information from it, and communicate that to others – are precisely the things that have made me successful to this point and that give me confidence in facing whatever comes along next. So I’d say that the worst degree is one that prepares you for a specific job at the expense of allowing you to get an education.

I can’t read all the responses, but my parents and grandparents are always asking me what I’m going to do with an Hons B.A. or Combined Hons. B.A. in English and Media and a Certificate in Technical writing–I’m second year now.
#1 University isn’t to teach you hands on usually, we are here to learn how to learn.
#2 I’ve taken computer courses and writing courses that make up for a lot of the hands on stuff, ie I can do some minor programming, and webpages has suddenly become a passion as of my course last semester.
What will I do with all this knowledge?
Go into publishing, I love to edit stuff-anything, it’s fun to me.
What you can do with an Arts degree?
Anything, more and more companies are looking for people who know how to put coherent sentences together, know how to put together a presentation.
An Arts degree at my university demands that you take a second language, it is compulsary not elective.
Right now I can read, write and speak 3 languages, English, French(Canada’s second official language)and Russian.
So can I get a good quality job? Yes, from banks, computer companies, either webdesign, or programming, or administrative.
I’ve already had one job offer for a software company.
That doesn’t mean that college(college here is different than in the States) is less than university, but it’s a different approach.
For many vocational and hands-on jobs it is a much better than university-which is much more theory.


I am a fire whose flames lick and spit at the boundless sky forever desiring wonderous consummation
-me

I don’t think the main purpose of a BA is to prepare you for a particular sort of job, but rather to teach you how to Think. Note that often businesses don’t care what your degreee is in, as long as you have one. The BA just proves that you have some sort of promise, and that you can pick things up. I think they should study whatever they enjoy, and if they decide they want to follow a particular path later, they can either go to a grad program (these really don’t care what your BA was in-- you might have to take a remedial course or two) or focus on something in some other way. I don’t think not having majored in business ever stopped anyone from succeeding. I think a art history BA with a Business MA is worth tons more than a Business BA.