Arrgghhhh!!!!
It's just not funny any more. My colleague's dentist told him the other day, after finding out where he works, "Oh, liberal arts. There just aren't any jobs for liberal arts majors out there. I've told my kids to steer clear of liberal arts." Of course this was while he had his hands in John's mouth, so John couldn't educate the man.
There are enlightened employers out there. I know there are. I'm married to one. But until people begin to realize how truly unimportant the specifics of the bachelor's degree are, my job is going to continue to be 10 times harder than it has to be. I have to tell every other student that they do NOT have to get a BS in chemistry in order to go to pharmacy school. I had to explain to a student so she could explain to her parents that her sister's sociology degree was not a wasted degree just because she's in graduate school for statistics now. And I had to explain to a potential employer at a job fair, when I noticed they were looking for a student with a Bachelor of Science degree in a science major, that yes, our Bachelor of Arts science majors take the exact same lab science courses as the BS students. Without looking at the roster, the instructor doesn't know on the first day of class what colleges the students are from. Not only that, but students pursuing the BA biology major have to work even harder than the BS students because BA students have to put CLA requirements on top of the same major curriculum that the BS students take, which equals approximately 38 more credits with the second language requirement and the 18 upper division credits outside the major requirement.
When will it stop?!? I haven't completely formulated my thoughts around what I'm about to say, so not much detail here, but part of me is really interested in returning to the classical model of education wherein there weren't so many specialized majors and everyone learned more or less the same things. Things like communication skills, critical thinking skills, time management skills, how to work with other people skills, etc. As an undergrad, does it really matter if you are a biology major or a neuroscience major? I mean, really?
Comments
Yes, yes, this brings to mind a student we worked with last transfer O/R (or the last one I was around for anyway). She wanted to do kinesiology--at least at first. When I explained that she'd have to take at least another 2.5-3 yrs of classes to complete the prereqs and the program, she didn't know what to do. We talked about it for a little while, and she said she enjoyed biology classes, so I suggested it as a major. This started her crying, to my surprise; she was completely thrown off by the fact that (a) she wasn't going to be going straight into the occupation she had planned on, and (b) the major she was actually interested in didn't have a *single* career path, but *many* possibilities.
Posted by: john. | December 29, 2004 04:35 PM
Actually, just to piss everyone off, Higher Education was founded in this country FOR job training. Oh, how could it be? For the clergy. What were the job requirements? Know everything an educated person should know so you can shepherd your community. Seriously.
As the move was made to secular education, this emphasis persisted in the need to train thinkers for certain work (back when Philosophy WAS considered an important occupation, for example). We had, after all, just founded a country based on some relatively recent philosophical principles, etc.
I have no problem with the idea that Colleges and Universities are for job training, but the idea that job training is about narrow study is really the problem in my eyes.
Take my most familliar discipline: Computer Science. As an undergrad, you learn how to program, and basic algorythms. Are you qualified for a job? Actually, you would have almost been 10 years ago, when being a code monkey sitting over thousands of lines of code that performed essentially what the "set up your small business" templates and wizards now do in Microsoft Access. Of course, you would have had to learn how to work in teams, and communication and documentation skills. And so on...because you really weren't fully qualified to be a fully functioning, independently judging, autonomous part of the corporate team. And this was when "soft skills" and "partnering" weren't buzzwords. Interestingly enough, those were the days when computer science curricula resembled math curricula and majors could choose B.S. or B.A. My old program got moved into the Engineering College from the Arts and Sciences College.
Today, people need the technical skills, the higher-order, cognitive skills, and the scrappy, ill-defined, "people" skills. I am not saying that engineers don't have something to offer an employer - they certainly have one of the three covered. But, frankly, the graduate studies are really where one gains technical mastery of a subject area. MBA programs are still crying for majors not in business, because even they get it.
Different people should be able to take differnt paths to reach different goals in their education. But, when a majority of ignorant in society start putting one type of learning above others, they are revealing mass ignorance of not only what higher education is for, but also ther own best interests (in choosing majors, hiring graduates, etc.).
Well, the rant probably won't radically affect any opinions, but it certainly will keep me in my wife's good graces...
Posted by: Scott (hubby) | December 19, 2004 08:12 PM
I for one am sick and tired of people who think universities provide job training. These are the people who look with disdain upon BA's because they don't map neatly onto a career. These shortsighted fools approve of, say, chemistry because there are obvious examples of jobs that somehow involve chemistry. I can't help but wonder if the same people think geometry classes would benefit the guys who pack stuff into moving trucks.
If you want job training, go to DeVry or whatever and learn to weld or be a car mechanic. Universities are for education. (Or rather, they should be.)
Posted by: Dan Drake | December 17, 2004 07:17 PM
Oops, lost a line there...my neuroscientist friend is a fellow at Harvard Medical School. Obviously, holding a B.A. has done her career tremendous harm.
Posted by: Stacie | December 17, 2004 05:56 PM
As a graduate of an institution that grants only B.A.'s, and yet is very strong in the sciences, I feel your pain. None of my friends or acquaintances who received their B.A.'s in chemistry, physics, neuroscience, biochemistry, computer science, etc., have found graduate schools or employers reluctant to admit/hire them. One friend, who got her B.A. in neuroscience, went on for a Ph.D. at Northwestern, and is now, I believe, a fellow I know several others who have had similar experiences. There's definitely a need for a little broader education out there.
As to the worthlessness of the liberal arts as undergraduate majors, we've had this discussion before, and I can only say that that may be true if you're not creative or brave enough to choose among the endless career options open to liberal arts grads.
My liberal arts college placed heavy emphasis on its belief that the value of undergraduate education lies in gaining exactly the general skills you list in your last paragraph. It's hard to maintain even pockets of that belief in an institution with so many high-profile pre-professional programs, though.
Keep fighting the good fight, Danielle...
Posted by: Stacie | December 17, 2004 05:55 PM