Why do people trash liberal arts?

[Ibanez]

Why do people trash liberal arts degrees/programs?

I was thinking of this the other day and I realized that most people trash a liberal art degree/program because of it's lack of specialization. Getting a BA isn't as clear cut as getting a BS in Civil Engineering. With that BS you know what you are doing but with a BA it's a little less clear, but the skills are supposedly developed to help you achieve just as much.

Thoughts/Opinions?

[geekchic9]

Getting a liberal arts degree used to be considered a Good Thing. It was supposed to teach you how to think for yourself. Then, you specialized with your master's or law degree or MD, and so on.

I have a BA in English, and it was a good "overview of the field" major. There are universities where you can specialize with your English degree: One I know has specializations in technical writing, creative writing, English literature, and linguistics. So, even liberal arts degrees are becoming specialized.

I personally like schools that focus on classical education, where everyone goes through the same degree program, and leave the specialization to master's degrees, just like in ye olden days.

On the other hand, this is coming from a person who eventually wants to get a Master's in Software Engineering, which requires a lot of undergrad work in the field. There are strengths and weaknesses to both sides of the debate.

[UHF]

Hello, I think there are several reasons. The main one in my opinion, is that arts excellence really is based on opinion. With science/engineering and other disciplines, results are produced which may require opinion in interpretation. But they are based on the quest for truth and use some form of physical measurement to evaluate it.

Arts are often really only down to opinion. Whether it's over works of art or literature. There's no real quest for a truth perhaps, despite what some would like to think.

Plus the arts have a notoriety as being an easy option requiring a little intellectual or sincerity requirement to enter. This is of course unfair. I think the lack of specialisation you mean, comes down to 'what did you learn that is of use to you now that you want a career?' Perhaps arts are just less vocational unless you become a painter or arts writer.

[seeker5]

We have to look at why people are going to college in order to view the reputation of different fields.

From Beginning of the existence of Universities to a few decades ago - people overwhelmingly went to college to improve themselves, expand their horizons. It was for the "rich", and college wasn't required for most jobs, and you could make good money without the degree. Thus Liberal Arts Degrees was favored.

From a few decades ago - present - Now it's a pretty much a requirement to earn a college degree just to have a decent job, and college is open to the middle and poor class. Thus most people go to college just to have a degree that earn them money. Thus the majors that allow people to earn the most have the best reputation. Liberal Arts Majors have a reputation of not making much when they graduate...hence the shift to not being a good thing.

That's my guess.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by geekchic9

I personally like schools that focus on classical education, where everyone goes through the same degree program, and leave the specialization to master's degrees, just like in ye olden days.

I mainly know of one such school, St. John's College located in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Excellent school for anyone who can afford to pay most of the ~45 grand per year out of pocket (limited grants available). I checked it out personally and enjoyed it, but ended up going for somewhere closer to home with a full scholarship.

St. John's College

[Brutha]

It's our postmodern culture.
When you have literature theory that says, literature is the culture talking to itself, the field loses its meaning.
After deconstructing a poem, whats the point of the poem?
Sure you will learn fancy words to analyse the peom. That excercise might even make fun, because you are better than most people at the planet at analying peoms.
To quote Alan Watts (out of memory): The philosoph works today a job from 9 to 5 to do philosophy. He studies whether certain phrases have meaning, and if so what?
If you could get away with it he would wear a white collar.

To the topic of self improvement. Lets take a look at Steve, he studied Informatics and got a good self help writer.
Do you think he would have gotten a better writer if he had studied literature and would new how to analyse a peom with fancy words?

Learning how to do mathematics and program, does also teach you to think for yourself just as good as the course on deconstracting peom.
The added bonus is that mathematics is actually a useful skill.
People you take training in mathematics do also learn how to think logically and make rational arguments.
That shows in Steves writing.

[Ak47]

Originally Posted by geekchic9

Getting a liberal arts degree used to be considered a Good Thing. It was supposed to teach you how to think for yourself. Then, you specialized with your master's or law degree or MD, and so on.

This is what my brother did- and a good chance i will too- get a BA that is. I haven't decided yet... as for him, he majored in Religion and Philosophy. For most people i'm sure it's assumed there isn't a lot you can specifically do with a degree in philosophy directly. He did get his JD (juris doctorate) though, and is now a lawyer. The government sucked him right up for a position since he was not only educated in law- but the practice and method of thinking which is obviously useful in debate type situations.

I don't think a BA is a bad idea compared to any other professional education, it just depends on what you want to do for a living. A lot of people are all about technology and such because it's a high paying, popular industry at this time. However, if it's not something you'd enjoy doing- then it's just a waste of time- you'd have money but never be happy.

[Erki]

Logic and rationalism are overrated.

[elainevdw]

The best bathroom graffiti I ever saw was written on a university bathroom toilet paper dispenser. It said, "Philosophy Degrees: Take One."

Now, let me preface this rant by saying I'm an English major and damned proud of it.

As far as why people smack-talk liberal arts degrees, I think it's because:

1) You can BS your way through a liberal arts degree. It's much harder to BS your way through a hard science, with the math and all.

2) Some people who pursue liberal arts degrees give liberal arts a bad name because they manage to be pompous AND unintelligent, all at the same time!

3) People confuse college with trade schools. A liberal arts degree doesn't teach you a specific task for a specific job.

The real problem is #3. College does not teach you how to be something, e.g. how to be a writer, how to be a psychologist, how to be a lawyer, how to be an engineer. College teaches you how to think. How to communicate. How to be independent. How to set and pursue both long-term and short-term goals. How to network. How to work in a team or group. How to succeed within a system. How to play by the rules. How to bend the rules.

Anything else you may learn at college is great! Good for you. But that doesn't change the fact that my dad studied criminology and ended up in sales, or that my boyfriend's dad studied psychology and ended up in hedge funds and financing. I studied English, and even though I've done my fair share of professional proofreading, writing and editing, I'm in the web industry now. In fact, my coworker and I were just talking about how the vocalist/cofounder of the band Bad Religion has a PhD in evolutionary paleontology from Cornell. By the way, my coworker has an MFA in creative writing and is now a graphic designer.

The sad truth is that college does not teach you job skills or prepare you for the workforce. It's purely a pursuit of personal growth. This is a wonderful thing, but there will always be the pragmatic follow-up question: Why pay $X thousands of dollars for "personal growth" if you end up a highly-educated barista at Starbucks?

To which I counter, where are your priorities?! A skill set is static; personal growth has infinite return.

And at least you got to immerse yourself something you were truly passionate about, instead of buying into the "college = trade school" mentality and studying something you didn't really like because you thought it would be profitable. The age that most people do college is the perfect opportunity to dive into something fun before you start the long process of specializing (and subsequently limiting) yourself through career, family, etc.

This also explains why there are plenty of mega billionaires who were dropouts, flunkees or worse. College is not necessary to be successful. But it can help -- and it's darn fun.

[RT Wolf]

Originally Posted by elainevdw

College teaches you how to think. How to communicate. How to be independent. How to set and pursue both long-term and short-term goals. How to network. How to work in a team or group. How to succeed within a system. How to play by the rules. How to bend the rules.

I agree with you on every point, and I'd like to point out that college provides you the opportunity to teach yourself how to think. It may seem like picking, but I've met too many people at my university who haven't learned any of those things. College doesn't teach squat, you teach it to yourself.

In that vein, you can teach yourself plenty of things inside or outside school, if you desire to learn.

[Doku]

I avoid the liberal arts degree debate by stating that I have a Bachelors in Computer Science, instead of saying that I have a BACS.

re: Philosophy degree... We had a saying at my college... "People with philosophy degrees are the only people qualified to sit around and ponder why they are unemployed."

[MartialDev]

Liberal arts are a wonderful pastime, and perhaps a career...but why should anyone spend $50,000 tuition on "art appreciation" lessons?

[Erock]

English and liberal arts can be challenging. As far as majors go I would put them both above business. To me, it's not necessarily a business type major that I look down upon, but the people that get these majors. They tend to have very little direction or purpose, weak personalities, and values that do not match mine.

Erock

[agnostic]

We are focused on productivity and efficiency of production of goods. An arts degree doesn't really help you with that as much as a science degree. Hence arts degrees are seen as a waste of money.

[ThoughtAddict]

I'm a philosophy major. My father thought it was useless. He didn't think I could use it to get a job.

Wow, was he wrong.

In college, the classes were about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Rorty.

What they actually taught were how to think, read, write, argue, pursuade, express complex thoughts, force yourself to do unpleasant, hard work.

A corporate lawyer in town was hiring a student to work for him. He interviewed a number of business and accounting majors. Then he hired me because, as he said, "They knew how to work with the numbers. You know how to read and think. I can't teach them how to think. But I can teach you how to work with the numbers." He later recommended me to a tax attorney who had fired accounting majors.

[Michael Chui]

It's sad that people expect college to teach you how to think. That's something you should have before high school.

[Doku]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

It's sad that people expect college to teach you how to think. That's something you should have before high school.

Yes, but how many people are actually home schooled? Not to hijack the thread, but public schools are there to create factory workers, and they do a very good job at it. They spend 12-13 years teaching you to follow orders, and not think for yourselves.
But back to the philosophy degree, yes I do know people with philosophy degrees that are doing very well. It does teach you to think outside of the box. My personal belief is that if you are going to rely on a college education to make you "set for life", the most well rounded and able to do it is someone with a philosophy and physics bachelors, and an MBA.

[Michael Chui]

I wasn't homeschooled, but I was reinterpreting the Bible in middle school. And, just because the education system sucks today does not mean it cannot be fixed. However, expecting it to remain the way it is without explicit criticism is an implicit approval of its current state.

[XeutonMojukai]

I also subscribe to the pre-high school free thinkers club.

I basically have always known how to think, and it's kept me successful despite seemingly having nothing going for me except dumb luck.

You need to teach yourself everything important, or else the skills you learn in school (and they are only skills) will not be worth anything to you.

~ David

[ThoughtAddict]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

It's sad that people expect college to teach you how to think. That's something you should have before high school.

I disagree. Learning how to think is a life skill that is never fully developed. It's always in flux. Most people never learn how to shift their point of view from a very conservative one to a very liberal one (to use oversimplified labels). The philosophy major was excellent at forcing many of these shifts, thereby teaching how to shift thinking. That's primarily what I mean by "learning to think". To be able to come to a logically correct answer and attack opposing premises is good. To be able to do it from 10 points of view is stronger.

There are so many points that I still don't get. There are still bad habits. I'd be wary of anyone who says that the process of "learning to think" should be done before high school. It's a skill that only a very few truly master.

[elainevdw]

Another thing about high school is that a lot of kids are more interested in fitting in than learning how to think, just because of their stage of emotional/social development. Also, in college, a lot of kids finally have the freedom and generally accepting atmosphere they need to experiment, which they may not have had before, thus giving them the opportunity to teach themselves how to think.

It wasn't until college that I was able to break out of a stiflingly religious upbringing and start to really come into my own. Prior to that, I couldn't learn how to think outside of the ideologies I was raised in (since I was surrounded solely by people who believed those same ideologies). Though I certainly did try. In college, trying to think wasn't completely futile, so I learned a helluva lot. And I like to think that I'm continuing to learn (and learn how to think even better) as time goes on. Especially now that I'm surrounded by more diversity than I was before.

Then again, I also know these two kids -- 10 and 13, I think -- whose parents are so highly-educated, well-traveled and successful that talking to their children is like talking to a couple of very giggly college freshmen. Now those are going to be some "thoughtful" adults when they grow up. And they're very lucky to have the parents, and atmosphere, that they do.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by ThoughtAddict

I disagree. Learning how to think is a life skill that is never fully developed. It's always in flux.

That depends largely on, as you go on to say below, what you mean by "how to think". I agree that it's a kind of continuum unto infinity, but what I am implying is that there exists a threshold beyond which a person should be, and that most people are not.

I define maturity here:
raccaldin36: Kids These Days, Draft Two
which in turn links to this:
raccaldin36: Kids These Days, Draft One

I fleshed it out a lot here:
raccaldin36: Progression of Educational Maturity

Originally Posted by ThoughtAddict

To be able to come to a logically correct answer and attack opposing premises is good. To be able to do it from 10 points of view is stronger.

Stronger still is being able to identity truth; and beyond that, the ability to express it. All of these involve thought.

Originally Posted by ThoughtAddict

There are so many points that I still don't get. There are still bad habits. I'd be wary of anyone who says that the process of "learning to think" should be done before high school. It's a skill that only a very few truly master.

So you're not god. But I would certainly say you have learned how to think. That you are aware of your own ignorance and of your faults does not mean you are not sufficiently capable of thought.

I learned the Allegory of the Cave in 10th grade; I should have been taught that in 6th. Coming into high school, I should have been aware of names like Socrates, Machiavelli, and Russell; I wasn't. I cannot quite describe the severity of the setbacks in my education because, to this day, I remain unfamiliar with the breadth or depth of their arguments.

The reason "few truly master" the competence of thought is because it is not taught. People laud the university environment for giving students a mindset within which to think about the world; in truth, what they more often do is create this mindset by forcing out others. I cannot think about the world from the perspective of a biologist; I see it in terms of information and organizational relationships. You, on the other hand, view the world from the viewpoint of philosophy, but I ask: how familiar are you with psychology or marketing, which are equally valid worldviews?

It should be taught. I don't think you'll dispute that.

The question, therefore, is when. Why college? Why not high school? Indeed, why wait until high school? A child's mind is quite capable during middle school, especially if her previous education was sufficient and competent; do it then.

Before high school.

High school is the era of the identity. Whereas the infant is an explorer of reality and the youth an explorer of his environment, adolescence is the ultimate introspective period of a person. Beyond it, the human being explores possibility, venture and accomplishment. They explore society, organization, regeneration, and time.

The time to learn how to think is during one's youth.