The perfect representation of everything that is wrong with education today...

[triphicus]

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/06/03/the-10-most-worthless-college-majors/When did the noble goal of education, that is, of expanding and enriching one's mind through the study of great works of literature, science, and philosophy, become reduced

Comments

[tyopsqueene]

I'm not sure about the golden age rhetoric here. I'm pretty sure that the giant German Us started to consider the industrial potential of their wee graduates within a generation of the big reconfiguring post-Napoleon. And the whole swathe of red brick British Us made hat tipping reference to giving a proper classical education to the new middle classes, while cranking out the industrial chemists and microscopists and steam engine desingers and slagging off Oxbridge for not being practical enough

[triphicus]

You make some good points, and again I want to point out that I was perhaps not clear enough in the OP regarding issues of practicality. I do not mean to say here that they are to be completely ignored, but rather that an education should not be reduced to their consideration.

I will admit that perhaps I am a bit inordinately idealistic about what education should be. But isn't it a bit idealistic in the opposite direction to assume that everyone graduating with a more technical degree will magically land a high paying job right out of college? It seems more realistic to assume that majors graduating out of both sides are going to struggle a bit in finding a job upon graduation. But it seems to me that that consideration alone should suggest there are other important things to be gained from the monetary and personal sacrifice put in for an education

[tyopsqueene]

I'm not sure that the connections between your 'big question' and the question you've posed in the OP actually exist in any simple sense

[rosathome]

I would think that whatever transferable skills and practical or vocational knowledge is required for most jobs can be (a) taught by the age of 18 and/or (b) be best acquired on the job. I really can't see this as a basis for higher education.

In fact in my, wildly counter-cultural view, I think the government ought to be aiming for fewer undergraduate students not more. If I were in charge (and there are lots of good reasons why I'm not), I'd work out how many students could be paid for (tuition and maintenance), and allocate all those funds to, say, the 15 or 20 best universities to provide places for the candidates they felt best suited to higher education. Anyone else wanting to go to university would have to pay their own way entirely. I expect that most of them would find they could manage quite well without.

[stardance]

I'm job hunting right now and pretty much every job I come across wants English or Communications majors if they don't want Business majors. So I dunno what this list thing is supposed to prove but the writer's clearly talking out of his ass.

[triphicus]

Thank you. That is the exact impression that I have gotten from the firsthand experience of my English major friends. (I also double majored in English, but as I have decided to take the Ph.D. route in Theology, I don't have any firsthand experience of whether this is true, but as my friends are for the most part honest people, I think it is fair to take their word for it).

[qkellie]

Excuse me, but why is everyone taking a list seriously that's on a web site that also includes, among its many highly relevant and important pieces of information, a link to something called "The Douchiest Phone Message In History"? Um, seriously? Do we believe that the esteemed writers of "holytaco.com" are in any position to do the research necessary to grasp what it is, exactly, that a major in Communication or Music Therapy actually involves in terms of coursework?

Everyone's comments are all very legitimate criticisms of certain majors. The original link was, if I am not entirely mistaken, a humor site. And an ill-informed one at that.

[triphicus]

It is still an idea that runs rampant in American society, and one that I have seen replicated in many different forms. It wasn't the well-researched, academic view on the matter that I was criticizing, but rather that of popular culture--which, quite sadly, is far more influential in American society than anything that comes out of the academy.

[qkellie]

True enough. Good point.

[triphicus]

Same with philosophy. In fact, pretty much everyone I know who went to law school majored in philosophy for precisely that reason.

[triphicus]

See, a "real-world" example of how the ability to reason and make connections between seemingly disconnected considerations is so important to making it in said world!

[pansette]

I don't know, though-- I think the author's got a point when it comes to most undergrad comm students.

Go into a communications class on any given day and it’ll smell like dried semen and booze. Reason being, communications is the major for anyone who wants to graduate, but doesn’t want to stop getting totally wasted on weekdays.

Well... yeah.

[qkellie]

That was admittedly a quarter of my fellow Com undergrads. Another quarter all wanted to become disc jockeys, and they were humorless, unfun, proto-emo guys with no pignment in their skin and all the fashion sense of a Cameron Crowe film. The rest of us seriously thought we will be Pulitzer Prize winning journalists.

OTOH, I eventually jumped ship to English and pretend I know nothing about the Com major, so...

[feministyogini]

I'm convinced this is why my cousin is majoring in it