What value is in liberal arts education?

[FBM]

This was surprising: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/un ... me=2282929 History and philosophy beat out physics and computer science in terms of employability.


And people majoring in Education and languages did even better.

[FBM]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DBt9mVdgnI#at=244[/youtube]

[rainbow]

This was surprising: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/un ... me=2282929 History and philosophy beat out physics and computer science in terms of employability.


And people majoring in Education and languages did even better.

Due to the fact that people don't like to employ those more intelligent than themselves.

They might not be terribly productive, but at least they won't threaten the person employing them.

My theory, anyway.

[FBM]

It's a pretty good one. If I had a company, I'd be specifically looking to hire people smarter than myself. (Not that such people are that hard to find. )

[macdoc]

Liberal arts degrees are great, but they aren't what businesses are generally looking for.

and for evidence of that you have ???

I run a tech business.....tech graduates can't communicate worth shit.....liberal arts grads communicate better and have a more flexible range of skills to offer.

[Cormac]

Read Taleb for a critique of the world without Arts.

[FBM]

Liberal arts degrees are great, but they aren't what businesses are generally looking for.

and for evidence of that you have ???

I run a tech business.....tech graduates can't communicate worth shit.....liberal arts grads communicate better and have a more flexible range of skills to offer.

The burn. From the real world.

Read Taleb for a critique of the world without Arts.

I was very slow to respect the Arts. It took a grad-level course in it to convince me of its relevance. Before that class, I saw photography as a hobby. After it, I realized that it is an art form. My photography may still not yet be good, but I guarantee you that it's better than it was before I took that class.

[Cormac]

Businesses relying on economists, physicists, business majors, and hardcore tech or ran us into this current crisis.

The absence of an understanding of the logical fallacies and some disciplines of critical thinking in business is a huge problem.

[FBM]

Tbh, I'm often surprised at the critical thinking skills of those trained solely in tech and sciences. In particular, the frequent inability/unwillingness to be skeptical about the "truths" and "facts" claimed by their particular field of expertise. The eagerness to gloss over the Problem of Induction and say that 'It's as good as known' or 'For all practical purposes it's known...', ignoring the numerous times in history when others have had the same attitude and been proven wrong. At the highest levels of science, afaik, scientists are very philosophical and concede that the present claims are provisional. A step or three down, though, and you find people asserting Absolute Truths.

[macdoc]

Quants risk assessment comes to mind. But then that whole category is a cesspool.
I term the shortsightedness - MBA think.

Just see the railway disaster in Quebec as a prime example of poor risk management. Cutting a staff member here and there.....sure saves some money....

But not the company. ( likely to go under )
Or the town. Devastated for a generation.

[Cormac]

Quants risk assessment comes to mind. But then that whole category is a cesspool.
I term the shortsightedness - MBA think.

Just see the railway disaster in Quebec as a prime example of poor risk management. Cutting a staff member here and there.....sure saves some money....

But not the company. ( likely to go under )
Or the town. Devastated for a generation.

...and quants are quite often economists rather than actual mathematicians.


Not just MBA think. It is more than that.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

At Purdue they run a Comm class, "Communications for Technical Majors". They aim really low.

[Cormac]

I think it has made my life more interesting, but majoring in a liberal art (Philosophy) has certainly limited my employability. I ran across the idea that many universities are considering downsizing or even eliminating their liberal arts courses and majors in favor of things like business, law, science and technology programs because of the relative unemployability of liberal arts grads. Would we be better or at least just as well off if we just learned about literature, arts, philosophy, history, etc, informally? In our spare time?

The liberal arts education, if the student actually does the work and learns the material, is awesome. It's very nice in life to have a strong background in history, philosophy, the arts, literature,logic, the classics, music and such. It forms a foundation upon which to base all other learning.

HOWEVER -- the problem with modern liberal arts degrees is that they are dumbed down and bullshit, easy to pass without actually mastering the material. If I thought a liberal arts graduate actually mastered a significant amount of material, I'd be impressed.

Also, the purpose of a liberal arts degree is not to prepare oneself for employment of some fashion. That should be obvious. Having a good foundation in Greek and Roman classics doesn't make you able to sell, or design, or build, or manage, or account or whatever. Those are different skills. The thing is, neither do so-called business degrees like marketing and "business management" and such. Those degrees are even more bullshit than liberal arts degrees.

What a person needs to do, and which few 18 to 21 year old can grasp, is take the bull by the horns in a project oriented fashion and figure out what they can do in life that they enjoy and which makes sufficient money for them, and then do what needs to be done to excel at that. Simply floating along through college taking "journalism" or "communications" or whatever fluffy major doesn't give you the needed skills for anything. They graduate and are mystified by the fact that folks aren't beating down the door to hire them for $75,000 a year salaries. The thing is, if they tried to think of it objectively, they would realize that they wouldn't hire themselves for most of the jobs they're looking for if they were paying the salary. That's because they haven't gotten any proven experience accomplishing anything besides drinking and partying in college and getting average grades in relatively easy curricula.

That's why it's important to have skill -- the best ones to get in college are advanced degrees like law, medicine and such. At an undergrad level, accounting, engineering, architecture, information technology, etc. are all good ones, because they allow employers to have a reasonably good expectation of what the graduate can do coming out of school. But it is possible to do both.

As far as I am concerned, I don't really give a shit what qualification someone head when I'm hiring. It is nice background information, and gives some insight to their way of thinking. However, I work on the assumption that if they don't have work experience (of ANY variety), then I'm dealing with someone who will be more or less useless once hired, regardless of what studies they've undertaken. (Medicine is different precisely because it mixes academic work with good old fashioned apprenticeship style hands on training. To a limited extent, architecture is the same).

[Coito ergo sum]

Liberal arts degrees are great, but they aren't what businesses are generally looking for.

and for evidence of that you have ???

I run a tech business.....tech graduates can't communicate worth shit.....liberal arts grads communicate better and have a more flexible range of skills to offer.

The burn. From the real world.

Liberal arts grads can't do the "tech" work, can they? (well, sometimes they can, but not by virtue of their degree, right?). Theater is a great thing to take in college, but it doesn't make you an engineer or a software developer.

Read Taleb for a critique of the world without Arts.

I was very slow to respect the Arts. It took a grad-level course in it to convince me of its relevance. Before that class, I saw photography as a hobby. After it, I realized that it is an art form. My photography may still not yet be good, but I guarantee you that it's better than it was before I took that class.

I have a great respect for the arts. Having a respect for the arts doesn't mean refusing to acknowledge that there are different "magisteria", as it were -- diferent disciplines. If I want an accountant, I would look for someone with an accounting degree. If I want an engineer, an engineering degree. If I want an actor, then I look to an acting school.

Photography can be a hobby, or it can be a career. All depends what you make of it, and what you want to do with it. Some folks don't want to get involved in commerce, which is just fine. There are writers with manuscripts they wrote, just sitting in their desks. Doesn't reduce the value of their endeavor, except to the people who base value on whether something has been published or made money. That's not the only measure of value, and value is entirely subjective.

[Coito ergo sum]

Businesses relying on economists, physicists, business majors, and hardcore tech or ran us into this current crisis.

The absence of an understanding of the logical fallacies and some disciplines of critical thinking in business is a huge problem.

I'm not following - are you suggesting that if businesses make economic projections based on an English major's or a Historian's work, that it would be more likely to achieve a positive outcome than if based on an Economist's work?