I've been stewing over this for the past couple of days and I need to vent.

I told someone in the ward that I was working on a physics degree with a concentration in astronomy and a minor in English (technical writing). After I finish my four-year degree, I want to pursue a master's in geology.

Their response was basically "the world sure has a shortage of graduates with useless liberal arts degrees" but said in a more sugar-coated way. Then they went on to joke about homeless painters and screenwriters.

I didn't have a good comeback at the time because I was tired and not interested in arguing, but it really bothered me.

Are you upset for and on behalf of others, who have liberal arts degrees? Or are you upset because your English minor somehow turns your Physics major into a liberal arts degree?

Or is Geology now a liberal Arts subject?

Edited to add - Physics combined with English writing skills is a fantastic combination. Very good choices there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2016 12:51PM by scotslander.

I was initially upset because they thought the English part was useless (or maybe they think astronomy is a liberal art? I honestly don't know what caused the reaction), but then it got me thinking about the weird contempt they had for the arts in general.

I've heard similar things from my friends majoring in fine arts, theater, and music. Seems like art degrees are really looked down on in some circles and I don't know why...

SLAnon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was initially upset because they thought the
> English part was useless

Holy cow Batman! Being able to be technically savy AND write coherent sentences. Bloody great combination. A great tool in the real world of business, and a rare gift in the academic world, should you choose to follow that path.


> I've heard similar things from my friends majoring
> in fine arts, theater, and music. Seems like art
> degrees are really looked down on in some circles
> and I don't know why...

Err... because most people who choose to study them do so because they are typically easier than the technical degrees. These people just want a degree, but don't really have a strong investment in the subject.

The few who really want to study the liberal arts subject because they have a passion for it, I respect those people, and they add great value to the world. We need liberal arts degrees, we need liberal arts graduates. Maybe not quite so many as we are getting now.

A friend of mine got an Art degree. He ended up with a 6 figure job working for a law firm doing all their presentation materials. He later added webmaster to his law firm job in 80's or 90's. Who would ever have guessed?

There are so many people today doing jobs that weren't even imagined when I was a kid. Many people like to think of college as a trade school. That works for certain types of degrees, but so many other things are unpredictable.

would you like fries with that ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> would you like fries with that ?

You are mean! There are plenty of liberal arts graduates that even have attained the heights of grocery store manager.

Yeah, I earned an Associate in Arts and had a good career as a factory worker.

Welcome to the club Don Bagley.

I have a four-year and a graduate degree, and am underemployed.

At my age, am holding onto my underemployment status for as long as I can so I can afford to retire someday.

My dreams for a career were replaced by a paycheck.

:/

There is a myth that if you don't get a degree that has an obvious career path, then you have wasted your time and money. It is a shame that American schools have gotten so expensive that people feel they cannot pursue their passions and must subject themselves to a less interesting course of study in order to pay their bills.

I majored in history and minored in French and economics. I really enjoyed my coursework and gained valuable research and writing skills. I don't regret what I studied, even if it did not set me up on an obvious career path.

Instead of focusing on a subject, remember you are learning skills. You will forget most of the content you study, but the skills are what employers need. Writing, research, analysis, statistics, critical thinking are far more valuable than any subject matter. A friend majored in Theatre and went to medical school. He says his theatre training helps him deal with patients every day.

Most jobs that require a specific content mastery probably need a graduate degree. There are exceptions like accounting and computer science, but even accountants do better with an MBA. Plan for graduate school and study what you love in undergrad.

As for STEM, there are lots of STEM programs that are no more marketable than humanities. Biology, geology, and even chemistry are not really in demand. A Phd friend in chemistry told me how tough the market is for them, so STEM is no guarantee of employment.

+1

Totally agree. You understand the benefit of liberal arts degrees.

And for full disclosure I am a STEM fanboy - PhD in physics for me.

I don't know about the antipathy against liberal arts degrees, but I actually have a BS in English...no BS!

BS in English, w/concentration in Technical Writing and a Minor in Mathematics, which I backed into when I got lost on my way to either a Physics or Astrophysics major.

My English classmates saw me as an interloper from the Physics department, and my Physics classmates saw me as a pretender from the English department.

Physics teaches you how to think and English teaches you how to communicate. It's not about making money, its about creating. You create and the money will come. And you teach others how to create and money will come to them.

Don't expect most people to understand you. They're so busy fighting their inner battles that they use you as a sounding board to justify their own failures.

This is why you see so many wars. As within, so without. A world full of people fighting inner battles (ain't religion great?) manifests what you see now.

Liberal Arts degrees in many schools are not focused on any one career path and are difficult to make a monetary return on the investment into the schooling. People ask "What job are you targeting to get when you graduate?" Mcdonalds is the normal answer.

You also find all sorts of "interesting people" studying liberal arts. This doesn't help the stereotype of the liberal arts group.

Those students studying more "difficult and focused" curriculum often feel that liberal art student are slackers. I learned that this was not the case for most of them.

I was a biology & chemistry major but I took drawing, writing, history and other classes. They were mostly brutal for me. The amount of work to put into one class was outrageous. The worst was a writing class. I spent 100+ hours each on 3 papers in a 15 week course. My major only required one quarter of it but I took an entire year because I was learning so much and it was helping in my other classes.

One quarter I took Organic Chem, Statistics, Advanced Genetics, and Art History. Art history took 3 hours of homework per day. The rest only took around one hour. Drove me nuts!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2016 01:22PM by the1v.

Yes. It should bother you. Why rain on someone else's parade. So judgmental. Why not root everyone on?

Some people don't want to be just another brick in the wall. So they will take risks. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't. But what it is, is the opposite of the Stepford life.

My son has a Philosophy degree. He works as a landscaper now. He has some regret about not following a more "practical" path in university, mainly because he's paying off student loans that didn't fund an education that led to a career.

However, he also knows that his education has benefitted him in so many ways that aren't related to his work life. He loved studying philosophy, and still loves reading about the subject. It was such a perfect fit for him, and has had a real influence on shaping the person he has become now.

As a side note, he's discovered that he likes working outside, and he enjoys the creative aspects of landscaping. I don't know if he would have ever gone in that direction if he'd followed a more conventional path.

Who cares what someone in the ward thinks about a college degree?

What matters is what you think and whether you're pursuing something you love.

That's the bottom line in pursuit of a higher education.

The job/career path will follow.

English as a minor is an excellent choice in just about any field where the English language is used.

Most people know that astronomy is a science, like physics. If they don't, it isn't your job to educate them.

Consider the source of dumb remarks, then move on. People offend what they don't understand because of ignorance and lack of tolerance.

English is also a preferred major for candidates going into the study of law, because it prepares them to write.

Actually, astronomy is one of the seven traditional liberal arts from the Middle Ages.
Quadrivium: music, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic
Trivium: rhetoric, grammar, logic

Note that 5 of the 7 subjects have a strong math component. Interesting that a "liberal arts" degree now often means "little or no math". That is a relatively new slant.

In the broad picture they could all fall within the liberal arts context, including physics and math.

They're all important to a well-rounded liberal arts education, depending on where one's strengths are.

My field was Poly Science with concentration in International Relations. Astronomy was just an elective to fill a core requirement to graduate. It was also one of my funnest classes I took, because of the planned events outside the classroom, and our professor was so enthusiastic about teaching it.

I graduated in an 'arts' degree. So many times when I told people what I was studying, they'd respond with "how fun". Don't get me wrong, I loved it (and hated it at times). But the condescension was typical. Sometimes I'd get the flip side . . . people who were overly impressed, because they knew somebody who had done it and what they could do when they finished. Or they'd take the opportunity to tell me how wonderfully talented somebody they knew was, as if that was supposed to impress me, just in hearing the tale.

There was never a 'normal' reaction to hearing my major. Nobody ever just said "cool", what do you want to do when you graduate? Do people do that with OTHER majors? If you tell someone you are majoring in computer science, they they brag about their brilliant cousin who is a programmer, and who they think is better than you?

People who think it's easy or 'fun' have NO idea. No idea of the pre-college work required to even prepare for the first semester. They have no idea of the constant pressure to be flawless. I worked harder in school than any of my roommates ever did. They had social lives. They could never understand why I was gone from morning until the building closed at 11:00 almost every night. This was practically expected at school.

There WAS no job waiting for me when I graduated. I got a job doing something else for a few years (good job, BTW, with a company that recognized the work ethic of people in my field). Now I'm self employed.



People who would put anyone down because of what they chose to study are jerks. It's YOUR decision, and it's none of their business.

I suspect that people who put others down--and this is true in almost any life situation--are actually ENVIOUS or insecure. YOU got to do what you love, while they chose to be responsible and 'successful'. And that bugs them. They need to reinforce that they are better than you so they can feel better about themselves.

"one of my funnest" lol, ugh


my adoptive father wanted me to be an engineer/scientist and is still disappointed I didn't follow that path - indeed, I should have.

He is also still upset I didn't finish law school
Overall, I guess he is just disappointed with me

Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, the ROI on a LA degree is now dismal.

For myself, it seems the further away in years I get from my time at college, the less I understand, the dumber I feel, and I second-guess if I ever really learned anything for the price I paid.

Weird

The running joke up here in Lethbridge where we have a very good university and a technical college (one of my alma maters) is that the coffee houses are full of barrista's with masters degrees in english lit and art history.

RB

It is rooted in class distinction. The term "liberal arts" is rooted in the word for freedom. Only an economically free man had the luxury of studying academic subjects, while the lower classes were restricted to trades and service. In some historical contexts, the intelligentsia was a class unto itself.

Studying subjects which are not direct job training is seen as a luxury. Those who condemn you are expressing jealousy or contempt for the fact that you are able to indulge in what has historically been an elitist pursuit.

My comeback, 100% of the time:


"Ohhhhh, goooood for you. And how was it? I hope it was fucking good, because it's useless now, isn't it?"

I don't know if I have a liberal arts degree, per se, (Elementary Education) but the degree comes from a small liberal arts college in the Midwest.

As I've gotten older, I appreciate my "liberal arts" experience more and more. It's meant to make you well-rounded and able to make a meaningful contribution to society, as opposed to just going out and making a lot of money.

I think if you have a liberal arts degree you need to have more focus and drive than someone whose degree leads to an obvious job (i.e. teaching, nursing, accounting, physical therapy, etc.) My undergraduate degree is a liberal arts degree (B.A. in Fine Arts/Studio Art.) I initially thought I wanted to go into graphic design, but I changed direction and put my trained eye to work in the interior decoration and design industry. I worked with interior decorators, including some of the biggest names in the industry, in sales and design including writing mill work orders (which takes very precise writing skills.) I enjoyed doing that work. I knew people with art degrees who managed galleries, trained in auction houses, or went into restoration work among other endeavors.

One of the reasons that I got a B.A. as opposed to a B.F.A. was that I had a feeling in my bones that I might want to change direction at some point, and I did. I agree with Axeldc that liberal arts majors will quite often have to get a graduate degree in a more specialized field at some point. I had a longing to do human services, and that led to my Master's degree in the field of education.

I loved my undergraduate studies and took courses in French (three credits shy of a double-major,) philosophy, art history, religion, astronomy, biology, psychology, human sexuality, and many other subjects. I learned so much about life and about the world, and I still put my knowledge and interests to work to this very day. Just today in a meeting, I put my knowledge of psychology to work in discussing a possible course of treatment for a troubled student.

My human sexuality course was one of the most popular on my campus. The course was where I learned that homosexuality will always be within a certain percentage range of the human population, and that it has occurred across years, cultures, and species. It is an integral part of the design of living creatures. My professor brought in a gay man to speak to the class (in an age when few were out,) and I remember thinking, "he looks so *normal.*" Later on I used the knowledge and tolerance that I was gaining to work productively in a heavily gay industry.

Can you imagine if any of the top 15 in Mormonism took a college-level class in human sexuality? Or women's studies? Or something that might actually broaden their minds?

As an English major in college I understand the pain of dealing with jerks thinking liberal arts degrees are a joke. I might not get rich with a creative writing degree, but I love fiction too much to give it up and take business classes.

I went to a private liberal arts college. I was the black sheep studying accounting in my general ed classes. I wouldn't trade the experiences I had for anything.

My biggest regret is I didn't take more liberal arts classes while I was in school. I had enough funding to have attended school another semester and it would have been purely elective courses.

I remember more from my theatre and yoga classes than I do some of my accounting courses. I remember pretty much nothing from most of my general business classes.

I truly learned about oppression and bias by taking an intro to anthropology course. Nothing made spotting the author's bias more than reading a book about the "bushman" people.

My theatre professor actually posed the question about the old testament possibly being historical theatre. He used the story of Job as an example (i.e. with God and Lucifer having all these conversations about what to do to poor Job). I still buy into that theory.

Also, it only took me about a year before I stopped asking English majors "so what are you going to do with that when you graduate?" because it finally pierced my thick skull the joy of learning to enhance knowledge and not just to make more money.

I work in higher ed and see liberal arts (and some social sciences) students come back all the time to get a graduate degree in something with a career path. They are angry that they paid a great deal of money to get a degree that won't get them an appreciably better job than their high school diploma would have.

I have a kid who is a very good violinist. She would have liked to major in music, but does not want to be a teacher. She is not majoring in music because while she is a very good violinist, she isn't Sarah Chang, and she wants to make a decent living.

We pay for 4 years of public college. If she wanted to be a music major, that would be OK, but we make our kids sit down with the Occupational Outlook Handbook and a few other sources, and come up with a plan. It's not that we really expect they will follow the plan, but it makes them think realistically about what they would do with a degree.

The cost of higher education has changed the equation from what it was a few decades ago. If you have tens of thousands of dollars in debt, you need to have some way to pay that off, and your BFA may not help you with that.

The idea that a liberal arts degree is going to make you well rounded I think has been offset by the fact that most colleges have a fairly long list of gen ed requirements that have to be filled. So, your physics major will take a 200 level philosophy course, but you almost never find a philosophy major taking calculus. So who is well rounded, exactly?

>>They are angry that they paid a great deal of money to get a degree that won't get them an appreciably better job than their high school diploma would have.

While I do get that it is frustrating to a 22-year old (it was to me,) the fact is I would have eventually needed that Master's degree anyway for my field (education.) And I would venture that is true for many fields.

True, but in many (not all) masters programs/professional degrees you need a bunch of pre-reqs that are filled by having the bachelors. Also, for many liberal arts majors, a masters in that same field still won't make you decent money. We get a lot of students with liberal arts backgrounds come back for a professional grad degree rather than the masters in the original discipline.

That's one of the reasons we have the kids come up with a plan, so that they know going into it if graduate programs also need to be figured in.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2016 08:46PM by excatholic.