Forbes Commentary.... WTF ?

[cbelt3]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2...partments/
"To Boost Post-College Prospects, Cut Humanities Departments

Half of freshly minted college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. And they’re saddled with a portion of the U.S.’s $1 trillion in student loan debt to pay record high tuitions. To fix this problem, the answer is simple enough: cut out the departments offering majors that make students unemployable."
- - -
I..... disagree. The author seems to think that colleges and universities should be nothing more than expensive trade schools.

Of course forgetting that his English classes helped him write this article, etc...

Recent college grads are not unemployed because they're idiots or poorly educated. College grads are unemployed because nationwide unemployment is so high. Heck... most high school and college kids are unemployed now, because all the unemployed grownups have snapped up the summer jobs.

[Uncle Wig]

I disagree also! That is some short-sighted thinking, right there.

[freeradical]

I can't fault this:

Not surprisingly, some majors generate higher rates of under-employment than others. Those with majors “in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities” don’t stand much of a chance of getting jobs requiring a college degree. However, those with ”nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees” were among the most likely to find jobs that required those degrees, according to the Labor Department.

[Carnos Jax]

Rad, that isn't evidence against the need for the humanities.

Addressing the general topic, as someone who has an engineering degree, I can vouch for the importance of various courses in the humanities, even beyond just learning grammer (in that it basically makes for a better problem solver).

[cbelt3]

free-
Oh, sure. But those are 'trade' degrees. And guess what ? Everyone who earned those degrees at a high quality University also got some of those 'useless' humanities too.

There is the implied assumption that having a college degree should somehow guarantee that you are employable. This was NEVER the case. I always laugh when I read articles about "It's so bad that PhD's are driving cabs".

What it means is that some schmuck got himself through a PhD, but is still incapable of working for a living. Not because of his education, but because he's a schmuck.

[Lux Interior]

Carnos Jax wrote: I can vouch for the importance of various courses in the humanities, even beyond just learning grammer

And speeling!

:jest:

[the_poochies]

I graduated from a very prestigious private college with a humanities degree. When I was a student, my Dad suggested that I take a few business courses in college even though my major was in liberal arts. At the time, I thought I knew better and I scoffed at his suggestion.

20 years after graduation, my earnings are embarrassing low when compared with my classmates (but I have my health and a lovely family, so I have that going for me ). My parents were very disappointed that this didn't translate into a lucrative career.

In hindsight, I regret not taking a few introductory business courses just so I understand how capitalism works. I open the business page of my local newspaper and I am totally confused....the copy might as well be in ancient Sanskrit.

[mick e]

University education has NEVER been about, and SHOULD NEVER be about the bottom line.

It has always been about, and should remain about the quest for knowledge.

[mattkime]

there has been a fairly large shift in the role of college over the past 20 years.

it used to be that a college education was enough to get you a job. now most US companies "can't afford" to train.

i think humanities degrees are a wonderful thing to recover from.

[J Marston]

The issue is framed in terms of majors, but it's really about creating people to function in a Forbes-like universe.

The biggest threat to Peter Cohan and those like him is that the population will turn against endless consumerism in favor of something else. We don't know what this "something else" might look like; but it's a pretty safe bet it will come from one of the traditional liberal arts.

It's worth considering the opposite of liberal arts: mechanical arts. Liberal arts were considered essential to be a free person; mechanical arts were worthy of servants. Employers want bookkeepers, accountants, people with degrees in management and commerce, because they won't rock the boat--their livelihood is bound up with their intellectual capital, which in turn is bound to a particular set of values. Liberal arts are bound to a different set of values, one in which commerce is only one of many different approaches to the world.

The constant drumbeat by conservatives to privatize education is part of this same program: create a labor force that suits the needs of employers.

Some years ago I had occasion to be talking with a former ambassador; the head of a chemical company; a bank president; the director of a hedge fund; and a writer. Four of them had undergraduate degrees in classics, one a degree in German. Hardly typical, and I confess that all were enormously talented, but it may be indicative.