Heck, according to classical definitions, mathematics and natural sciences (basically anything that’s not direct training for a specific profession) are themselves considered liberal arts.
I think that perhaps when most folks are talking about “liberal arts degrees” in the context of this conversation, they mean degrees which are difficult to find practical applications of.
The thing is, you don’t have to guess. This is information that is easily available. If the pile on liberal arts was not the default mentality, it wouldn’t be difficult to find out this information at all. But here is the other thing, if the driving factor is the potential salary, then talk about that number not some stereotypical view on what some people think having a liberal arts education means.
That’s the kind of shit Trump does to pander to his base. I expect better than that here.
I always consider Economics closer to a STEM major than the ones that engineers typically make fun of basket weaving, Native American Studies, interpretive dance, Chinese art history. Of course one of the most successful guys I know majored in Chinese Art History. I don’t know if the art history really helped but becoming fluent in Mandarin and aware of Chinese culture made him really valuable to American companies doing business in China.
While I’m someone that has long argued that we need to rely less on college degrees as job training certification, I think it’s important not to lose sight on things like that. A well-rounded education can provide all kinds of benefits that might not be obviously applicable. I mean, the classes I took in botany don’t really do much for me as a software developer, but it sure has given me insight into things like the GMO debate.
Again, while I generally wish we had more… direct ways of getting educated for the modern workforce than the typical 4-year college degree, I think it’s important for people like me to take a step back and understand what we might lose with such a narrowing of education. I think we can fairly accurately detail what skills we need today, but not necessarily what is going to be important tomorrow (directly or indirectly).
Also, don’t forget, that what that narrowing would do for things like policy debate. People are already stupid and gullible enough as is, stripping out any broader education, especially civics, would prove disastrous I think.
Well arguably the reason people are stupid today is because the emphasis is on graduating and not on learning. Seeing degrees as a basic requirement to just start doing anything means the education system is geared to as much churn as possible regardless of quality. Imagine the financial chaos of a school district if it had to hold back 25% of its students every year because they weren’t learning the essentials; it would go bankrupt. When one or two students are behind you can make amends, but if half the students are substandard you push the lot out the door and roll the dice on the next class.
I mean if most universities just taught the Ivy League level textbooks they use you’d see huge attrition in lower tier universities as students struggled to keep up. But that’s kind of the point, that relationship between outcomes, cost, and educational attainment. Guarantee certain educational standards even at the cost of graduation rates and you’ll burn up degree inflation.
It was earlier in the thread, but I take huge issue with the implication and assertion that software development takes “more brains” than other disciplines.
I’ve been working in the tech industry for nearly a decade, and as such I was able to make 6 figures merely 2-3 years out of college, but I don’t necessarily feel like I “deserve” that money compared to a teacher or other public servant. Sure what I do is immensely technical, takes a lot of problem solving skills and careful studying in school, but all I ever got was a 5-year Bachelor degree.
Software being in vogue and paying well is more a factor of timing and luck than it is genuinely skill. It pays well because of high demand with lower supply, but the lower supply isn’t strictly because of difficulty, it’s because of timing and luck of the people who happened to decide to study it.
There’s also the fact that, as a society, we severely under-value the importance of public servants and the arts. There is so much evidence that they’re so important - that paying teachers better attracts better teachers, paying more for social services results in better social services, paying for Arts education helps kids learn and grow better in other areas - but all that is ignored in favor of bullshit arguments like “HURP DURP TEACHERS ONLY WORK 9 MONTHS A YEAR”
What about that Kansas City study where they invested BIGLY in students and test scores still went down? garbage in garbage out, coding macht frei
Germany is at 28 with only 27% of the work force having college degrees
I am living and working in Germany since birth, have a university degree in Computer science. If the university would not have been almost free, I could not have studied. It is still like that, approx. 60-70$ fees per semester (6 months)
but usually you get a student id, where you can save money buying train tickets, cinema, theatre etc…
But if you do not have a degree, you still get good jobs that are well paid.
As an outsider, it is totally looking crazy how much money you have to pay for US univerities/colleges… this is totally part of the responsibility of a country, to take care for education in a way, that everybody who has the qualification and motivation can get any kind of education…well, of course it is paid by taxes by everybody, but that’s okay. What are taxes for? Better spent for education than other stupid crap, governments have no problem wasting tax money… so using taxes for education is a good way of keeping the money in the right place…
Tuition dollars get split between
a) equity administrators who run kangaroo courts
b) wall street rentiers who are preparing to retreat to hardened compounds in SE Asia when the revolution hits
As someone who went to a public school, my tuition was not nearly as much as my cost of living and the random fees we had to pay. I remember some girl tried to publicly shame me in class because I told her I was not willing to pay fifteen dollars a month so the campus could turn green. She made some weird comment about the cost of a CD and etc. but the sticking point is they were adding this as a fee and not part of tuition… which aid does not cover. Room and board was a large part of that federal aid package. Tech fees, lab access fees, fees for green energy… fees add up. And not everyone can be an RA at a dorm. That is not the answer to everyone’s room and board costs.
Regardless of your degree, if you paid what I paid in tuition you’d be okay. What screw my graduating class and those just before and just after was a horrible economy and the fact everyone was letting go of workers when you’re trying to get hired.
Now the private school tuition, some of those are incredibly high. I believe that kid that ran to hide in Europe for having 200k in educational based loans was a music major who went to undergrad and grad at private schools.
Maybe at Trump U., but not at most legit small colleges. The whole system is fundamentally broken, to be sure. Higher education in the USA depends on a deliberately maintained surplus of labor in the form of underemployed Ph.D.s, and is further warped by the conflation of the college “experience” (four years of hedonism in controlled surroundings surrounded by like minded young people) with education (the actual acquisition of skills and habits of mind). Traditional, not-for-profit private schools have to compete for pretty much the same pool of applicants within broad groupings depending on the tier of the school, region, etc., and because in many case curricular differences are either not very pronounced or are very hard to sell to people, the competition depends on things like physical infrastructure, amenities, and living spaces, which all cost a lot of money. Increasing obligations to accessibility, student care (mental and physical), and technology infrastructure (if you don’t have good WiFi in the dorms, fuhgeddaboutit) also cost money.
Salaries of administrators often come in for justified criticism, but in truth doing a good and conscientious job as a college administrator is hard, demanding work, and many if not most college officials earn their keep. Faculty salaries are also a huge part of the bill as well. Even with a surplus of candidates, getting ones that actually can work with others, teach classes, and if necessary create scholarship isn’t as easy as it looks. Getting a Ph.D. alone is, well, more a testament to your endurance than anything else; it is a very poor predictor of any post-grad school accomplishment.
And then there are the usual operating costs–a modern college eats energy even if it’s LEED Platinum certified, and the staff salaries, physical plant expenses, and what not are huge.
One can indeed argue about whether the traditional four-year college model is worth keeping, or if it even works at doing anything more than creating a self-sustaining employment system for the hyper-educated, but for schools that actually take education seriously, in today’s environment there’s no shortage of legitimate costs to eat up that tuition money.
Is there a teacher shortage? This is anecdotal, but 4-5 years ago I wrote a story for a local paper about one of the school districts in my area pushing early retirement for some teachers. It was a good district, but not one of the top districts in the area. I interviewed the assistant superintendent and asked if they would have trouble filling positions of the teachers taking early retirement, and she told me they got something like 200+ applications for every opening.
That said, I know some of the more difficult districts in the area do seem to have a brisk turnover. They don’t pay as well and it’s a tough job. Still, it’s a salary and benefits and experience. They get people to fill the positions.
It’s more liberal arts than a stats degree, but less liberal arts than sociology. It’s half and half to me, as someone with an economics degree.
You don’t really learn how to do the math (unless you get to grad level) , but you learn how to understand it and use data correctly. It depends on where you go to school though- things really did change between the 90s and 00s. Getting a degree last decade was a lot easier than in the 90s- and I don’t think it was that much due to increased maturity on my part.
The places that are willing to hold students back are your service academies and engineering schools- which is one reason why I’d view a degree from such a school more highly, even if it was a non-technical degree. I’d view a degree from NC A&T more highly than I’d view a degree from UNC.
I’ll say this as someone who did go to an engineering school years ago. The engineering types really do struggle and hate the social sciences stuff as a general rule just as much as the sociology majors hate math.
The number of administrators and other non-academic college employees has doubled in the last 25 years. I can’t find figures for student and faculty growth over the same period with quick Googling, which is all I have time for, but these figures for students (from 2000 to 2025, projected) suggest growth nowhere near that rate. Certainly, some administrators earn their keep, but do we really need twice as many as we had in in 1991? If so, when does the vastly disproportionate growth end?
Also the arms race for amenities, the lavishing of NFL level sports facilities subsidized by academics, the fact that in almost every state the highest paid state employee is a coach for one of the state college teams, the vanity endowment projects that serve to stroke wealthy donor egos rather than serve school needs, and on.
@TheWombat I get what your position is. But I simply do not accept the premise. It is inarguable that the growth in costs does not reflect the ‘true’ cost of education, but rather a ballooning growth fueled by unneeded overhead. The growth in administrators relative to other staff is a perfect example of this.
Because, just like healthcare, we spend much higher relative to other countries. There is a ton of waste in the system, and a ton of overcharging simply because they can.
Sorry, I meant more like of every independent plumber got together and collided to form a larger company, capturing the market and allowing them to charge whatever they want:
Actually, why are plumbers even unionized? There is typically no management to negotiate with so representation to management is out. Is it just for health benefits? I don’t see why plumbers would join a union, how does that benefit them? There is certainly no requirement to join a union in order to work as a plumber.
Think of craft unions more like the guilds of yore. They typically unionize for lobbying efforts on behalf of the whole industry, stuff like safety, certification requirements, negotiate for insurance and healthcare for their members, set standard wages, etc. They also keep the riff-raff out of bidding opportunities. For example, no big contract is going to go to a non-union independent plumber.
Yeah, trade/craft unions are in place just for that reason. People hire union tradesmen because they know that the union guarantees a level of quality in the work, and prices that are pretty standard.
So yeah, many plumbers and electricians and tradesmen are in a union already, and things are fine.