Is it good policy to give financial aid to liberal arts majors?

[Kassiopeia]

Pekka, I have to say, brilliant trolling!

[:) Smiley]

Another erason to give financial aid to liberal arts majors is for equality. Already, the humanities departments are dominated by those who can afford to not have a job after graduation. Cutting off aid would make for an even more elitist culture.

[Shi Huangdi]

That's why we open up more spots for legal immigration. Problem solved .

I don't think we can rely on immigration forever, however. Increasingly better opportunites are opening up for work in India and China, and so there is less of a need for them to come here.

Yes. Having students who study actual knowledge (as opposed to a technical skill) is good for a society. It is good to have mathematicians and engineers, but also to have political theorists, economists, and yes, even philosophers.

But do we need as many of them? It's already incredibly difficult for a politican scientist or a philosopher to get a PHD and then a tenured position there. If anything we have too many people studying political science and Philosophy.

[quote]what you're really doing by helping the liberal arts is diversifying your culture and society, [/quote}

So, why should we be subsidizing high culture? Why should we use taxes from the lower classes to subsidize the enjoyment and stimulation of the upper classes? If we were going to subsidize culture, it'd be alot more equitable if taxes went to subsidizing Reality TV instead of Philosophy professors.

Then I would suggest you look at other ways liberal arts students and enthusiasts contribute to the economy. In fields like this, communication and conceptualising is key, as is the ability to spread your ideas to others. All of these are skills are absolutely key in business and I'm sure we all know people who have benefited in business from a background in the arts.

Yes, those skills are important, but the fields where those skills are refined to the needs of the business world are in business degrees.

Having recently gone through the process of seeking an entry level job, I could see how business clearly prefered business majors. Whenever I went a job fair and looked at private sector business positions, they all stated they were primarily looking for people with business degrees. In spite of the fact that I had a high GPA, a double major, and good internship experience, and a major that is closer to the world of business(economics), at job fairs recruiters were pretty dismissive of my liberal arts degree. The only recruiters that didn't seem to really care about majors were those who were recruting for sales positions, but for those positions I suspect it's mostly about people skills.

Masters of Liberal arts can make Coca Cola and charge 0.99 for it.

Again, that's marketing, not a liberal arts field.

That's not correct. I'm being put through a philosophy degree by my company, and we sell aircraft metal to manufacturers so it's hardly a hippie organisation!

Ah, well that is nice, I've never heard of anything like that here.

Business is not about degrees and qualifications, at least when you get to successful people. It's more about talent, experience, and how well you can communicate, listen, and get on with people. You don't need a wallfull of degrees to succeed in business, just the ability to work hard and use your mind.

But do you need any degree to do that? And is there any reason science majors and engineers can't do that?

While you're more than welcome to spend the next 25 years trying to work out which field will ultimately give the greatest return on investment, I have things to do today!

We don't need 25 years to do that. It's easy enough to see which fields are in the greatest demand, and which sectors of the economy have been responsible for recent growth in our economy.

You're right of course in claiming that the jobs many liberal arts majors do are valuable, and that we do need businessmen and people to market the products that engineers make. But there's no shortage of them. You won't hear anybody any talking about a crisis of insufficent econ majors. You'll never hear an executive say that we are in dire need of more philosophy majors if we are stay competetive. Even with business, it's not going to hurt the business world greatly if there were a drop in people who majored in business. And it's not even as if you need a liberal arts degree or a business degree to do business, Engineers have been sucsessful when they transfer into private industry.

On the other hand, we do need more scientists and engineers if we are going to continue to have good products for the liberal arts majors to market and sell.

No-one needs to go dry though! Bare in mind that liberal arts benefit most from education, in business, it is experience that counts and given the choice of going into business or spending three years at university studying it, you should choose the former. You'll end up richer for it!

Bear in mind there are two components to the value you get from education. One is the actual value of the knowledge you learn. The other is called signaling- that is the value you get of demonstrating to employers that you possess a reasonable degree of intelligence and that you can be trusted to get your work done.

The former adds value to the economy if the knowledge can be applied and put to good use. The latter is of much less value. I suspect with the scientific and technical disciplines the former takes up more of the value.

But you are correct that indeed you do benefit from getting a liberal arts degree as opposed to not seeking any education. Because the value you get from it justifies taking up a loan, it's reasonable to ask someone to pay it for with their own means. On the other hand, if you are learning something which directly adds value to the economy then we all benefit from that, and that justifies a subsidy.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Smiley
Another erason to give financial aid to liberal arts majors is for equality. Already, the humanities departments are dominated by those who can afford to not have a job after graduation. Cutting off aid would make for an even more elitist culture.

I would think encouraging less well off students to study fields with higher payoffs would lead to more equality...

[GhengisFarb™]

No. It has the word "liberal" in it.

[Thorn]

Let me put it to you this way, the majority of big buisness people while not liberal in most any sense, have taken liberal arts education, it builds a more rounded individual. If you want math and science people to make up the bulk of the societies future, you might as well have AI robots running everything. Productive perhaps, but productive for what? More efficiancy isn't going to do you very well if you have no way to put it to practical use. Scientists are thinking about building a tower to the moon, now what kind of practical use does this have, yes it is a engineering idea, but how does THAT help the economy, and what happens if it gets knocked over, do you think what is left of the country will have much of an economy. No. Scientists explore new ideas rarely do they think about whether it is actually good, a well rounded person on the other hand would be better equiped to differentiate this type of thing, and use buisness knowledge to manage people that are getting a little bit out of hand with neat techno ideas.... got it?

[Velociryx]

No.

Obviously all liberal arts majors need to be sodomized and then shot. People studying Engineering and Science should be given the sports car of their choice and a "Hooker Allowance" while in school.

This will nicely solve the problem.



-=Vel=-

[Dinner]

I'd change it so that people in selected majors got 100% free rides but those selected majors would all be useful ones like sciences and engineer.

[Gibsie]

All theyhad to do to get me to study (biochemical) engineering was offer me nearly $30,000 in scholarship, plus tuition paid for. Which reminds me, I oughtta go revise so I can get MSc...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Son, there are differences between scientists, technicians and engineers.

I'd appreciate it if you'd bear that in mind from now on.

And I mentioned scientists as an example of technical skill folks where?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
But do we need as many of them? It's already incredibly difficult for a politican scientist or a philosopher to get a PHD and then a tenured position there. If anything we have too many people studying political science and Philosophy.

We probably need more. Too many suckers get drawn into illogical or wrongheaded arguments by politicians or demagogues and people who are educated in logic or politics can better see through the crap.

[Kaak]

If only you had been better educated in logic

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kaak
If only you had been better educated in logic

I was (got an A in Logic at any rate)... unfortunately they must have kicked out of of school for what you call 'arguments'

[Kaak]

*yawn* one of my degrees is in philosophy. congrats on doing well in intro to logic

[Asher]

Liberal arts people are important to themselves and likeminded people. In the real world, most people who can make it to engineering can do their job given equal amounts of training.

Liberal Arts is where you go if you can't cut it in the the sciences or engineering. That's why they get paid ****, too, in general.