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

[JohnT]

Wasn't the US losing the race to graduate as many engineers and scientists as possible to the Soviet Union? Wasn't there an "Education Gap" in the early 1960's, as we poured money into NASA and Vietnam? Haven't we seen this before?

I have no problem with Asia producing more engineers than the US - "Asia" is twelve times larger than "the US". If "Asia" was 1/2 as efficient as the US in producing engineers, they should produce 6 times our amount, if they were 1/12th as efficient, they should match our numbers.

I don't really understand the need for controversy here when none exists.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by TCO
No offense, Cruise Missile.

None Taken, Mindless Mingophant.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I think I recall a quote by some big US technology executive, who mentioned that in China all the leaders were engineers, and were good at understanding policy issues relating to technology that were brought befor them. Whereas in the US, most leaders are lawyers and have difficulty with technical issues.

Given the complaints about having liberal arts major politicians, I guess y'all would prefer to have a government more like China's....

America's leaders have always been lawyers. What do you think most of the founding fathers studied for?

[Colonâ„¢]

Maybe if China would have more lawyers within their leadership, they wouldn't have such a weak notion of rule of law and they might actually build a half-decent legal system.

[Cyclotron]

Education is beneficial to the individual and society in many various economic and non-economic ways. Students, however, will only realize their fullest potential when they are allowed to study that which interests them most. Is ir really in the interest of the state to cut off scholarships to liberal arts majors in need of money, forcing poor students to gravitate towards technical degrees that they are poor at and don't like, turning (for example) a great writer, musician, or educator into a engineering school dropout?

The underlying claim to the argument of maximizing the economy through cutting scholarships to liberal arts majors seems to take for granted that a student, when faced with financial crisis, will happily take up a new, cheaper, technical major and proceed towards a productive technical field where they will advance the economic progress of the mother country.

I can't see this as being true. People major in what they like and what they believe they are good at. I can't see why financial incentives - or, more correctly, coercion - would change that substantially and turn would-be liberal arts majors into better scientists and innovators.

I'm lucky enough that, if my financial aid were taken away, I would still be able to pull through college. I chose to be a Politics major (the department, interestingly enough, decided this described the field more precisely than "Political Science") because I found the subject interesting and I had a talent for writing about it. If offered free tutition to major in math or science instead, I wouldn't take it, because I wouldn't be happy doing it - and that is the aim of my life, not stimulating the economy.

As has already been mentioned, the best way to produce more technically-minded students is to hit them when they're young, with more math and science. Financial coercion of poor students with interests in liberal arts fields isn't a viable strategy, even if you agree with the goal of economic progress through more technical majors.

[Cyclotron]

I thought I would also bring up an experience I had this past week. Our school was visited by a Sri Lankan scholar named Sudharshan Seneviratne, an advocate of the liberal arts education in his home country, and I had an opportunity to ask him some questions because he's a friend of my advisor.

His basic argument on the issue was that the university and educational system under British rule, at least in the later colonial period, was weighted towards the liberal arts because of foreign philanthropy and guidance that valued such an education. Upon Sri Lanka's independence, the government quickly redesigned the education system to stress only technical knowledge, which Sri Lanka's leaders saw as vital to competing and gaining prosperity in a global market dominated by technical fields.

The end of the colonial liberal arts tradition coincided with the rise of the ultra-nationalist movements among both the Sinhala and Tamil ethnic groups, which together compromize nearly all of Sri Lanka's population. Seneviratne credits this new education with a prominent role in that country's increasing sectarian violence, for two reasons - one, the ever more "IT" oriented schools produced students who lacked intellectual independence and followed violent ethnic movements readily; and two, the government's top-down control of the educational system, essentially a program of social engineering to maximize economic advantage, ended up creating a great deal of pro-Sinhala propaganda along with the science classes - with the government already heavily involved with the promotion of certain curricula, it proved all too easy for the government to add certain other curricula that served its short term interests, largely involving the marginalization of and incitement of violence towards the Tamils. The single-minded parochialism of the schools, created by Sri Lanka's profit-centered government, served ultimately to betray the interests of the people and can be implicated in the human misery and death of many Sri Lankans.

Now, Seneviratne and his colleages are attempting to effect change in Sri Lanka's education system, in an attempt to reintroduce more liberal modes of education that will, in his view, serve to advance an intellectually oriented, multicultural personality in the next generation, something lost when the educational system was stripped of its non-technical content.

One wonders whether the interests of our society as a whole, especially a time in which the multicultural character of our nation is being so hotly debated, are composed of more than concerns over a real or imagined "engineering gap" between us and other countries.

[JohnT]

Btw, I think it (cutting FA to LA majors) is a foolish idea as well.

[DAVOUT]

Cyclotron,



and best wishes for Sri-Lanka.

[GePap]

The relative lack of people chosing engineering and other technical fields in the US has nothing to do with universities and the government giving financial aid to liberal arts majors. College aid is not a zero sum game- if more students sign up to universities and colleges that have good technical programs, then they will get the money. I doubt any single student has ever decided against studying engineering because they could get money for studying english. That is simply not how it works.

The problem in the US is not in terciary, higher education, but in primary and secondary education. That is when kids would decide that they might want to try a technical field, but few schools as far as I can tell can teach students the higher levels of math, and lets not even get into practial and technical schooling.

Even then: I went to a "math and Science" school, with top of the line labratories, in whcih high level mathematics were available, all students were required to take some technical classes, and yet, even there, while a large number of people ended up in Cornell, or MIT, or CalTech, most people still chose the humanities or social sciences, because that is what people tended to want to study. Engineers have a stigma in our society as geeky antisocial nerds.

[TCO]

It's harder too. And you make more money being an evil salesman.

[GePap]

One thing that Asher's little chart fails to show is how many liberal arts majors get out of college, and then head straight into even higher education, usually law school, or business school.

One of my friends studied anthropology, then went to law school, and is now earning more than 60,000 as a lawyer for the feds. Granted, he has huge debts to pay, but a lot of kids who go into college do this.

In terms of money, why study engineering and make 50,000 after you get out, or study economics and find yourself a trading job and be making 90,000 one year out? If people are in it for the money, you go into finance, even law, not engineering.

[Kuciwalker]

One thing that Asher's little chart fails to show is how many liberal arts majors get out of college, and then head straight into even higher education, usually law school, or business school.

As do tons of engineers.

[Alexander's Horse]

Arts majors rule this world - the guy who ends up CEO or President or Chairman of the Board is much more likely to be an Arts guy who did Fine Arts or Philosophy than an MBA or engineer, the latter are the foot soldiers of the economy. Arts prepares you to run society.

Why? Because liberal arts teaches you to think.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

As do tons of engineers.

I doubt that the same number of engineering majors go into law as say lib arts of social science majors. Maybe business school, but certainly NOT law school.

And since engineers gaid paid relatively well right out of college, the economic incentive of continuing education is lower, since lib art majors would have an incentive, based on Asher's chart, for even further education.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
I doubt that the same number of engineering majors go into law as say lib arts of social science majors. Maybe business school, but certainly NOT law school.

I meant went to graduate schools, not law or business schools specifically.

And anyway, my dad went from a technical field (Actuarial Science) directly to law school. It just depends on how useful law is to the field.

And since engineers gaid paid relatively well right out of college, the economic incentive of continuing education is lower, since lib art majors would have an incentive, based on Asher's chart, for even further education.

Every engineer I know has a Master's or PhD.

EDIT: engineering major I know, that is - many of them are scientists.