Comments about ‘My view: Providing degrees to everywhere’

At the World Business Forum in New York last week, 8 of the 10 keynote speakers were (gasp) writers. The only CEO on the program bored everyone to death. It seems the English majors rule the world after all, Sen. Stephenson.

Some statistics would be helpful if they are trying to prove the worth of their degrees...

Excellent essay. Unfortunately, the tunnel vision of Senator Stephenson is not only found in the Utah legislature but is found in every state in the nation. Somewhere along the way, in our me first society, some have decided that anything serving the greater good of the nation cannot be tolerated and certainly shouldn't receive public funding. The writers have done an excellent job in dispelling that misguided thinking.

If we are to remain a great nation, liberal arts education must continue to be supported and encouraged. Job skills are not just made up of nuts and bolts but, as the authors have pointed out, include "skills in critical thinking, quantitative analysis and complex problem solving." Anyone who works in today's business world understands that.

Bravo to Pease and Smith for their excellent analysis.

technical barbarians????

is that the same as technoid mutants?

Most of the really interesting people I know and work with have degrees in English, Political Science or History.

When I was in grad school a statistic that was shared me me (can't recall the source now) was that a Harvard MBA will get you into a good company - even a good large company, but that Harvard MBA's are statistically _under_ represented in top management of Fortune 400 companies. The CEO's and CFO's of those companies had more diverse educational backgrounds and to be a senior exec in a Fortune 400 firm you need to know a lot more about history, political science, literature, etc.

To disparage a degree in Art, History, Music or English as a "degree to nowhere" is shallow and thoughtless. Above all, it's just plain not true.

I'll say this, when everybody has a college degree,nobody has one. Just like a High school diploma, college degrees are now worthless.

I have learned this by getting a business degree myself. The colleges just want your money and looking back now, I could've done something much more productive with the money that I used to get my worthless bachelor's degree, like starting a business.

College institutions are nothing more than sports franchises now. They give 40 athletic scholarships to One science scholarship. The reasons for that being, is that nobody will pay money to watch somebody conduct a science experiment but they will pay $30 for a basketball ticket. Athletics are really the universities biggest money maker. How is the science dept going to produce 10 million in revenue every year.?

Good thing I didn't take out a loan.

@Blue;

Since when have Utah's legislators been known for telling the truth?

@Anti-BO;

It is a sad situation that athletics have become so all-important to colleges, but that in no way diminishes the degrees in other fields. I don't consider my own degree to be worthless.

Stephenson could use some of the education he so disparages.

I think my daughter did it right. An Arts BA and an MBA.

Re: "The college. . . has no apologies for its support of the liberal arts. In fact, CHaSS has just launched an alumni magazine to trumpet the value of . . . "degrees to everywhere."

Of course they have. Their jobs are at stake. But this sort of sophistry actually trumpets, not value, but a loss of connection to any useful reality.

All agree that educational experience benefits by introduction to humanities and soft sciences. But rice-bowl-guarding educators have forced these squishy concepts to primacy in a modern college student's course of study, displacing necessary and important disciplines. This makes, not just a bachelors, but even graduate and professional degrees, less useful in a competitive jobs marketplace.

One might ordinarily wonder what educators are smoking. But, this dumbing-down, socialization, and overpricing of "higher" education actually fits nicely into an overall plan to capture -- strictly for political advantage -- minds that would otherwise be lost to "progressives."

And, to keep young graduates destitute and discontented, ready to man the barriers, come the revolution.

I got one of those degrees to nowhere at Utah State. Some of my classmates said they learned more in High School than what they got from some their classes at Utah State. After graduation, I couldn't get a job that supported a family, let alone myself. I went back to school and got a degree in healthcare from Weber State and had a job before I graduated.

I earned an Economics degree in the late 80s and quickly found out the market for economists is pretty slim, so I started from scratch in a different field (IT) and worked up the ladder via self-training and experience. But there hasn't been a day where I don't use the critical thinking, analytical and writing skills I started honing as an undergraduate.

I've found my "degree to nowhere" has been very beneficial in my career, in terms of understanding what's going on in the broader world, something my colleagues who focused on technical degrees often can't see.

The world is a very large, complex, and nuanced place. The more people who can see the larger landscape, the better for our society. The Legislature generally despises a having a population with analytical and critical thinking skills, but it's a good thing for society overall, in my judgment.

Remembering various educational presentations and conferences with high school counselors, I can see why a lot of people have it drilled into their heads that college degrees equal jobs. Not true. Did I launch my career shortly before graduating? Yes. Did I bust my rear doing so? Yes. Did I maybe get lucky? Yes. I'm grateful for my circumstance and my heart goes out to anyone who struggles to make it in their field. I don't think the education problems are so much a "degrees to nowhere" issue as they are an issue with students who have no desire to get anywhere (to buckle down, work and have realistic expectations). The value of a degree--no matter what kind it is--lies in its application and the responsibility of that application lies with the student. And yes, I've even applied information from my "pointless" classes (jazz history comes to mind) in my job.

Besides all the times my liberal education classes benefited me throughout my career, they have made my "other" life more rich and I appreciate things so much more. Now that I'm retired, I have many, many interests and enjoy so many things that I had no inkling of before college. What a treat it was to ride through Manhatten on a open air tour bus and be able to name the time period of most of the buildings and appreciate the unique and diverse architecture. My history and political science classes made my trip to Boston so very memorable. Those "liberal arts" classes are often graduates' favorite classes and make them interesting, full individuals. I have two master's degrees. Which one has added the most to my "real life"? My bachelor's degree with its geography, microbiology, botany, art and music history classes. It will be a sad day when we decide as a society that a job is the sole goal of higher education.

Nice article. I agree.

Re: "It will be a sad day when we decide . . . that a job is the sole goal of higher education."

Agreed.

But it's a sad day, anyway. "Higher education" has abandoned preparation of students for jobs as an important goal.

Today's graduates are scarcely more prepared for the workforce than the day they graduated high school. Ivy-tower universities take scant care to even determine the relevance of their pedagogy, let alone monitor, change, and update it, as necessary, to assure continuing relevance. Well-paid academicians are prohibited from sullying themselves with the nuts and bolts of a student's chosen endeavor, encouraged to conduct tax-paid research, as a substitute for learning to teach. When teaching is unavoidable, academics are content to fill young minds with untried theory, rather than accepted practice.

All that is dumped on a graduate's first employer, who is becoming less willing to take on the task, leaving graduates with an appreciation for art and music, but without time or resources to benefit from it.

How about a little balance?

"They want people with skills in critical thinking, quantitative analysis and complex problem solving. That's what we do in a liberal education,"

Really? How much quantitative analysis do you do whilst writing about Moby Dick or Vermeer?

One of my physics advisors once said, "If you have to add the word 'science' it probably isn't." Physics? science. Chemistry? science. Biology? science. Medicine? science. Social Science? Political Science? Hmm, I guess in order for people to want to lend credibility to their field, they need to append the word "science".

You want real quantitative analysis? Hire a Mechanical engineer, a biologist, an account or statistician. Oh that's right, the liberal arts majors tackle the "hard" questions.

At some point you must go out and earn a living for yourself and your family. That requires a set of marketable skills. Various things taught in liberal arts curricula may enhance but by no means are a substitute for marketable skills.

A perusal of the various occupations for which special immigration visas are offered is very revealing. These visas are available for occupations requiring certain marketable skills for which there is a high demand (engineers, scientists, IT pros) reflecting higher education's inability to turn out sufficient numbers of graduates in these fields. Skilled immigrants must make up the shortfall. There are even special visas available for low-skilled seasonal farm workers. Liberal arts majors? Nope. Higher education turns out an over abundance of these and they are not in high demand.

I think everyone's unfairly slamming Sen. Stephenson on this one. I don't think he was dissing liberal arts education per se, but the pursuit of entire liberal arts DEGREES that clearly don't have much of a job market. I think we can all agree that GE classes in the social sciences, literature and other classes unrelated to a student's major are critical to a well-rounded education. But grinding out piles of - let's face it, easier to earn - liberal arts degrees (I know, I have one) when the job market isn't demanding them at all is unfair to the students involved.

Nobody's saying liberal arts education isn't important - it is. And liberal arts degrees should still exist for those jobs that really demand it (teaching liberal arts, journalism, etc). But we need to pay far more attention to the more immediate goal of actually earning a living, which is ignored by far too many students who don't get the employment guidance they really need when deciding on an actual career. We spend far too much money on these degrees to have them only be four years of "personal growth" - they need to yield a return on investment as well.