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The Death Of Humanities Majors
"People say you should do what you love," but in the new normal reality, it appears - based on the flagging applications at Harvard's humanities division - that oft-used phrase has been appended with, "but, I don't want to be doing what I love and be homeless." As The WSJ reports, among recent college graduates who majored in English, the unemployment rate was 9.8%; for philosophy and religious-studies majors, it was 9.5%; and for history majors, it was also 9.5%. By comparison, recent chemistry graduates were unemployed at a rate of just 5.8%; and elementary-education graduates were at 5%. Students have taken note. At Harvard, humanities majors have fallen to 20% in 2012 from 36% in 1954. School presidents and administrators at liberal-arts colleges have already started to take a more job-oriented approach to a liberal-arts education, but face an uphill battle in the wake of stepped-up global economic competition, a job market that is disproportionately rewarding graduates in the hard sciences, rising tuition and sky-high student-debt levels.
Via The WSJ,
The humanities division at Harvard University, for centuries a standard-bearer of American letters, is attracting fewer undergraduates amid concerns about the degree's value in a rapidly changing job market.
...
Universities' humanities divisions and liberal-arts colleges across the nation are facing similar challenges in the wake of stepped-up global economic competition, a job market that is disproportionately rewarding graduates in the hard sciences, rising tuition and sky-high student-debt levels.
Among recent college graduates who majored in English, the unemployment rate was 9.8%; for philosophy and religious-studies majors, it was 9.5%; and for history majors, it was also 9.5%, according to a report this month by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute that used data from 2010 and 2011. By comparison, recent chemistry graduates were unemployed at a rate of just 5.8%; and elementary-education graduates were at 5%.
Students have taken note.
...
"People say you should do what you love," Mr. Lytle said during a break from his job giving tours of the Ivy League campus Wednesday. "But the reality is that it's kind of a tougher economic time, and we do have to worry about living after graduation. I don't want to be doing what I love and be homeless," he added.
...
The weaker job prospects in certain fields have led four Republican governors to call for funding cuts at departments in public universities that they don't believe prepare students for the workforce.
"If you want to take gender studies, that's fine, go to private school," North Carolina GOP Gov. Patrick McCrory said in a radio interview in January. "But I don't want to subsidize that if it's not going to get someone a job."
...
"I think that's because they have a very primitive and reductive view of what is essential in society," [Homi Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center at Harvard] said. "There are jobs, and even in business, the humanities play a major role."
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Oh the Humanities!!
Why study human history? Better to ignore history and instead work for a company creating infrastructure to spy on Americans while earning tonnes of Treasury dollar$.
All the *best* schools (based on "who" you get to know) have been co-opted, and are now official extensions of the M-I-B-I-G (Military-Intelligence-Banking-Industrial-Genome) Complex that OWNS the "elected government."
The Ivy League is all about advanced weapons, information technology, fiat pushing on string theories, GMOs, and newer, faster and better ways to concentrate power and bring about control over everyone.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA?Maybe a few of the kids will figure out that when “Humanities” in university has little to do with HUMAN ACTION, in reality, nothing in that course of studies matters anymore.
Humanities don't pay the bills.
Humanities degrees = sitting in a classroom being indoctrinated by tenured radical windbags. Good ridance. Let them become plumbers, and get themselves a good reading list. They would at least then be less of a menace
"Humanities don't pay the bills"..
Yup.. in college and outside the synthetic MSM, but..
Human action.. and value /service for compensation crestes a real economy.
Maybe we will get back there one of these days.
I doubt a Harvard English Major is going to be jobless. A (pick your) State College one is. Even worse is a "career track" non-critical thinking / analytical degree-like business adminstration (non-accounting), marketing, etc. Engineering is shit too (unless from a v. good school) as all the low level engineering jobs are pay like 7K a year and are based in mainland China.
Why even bother with a degree if you're not going to a 1st tier school. E. Snowden had a rockin' job w/o a h.s. diploma.
There are many, many Ivy League graduates, some with very good academic records, who can't find employment that's more financially rewarding than service sector slop shop work (e.g. waiting tables) right now.
If I'm not lying (and I'm not, because I've seen the resumés), you're buying.
"all the low level engineering jobs are pay like 7K a year and are based in mainland China."
True dat..
But at least it is up from 6K/yr when I was there last , some 10 years ago.
Actually it's the people-people and the talk-people (Humanities, Management, Marketting) that specialize in power concentration and control over others.
Engineers just wanna make stuff and are rarelly people-oriented. In fact we (me being an engineer) are often accused of paying more attention to machines than to people, which is usually true.
(Which is probably why engineers are again starting to make more money: as it turns out in the long run a country that only makes hot air and bullshit is not going to go anywhere, but one that makes thingymajiggies will. That said, managers still do more money that everybody else)
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."
- Wernhner von Braun, Nazi SS concentration camp commander, head of Marshall Space Centre at Nasa, one of the primary architects of Apollo mission
Point is, you need engineers and the liberal arts. Nazis weren't big on the liberal arts - for a reason.
Actually, Germany had been a center of high culture for a very long time, and the German National Socialists took great pride in trying to protect that culture from the insane, murderous Bolsheviks who were hellbent on setting the entire European world ablaze, quite literally.
Nice revision of history. Von Braun was never a "concentration camp commander". It's hard to see how he would have time since he was running the German rocket program. Slave labor from concentration camps was used in the V-2 rocket factories. Now certainly Von Braun "went along to get along" in terms of knowing what the Nazis and SS were up to, but "camp commander" is simply not true.
Now certainly Von Braun "went along to get along" in terms of knowing what the Nazis and SS were up to, but "camp commander" is simply not true.
It's an exaggeration, but considering his factory was using (likely 100%) concentration camp 'labour' he was more or less running his own concentration camp.
His history is whitewashed because he is so esteemed in the USA, but unquestionably he was an early member of the SS, close to Himmler & used concentration camp slave labour well aware of what was going on (and by all indications supportive of it).
And yes, his 'defence' is typical of all the nazis - they all just "went along to get along."
:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
So silly that the same people that rage about people going to college for humanities then act all outraged when an uninformed populace implements policies and structures doomed to self-destruction. As if good engineering can save a neo-primitive populace from itself.
The humanities in American colleges are all a joke, anyway, though, so we're not losing much. If you want to learn about the world read 19th century Russian and German thinkers. Nothing's really changed since then, and they are still the best.
Americans think the humanities are pointless because we only read the British, and they are uniformly awful. So many American boys give up on literature after being forced through the Jane Austen and Charlotte program in high school. Who wants to read that tabloid nonsense? Forget pretty much everything British, and arts and letters suddenly become appealing to a red-blooded male once more.
In fact, you may even live longer if you learn another language and break out of the worldwide Anglo ghetto:
http://www.fakenation.info/please/speaking-english-is-bad-for-your-health
.
Doesn't this just mean the the government needs to step in and spend more money to give these people a job doing nothing? Oh yeah, and give them a liveable wage like $150k to start, so they won't be "economically disadvantaged" compared to those evil smart people, like engineers and entrepreneurs, who so unfairly had the intelligence to achieve what they have on their own.
Doesn't this just mean the the government needs to step in and spend more money to give these people a job doing nothing?
Not to engage your straw man too much, but what US industry doesn't .gov subsidize?
compared to those evil smart people, like engineers and entrepreneurs, who so unfairly had the intelligence to achieve what they have on their own.
First, around 60-70% of the people I know personally have engineering / science backgrounds, no one is disparaging that route. The unfortunate thing is a lot of them have wound up working in finance. Second, no one on this planet throughout history has ever achieved things 'on their own.' Only idiots believe the latter.
Really?
"Second, no one on this planet throughout history has ever achieved things 'on their own'."
SOMEONE invented the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell. SOMEONE invented vulcanized rubber - Charles Goodyear. On the one hand, you are right - most achievement, scientific or ordinary, is built upon previous achievement, so that in that sense, yes, 'on their own' is a misnomer. But logic insists that SOMEONE discovered brass, bronze and even copper - or perhaps multiple "somebodies" across time and the face of the planet.
But you have to be careful with this - pretty soon, someone will claim "It takes a village to raise a child", some other Obozo will claim "You didn't built that yourself, someone else did" and we're off to the races - towards Hell.
There are plenty of patents out there with only one name on them - which wouldn't have existed without ONE person working, thinking, inventing "on their own".
SOMEONE invented the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell.
First, that's a highly controversial statement. Second, the 'telephone' as Alexander Graham Bell is credited by many for was a long succession of inventions culminating in that device which was further developed later.
But logic insists that SOMEONE discovered brass, bronze and even copper - or perhaps multiple "somebodies" across time and the face of the planet.
The latter being true.
Obozo will claim "You didn't built that yourself, someone else did" and we're off to the races - towards Hell.
That's a separate issue but people often conflate the two. Everything humans use fundamentally day to day is based on millions of years of development by countless people.
There are plenty of patents out there with only one name on them - which wouldn't have existed without ONE person working, thinking, inventing "on their own".
Patents today are held most often by corporations with many people involved in the research.
Original JC quote: "Second, no one on this planet throughout history has ever achieved things 'on their own.'"
Later JC clarification: "Patents today are held most often by corporations with many people involved in the research. "
Thank you for proving / conceding my point.
"First, that's a highly controversial statement. Second, the 'telephone' as Alexander Graham Bell is credited by many for was a long succession of inventions culminating in that device which was further developed later."
Did or did not Bell get the patent? Did he invent the first successful working telephone? If not, who did? Claiming that he did not invent a certain microphone, certain circuit or copper wire does not diminish Bell's success in putting it all together; it did not exist in a complete form until he did. (I notice you didn't contest Goodyear's invention of vulcanized rubber, since it's fairly obvious he did that one all by himself.)
>>"But logic insists that SOMEONE discovered brass, bronze and even copper - or perhaps multiple "somebodies" across time and the face of the planet.
The latter being true.<<
If copper and brass and bronze were discovered multiple times by multiple individuals across time and the face of the planet, did not individuals do it each time, or were there corporations sponsoring research prehistorically?
And if those individuals each were ignorant of the others' efforts (say, pre-Columbian Americans, pre-Roman Greeks and pre-Empire Chinese), does that not still count as individual effort?
You cannot claim group effort is the only possibly driver of success. Individual efforts exist, and may be more important - try and do anything useful through a committee, and it becomes obvious.
Finally, "That's a separate issue but people often conflate the two." No, the ideological underpinnings of tyranny are inseparable from their effects - we are watching it now, with the NSA, IRS, State Department, etc. Claiming that there is no individual accomplishment is part of the psychological and ideological justification for government theft, oppression and suppression throughout history. Perhaps we will see through it this time, perhaps not - but that's what it is. If I didn't invent it, you can claim I don't deserve any benefit from it, and you can take it "for the people" "for the children" or for whatever reason-du-jour suits you, or that will fool enough people into supporting your theft.
Thank you for proving / conceding my point.
I was simply pointing out how most research is done these days, you were giving the impression that research is done on an individual basis.
Whether patents are in individual names or corporate names is irrelevant to the discussion.
The larger point is regardless of field, a very strong foundation based on thousands of years of research in a diverse range of disciplines is necessary to be able to add any additional innovations.
Did or did not Bell get the patent? Did he invent the first successful working telephone? If not, who did? Claiming that he did not invent a certain microphone, certain circuit or copper wire does not diminish Bell's success in putting it all together; it did not exist in a complete form until he did. (I notice you didn't contest Goodyear's invention of vulcanized rubber, since it's fairly obvious he did that one all by himself.)
You're completely missing my point, inventions don't happen out of a historical context. Why is it that so many people in diverse areas of the world rushed to patent the same technology at the same time? Coincidence? Or a natural evolution of current research?
You cannot claim group effort is the only possibly driver of success. Individual efforts exist, and may be more important - try and do anything useful through a committee, and it becomes obvious.
Denying individuals is totally absurd, but so is pretending that an individual exists outside of the group / time / place.
Newton said it well:
" If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton
"The government is the giant, you owe us for the boost, and, for the view, we charge by the second ." - President Obama
"I don''t know anything about giving Green Cpanies free views from the shoulders of giants. We never rented giants to political donors for free." - Obama
Better to rewrite history for the Ministry of Truth.
That's downright inhumane.
humanities major is one of the few you could get for free at a public library (or atleast what public libraries use to be- i haven't been in a spell)
As an engineer, avid reader and former classical pianist I can attest to the uplifting nature of the arts (and by extension, the Humanities). in the end we are defined by who we think we are culturally. My objection to the current trend in humanities is the wholesale forsaking of the European (Western) tradition for studies of other cultures that Re then held to be somehow superior. It may work for an anthropologist but it is not useful.
Unfortunately, the libraries have been mostly emptied of real, classical content and replaced with textbooks about classical content, prepared by committees indifferent or hostile to Western tradition.
Also, I think that getting the most value from classical studies requires a good teacher(s). Self study wastes an enormous amount of time.
New and improved humanities degree = self sufficiency. (Get out of debt and grow your own food.)
OT: The L A Times is reporting that Edward Snowden has checked out of his Hong Kong hotel and his whereabouts is unknown. http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snowden-gone-hong-kong-hotel-20130610,0,6912122.story
I hope he didn't fall for the Billion-Dollar Platinum Coin trick. And holds out for the Trillion-Dollar Platinum coin. ;-)
Damn, everyone wants to be a Bankster......
When it's between being a bankster and being a homesteader, it's no wonder why so many pick the way that doesn't wear overalls and look like work.
Women studies is a much better choice.
And within women's studies, the specialisation in lesbianism often has a lively following
George Carlin on education:
exerpt:
" Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the REAL owners, now. The REAL owners, the BIG WEALTHY business interests that control things and make all the important decisions -- forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.
...
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They DON'T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting FUCKED by system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
Stop the whining. A humanties degree from Harvard is still a degree from Harvard.
http://dareconomics.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/around-the-globe-06-10-2013/
anyone who can afford to go to harvard probably ain't worried about getting a job after graduation.
Exactly. More so if your roommate is a son/daughter of a sitting Member of CONgress, or some other crony connected entity.
One can be the dumbest one in class (maybe not even truly earned getting in), but due to having "Harvard" on your resume and the connections made is all that matters.
Not stating it's right, but that is how it is...for today anyway.
Look what Colombia did for Obama...he never went to school there..no one saw him..knew him..but he somehow graduates and goes to Harvard..same story....no papers written..but its on his resume....and he had connections...to the best Chum on campus or off I think....
Bernanke studied liberal arts degrees at Ivy League schools and look how far he made it. When you grow up and mommy n daddy pay for everything, they you get a Doctorate of Philosophy, you truly can accomplish great things in this world.
/sarc on
I finished my philosophy degree in the 80s, when, looking at that chart, the number of humanities majors was even lower. It was a great subject to study and I still rely on techniques I learned there. It was no problem developing a career.
Can we stop calling them the "humanities" and call it "higher education without math"?
There is no higher education without the math; you must mean the representational math that pedants teach to themselves incomprehensively on blackboards. Nothing comes out right without the equals sign.
Are you now teaching it to others?
I finished my philosophy degree in the 80s, when, looking at that chart, the number of humanities majors was even lower. It was a great subject to study and I still rely on techniques I learned there. It was no problem developing a career.
Same here. Philosophy degree completed in early 80s. No regrets; it really is handy to be able to reason.
A critical mind might wonder why Philosophy isn't on the syllabus to all. The French make it mandatory to 16-18 yr olds; say what you want about their economy, but they're still a Republic (well - technically, it got a bit fuzzy there regarding De Gaul & coups).
(ugh, self-correction: late eighties. guess that the training in reasoning doesn't extend to getting dates right)
When I first read this WSJ article, I thought that it was dreadful that so few people were now reading Milton and Shakespeare and Plato.
Then I remembered that most humanities departments these days have been taken over by Higher Criticism, and don't assign any decent reading anyway. They gibber to one another about "deeeferaaannce" and social norms and how nothing is truly any better than anything else and they publish journal articles about Superman and Gumby.
People are willing to sacrifice and skimp and take risks to study great ideas. They are not going to risk all to study crap.
Anyone remotely familiar with post-Modedernism knows that Humanities commited sucide.
The humanities major is dead because the academy has killed the humanities. Period.
Great books and the triumphs and follies of civilizations past are just as relevant and useful to the understanding how the world works today as they always have been but the university departments which are supposed to direct these studies have been overwhelmed by Cultural Marxism long ago. This entire field of enquiry has been perverted and reduced to an exclusive focus on race, class, sex and gender identity politics and navel gazing. Now students have realized that this is just a lot of empty-headed, ethno-masochist bullshit of zero use for anything.
You want career advice punk? get a government job.
I know you won't care, but "Cultural Marxism" is a major watch word since Breivik. EU doesn't like it at all.
Friendly / neutral advice.
i had to google cultural marxism.
had no clue what the term implies...
If you are going to look up the meaning of politically charged words and/or phrases I recommend using the DuckDuckGo search engine rather than using Google, which saves all your searches for potential future NSA perusal. (I wish I could add a 'sarc', but unfortunately this is no longer a joking matter.)
The humanities department needs to wipe two schools out from the university setting: Criminal "Justice" and Education. These are not real degrees. They teach nothing. There is no discipline. There are no theories of teaching. There is mastery of subject material. And part of that mastery is demonstrating that you can convey your thoughts to someone else. In reality, everyone who receives a degree in a real major should be able to teach their subject. Hence, there is no need for a specialized teaching degree.
Mass communications departments also need to be eliminated as well. Again, there is no discipline.
You've let your jobs be sucked away by governmental training programs. And what you find in criminal justice or Ed departments are the very dredge of academia. Stop awarding degrees for this.
"School presidents and administrators at liberal-arts colleges have already started to take a more job-oriented approach to a liberal-arts education" translation: "We're going to transform ourselves, into over-priced community colleges"
...and for an encore he's going to start a business that sells lemonade for $50 a glass.
"Overpriced community colleges!"
LOL! Best post I've read in a while!!!!!
The periodic table of elements was my favorite. Do they still teach that?
If you love to do it, why should anyone have to pay you to do it? I might just offer you the chance to do something you love doing for a small nominal fee.
What's English again?
Its "press #1" when you call your corporation or government for answers
No reason to... History is being rewritten anyway.
Liberal Arts faculties have slowly, relentlessly destroyed their product over the last 30 years. Any quick perusal of the current course offerings reveals this in spades. Never before in history has a liberal arts degree been worth less, and never has it cost more. For the past 20 years one of the more dependable, highest paying jobs for liberal arts grads has been waiting tables. As the grad casts about. Gets his bearings. Sets new goals. Starts a new career with 5-10 years wasted and a mountain of debt.
Liberal Arts faculties have slowly, relentlessly destroyed their product over the last 30 years. Any quick perusal of the current course offerings reveals this in spades. Never before in history has a liberal arts degree been worth less, and never has it cost more. For the past 20 years one of the more dependable, highest paying jobs for liberal arts grads has been waiting tables. As the grad casts about. Gets his bearings. Sets new goals. Starts a new career with 5-10 years wasted and a mountain of debt.
"If you want to take gender studies, that's fine, go to private school," North Carolina GOP Gov. Patrick McCrory said in a radio interview in January. "But I don't want to subsidize that if it's not going to get someone a job."
Kudos to this guy. Encouraging kids to take out loans for this shit is child abuse.
But you missed that "that if it's not going to get someone a job." means "not going to turn them into a worker drone"?
As opposed to an EBT parasite ?
<sigh> I've written this before. The value of a humanities education is supposed to be this:
These skills can be transferred to virtually any situation that doesn't require detailed technical knowledge. However, the degradation of humanities departments by the additions of 'pseudo'-courses, such as wymn's studies, or African-American culture, where there is 1) no body of literature worth speaking of to review, and 2) the "professors" (and I use the term loosely) aren't interested in creative thought, per se, but merely the regurgitation of the professors' own biases and conclusions, has, if anything, intensified. Trying to convince, for example, a feminist professor that dead white European males are NOT responsible for all the ills of the world will get you a failing grade.
It is sad to see how what was once the best way to train an agile young mind to deal with a multitude of possibilities, as opposed to turning university into a giant vocational school, has been degraded, and made virtually useless. But then, we could say the same of our democracy.
Meh. This is only controversial because governments are now taking money from poor people to fund humanities departments for rich people.
"Taking money from poor people"?! What parallel universe do you inhabit? The bottom 50% of income earners pay no net taxes, so unless your definition of "poor" is exceptionally broad, your statement is exceptionally stupid.
You are 100% correct in your assessment of the potential value of a humanities education. Furthermore, it can still be accomplished by choosing a college or university with a core curriculum requirement and by critically evaluating the course content of the offerings in the school's college of arts and sciences. My daughter chose a private university with an extensive core curriculum requirement and then carefully vetted the arts and sciences offerings to avoid what we termed the "grievance classes" focused on issues of race, class, gender and ethnicity. The university made this easier for us by grouping the majority of those types of classes in the "Department of Social and Cultural Analysis". My daughter grew by leaps and bounds in all four of the points you listed and now has a great job that relies heavily on the critical thinking and writing skills she honed through her liberal arts/humanities education in a very demanding honors program.
Good on your daughter. It is unfortunate that most people in university are chasing a "piece of paper", rather than an education. Of course, that is in response to the growing, nay almost complete, grasp of 'credentialism' upon hiring managers everywhere. Whether you can do the job or not is irrelevant in many cases; possessing a 3rd party's stamp of approval is all you need. That way, the hiring manager can point to the piece of paper when the candidate falls down on the job and say "How was I to know?".
When I was in school liberal arts was a CATEGORY of courses from which to choose when needing a lame-ass class to fill in a few credits.
Liberal Arts: A Degree In Uselessness.
Last it got this bad Russian intellectuals were turning to booze and heroin. Reagan was kicking the lunatics onto the streets and Johnny Rotten was jumping onto glass tables.
May we hope for banksters jumping from tall buildings this time around.
Funny thing is, utilitarian arguments for the humanities kill them.
IMO, the trend away from humanities is a good thing. Wish we could say the same of civil law attorneys. While I hate the idea of government intervening in what we ought to pursue, I don't mind the idea of allowing larger loans to the math and sciences and limits for the humanities.
I recall attending a presentation at U by a feminist on post-modernism / deconstruction and there was a lively debate going on and a white male (maybe gay) commented that he agreed with the post-modernism approach and supporters of traditional logic failed to "understand" the argument.
Well, I thought that bull dyke was going to get on her knees and give the guy (maybe gay) a hummer right there.
There was definitely pressure (and reward) to conforming.
Philosophy's important. Take Popper for example.
"a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable."
The way Anthropogenic Global Warming is.
If I had a good classical education I wouldn't of had to look up the meaning of Anthropogenic.
There was a time when having a Classical or well-rounded education included the Humanities (Literature, Music, History). It included that literary Classics, and often meant being multilingual.
E.g. in Germany, university-bound high school students would study English, French, Greek, and Latin. I suspect that Greek and Latin are not so important these days, and that other languages have replaced them. At a nearby high school in the Pac NW, they teach French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. And offer a very respectable Music (Orchestra) program. Cool!
My only complaint to that is that they don't offer these languages at K-8, since the human brain rapidly loses its ability to learn foreign languages with progressive age. I once remember being on a plane, where a woman spoke to her two sons (aged 8 or 9, I guessed) in English, French, Italian and German. They responded in kind -- fluent and accent free. It turns out she was Swiss. I was in total awe. When I asked her about this, she told me that kids have no problem learning more than one foreign language. Her kids were proof.
What a shame that TPTB in this country have not figured out that an "educated nation is a strong nation". It is said -- or so I've heard from reliable sources -- that "The people of The Book value knowledge exceedingly high, and almost above all things". Something to ponder...
Remember, it's 9.5% unemployment with a history degree from Harvard. What do you think it is with a history degree from University of Phoenix online or City College of Ackron?
Geology BITCHEZ! It's what's for majoring in! :-)
STEM majors have huge troubles finding jobs. A frequently quoted number is that 2/3rds of the engineering talent graduated by the universities can't even find their first job, and this has been pretty persistent over the past decade.
So what is your source for your "frequently quoted number" ?
I don't buy that for an instant, given our difficulties in finding STEM grads to hire. But Sociology, Psychology, and Gender Studies? Could hire a dozen every day. Problem is we don't want them. Can't do anything to justify a salary. And the one we gave a chance has filed an EEOC complaint after we laid them off. Never again....
Thank God I only have $50,000 in student loans for my BA in Gender Studies!!!!!! I should be able to pay it off pretty quickly! :)