I am tipping the hat here to Jared Wheeler. He keeps serving up material that is just too good.
After reading this article, I hoped for the periodical's sake that it was an editorial, but even then, I think this article should be embarrassing to the paper.
Okay, so Mr. Weinstein, here's the deal: the job market is riper for STEM graduates than liberal arts majors. Maybe, it's an overreach of the state's power for it to actually monetarily favor one program over another, but let's face the facts, if we are talking about jobs and economic growth, anthropology and the arts can't hold a candle to engineering, computer science, and other applied sciences and maths. It's not that the liberal arts aren't worth studying... they just don't pay you back in cold hard cash as well as studying the sciences and mathematics.
The governor was talking about jobs. But, Mr. Weinstein has to create some underlying motives to make his article more interesting. And so, Rick Scott is really trying to squelch free thought and progressive education, whereby students are nurtured to challenge established social norms and stand up for equality... Oh, those racist Tea Partiers!
And, Jared, in case you are wondering, I would be glad to tear up an article written by a conservative news source... provided it was also very badly written.
ReplyDeleteJust saw this . . . You should cross-post to Google+ or something.
ReplyDeletePretty much everything you said here is flat-out wrong. I realize that your observations come from a place of basically benign (but profound) ignorance on this subject, but surely it would have been a good idea to investigate further before posting?
I assume that the attempts to assign nefarious motives to Gov. Scott's idiotic statements got your goat and provoked you into a misguided leap to his defense, even though what he says is foolish from any point of view. I agree that part of Weinstein's article was very silly and misplaced, but then, so was your mention of "racist Tea Partiers!" (at the least you overstepped with that, I see no such statement in the article) . . .
In any case, that bit had nothing whatever to do with why I posted that article. The essential information lies in what the governor said, and why what he said reveals a critical lack of understanding (which you apparently share).
You say, "Okay, so Mr. Weinstein, here's the deal: the job market is riper for STEM graduates than liberal arts majors. Maybe, it's an overreach of the state's power for it to actually monetarily favor one program over another, but let's face the facts, if we are talking about jobs and economic growth, anthropology and the arts can't hold a candle to engineering, computer science, and other applied sciences and maths. It's not that the liberal arts aren't worth studying... they just don't pay you back in cold hard cash as well as studying the sciences and mathematics."
It's hard to know which angle to even begin approaching this from . . . What you're saying makes no sense as a response to the article, nor are you correct in any of your assertions.
-Whether engineers earn a higher salary than English majors is irrelevant to whether there are jobs for people with liberal arts degrees . . . and there are. I, for one, have had no trouble finding employment since I graduated. I likely will never be paid as much as you will, but that hardly means that my job doesn't matter or is in any way less important or that it somehow isn't a job.
ReplyDelete-Someone graduating with a degree in anthropology isn't an anthropologist; a point which seems to confuse both you and Gov. Scott. They're a person with an anthropology degree in search of a career, and often they're not looking for a career in anthropology. A degree in almost any of the liberal arts prepares students to succeed in a wide variety of fields outside of their immediate area of study . . . That is the very nature of a quality liberal arts education.
-"The liberal arts always situate graduates on the road for success. More Fortune 500 CEOs have had liberal arts B.A.s than professional degrees. The same is true of doctors and lawyers. And we know the road to research science most often comes through a liberal arts experience." Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/01/greenwald
-Liberal arts programs provide valuable experiences for non-majors through survey courses and electives that provides a well-rounded education, broadens horizons, and expands the life of the mind in areas that their core classes leave undeveloped. Scott isn't going to improve anyone's college education or career prospects by underfunding those departments just because he's too dim to understand how education works.
-You are apparently unaware that mathematics and the sciences are considered "liberal arts" . . . I assume you mean the "humanities" when you say "liberal arts." The latter term is actually far broader in scope than most people realize.
-In your zeal to slap down what you apparently perceive to be liberal bias against an embattled common-sense Tea Party governor, you seem all too willing to gloss over what you call "an overreach of the state's power." Why is that? Even if Scott were right, and he's not, those are classic authoritarian, Big Government kinds of decisions:
"Students are interested in many different subjects when they come to college — physics, literature, agronomy, to name just a few. Is it really the government's role to steer them into one subject discipline over another?" http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111020/article/111029935?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar
"And, Jared, in case you are wondering, I would be glad to tear up an article written by a conservative news source... provided it was also very badly written."
I've never doubted that, but I really don't see why you think you've accomplished that goal here. I hope my tone here isn't too off-putting. I've had to listen to this kind of wrongheaded nonsense for nearly a decade now, sometimes via the news from small-minded pencil-pushers like Scott, sometimes via snotty technical majors' (not you) myopic disdain for any subject that can't be directly quantified or monetized. Suffice to say that the familiarity with this line of reasoning hasn't made it any easier to swallow.
In case you hadn't noticed, Derek, I think you hit a raw nerve of the variety that makes Jared go off frothing at the mouth.
ReplyDeleteA couple of things:
1) As Jared has noted above, there is a false assumption that a college degree dictates what line of work one will go into. There is a loose correlation, but most of my best colleagues are those whose education does not forecast the position that they currently hold (be it indirectly like electrical engineering or completely unrelated like a marketing or graphic design.)
2) As a general rule, I would argue favoring educational fields based upon what pays more is a very poor idea. Beyond the simple fact that employee pay is mostly a matter of supply and demand (and by railroading a bunch of would-be humanities majors into engineering is going to drive down salaries), the fact of the matter is that current trends are very poor indicators of future utility. Each generation, several high-pay fields that were in high demand 5-10 years before become obselete (machinists, typewriter mechanics, buggy-whip salesmen, etc.) and I would certainly not trust government agencies to pick the winning trends as far as what areas to prioritize by taking money from other areas.
3) Just going off of salaries, the real money-makers in recent decades have been people inventing new financial instruments like derivatives and engineers developing mechanisms like high-frequency stock trading. When you step back and look at those areas, not only were they catalysts for the last financial crisis, but they add almost no value to the economy at all.
As a last aside, based upon current societal conditions, I would argue that society needs more of the things that Gov. Scott would take money away from - history, literature, philosophy, economic theory, ethics, etc. And if the people looking to go into those areas are willing to help society for the pittance that those fields pay, why on earth would anyone go out of their way to make it harder for them?
Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Scholl, I have been busy like nothing else the last half of the semester, so that explains the delay.
ReplyDeleteIt might come as surprise to you, but I actually agree with your sentiments about a liberal education. In fact, I have longed for a number of years for a good liberal education.
To start with, I guess, I would say that on an individual level it is more practical and lucrative for a student to spend $120,000 on an engineering education than on a English or History degree. That doesn't mean that engineering provides a more whole-person-nurturing education than a degree such as English or History. Also, how many graduates of engineering have to work for McDonald's right after graduating as compared to Philosophy graduates (undergraduate level education).
In order for a liberal education (humanities, mathematics, even biology) to be very practically useful (because people have to eat), one needs to get a Master's or PhD. How many people can do that? I would say it almost takes more brains, and even more diligence and hardiness to become an anthropologist, biologist, or professor of philosophy than it does to become, say, a software engineer.
As far as Governer Scott's claims went, I thought they made some sense (yes, his words could have been better chosen). If we have to invest only 120,000 (just a random figure assuming a full ride for the student) to turn out an engineer who will almost immediately be able to find a job earning 50-60k a year (keeping in mind that people are paid for the worth of their work, how much companies value what the graduates can do for them), and we have to pay the same amount to turn out a well-rounded humanities graduate who can work in a hardware store, or maybe get that chance at a fellowship, internship, or graduate degree at some institute... which choice do you think is going to result in more economic development. At least, which choice is going to ensure more that we don't need to support the same graduate on welfare for the next 10 - 20 years of his life?
Obviously, I am shooting in the dark a little with these scenarios, but I would have thought they weren't that far off.
In general, though, I thought the article was almost completely idiotic... except for a few notes about the worth of a liberal education (which, incidentally, the author appeared to use to spin a hatred-of-liberal-education-and-morally-attuned-people on the Republican party).
As an example of how naive the author appears, consider the parting shot at the difference between how much money is spent on football programs and how much is spent on anthropology programs in Florida's top six public universities. What I want to know is how many of those universities even have anthropology programs and how many have football programs? How many staff are in the anthropology programs as compared to the football programs? How much more money does football bring in than research grants for the anthropology program bring in?
And, I don't even like football.