CMU School of Drama


Thursday, May 03, 2018

Some majors are quite minor

News, Sports, Jobs - Observer Today: Consider college as an investment. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, roughly half — 53 percent — of students who in 2009 were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities graduated within six years. Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that in 2010, 62 percent of U.S. college graduates had a job that required a college degree. Thus, roughly a third of students who enroll in college graduate in a reasonable time and get a job that requires a college degree.

3 comments:

Nicolaus Carlson said...

This article clearly doesn’t understand the importance of many of the majors we offer and has been brainwashed by that insatiable alliance to capitalism. Very quickly it is all majors that are defined as strong being somehow directly related to business related jobs and even more directly related to office jobs in business. Then jobs that offer something to business but are indirect are then considered to be “harder to categorize” while everything else is considered weak. It is very easy to see that this article lacks information on those majors and they are simply being claimed “weak” because that is what they have been considered in society for a long time. The biggest two I have with the weak category is art and education. IF they are so weak then why do we need those two in particular so much in our society. The arts or otherwise known as entertainment contributes a hugely significant to our economy. The argument here is that they can’t contribute to our economy and that’s just false. The entertainment industry alone is one of the most popular industries/business. People know Hollywood and Broadway just as much if not more than they know Google, Microsoft, and Apple just for example. Everyone wants to see the latest marvel movies, as just proven with the biggest opening in history with Infinity Wars. Clearly, the arts are strong then because without artists, this industry can’t exist and not only creates jobs for thousands upon thousands of people but also contributes to the economy immensely. Then education. This just mutes the whole argument because if no one is learning how to teach, then no one can teach which means that no one will learn anything and all those strong majors don’t actually exist anymore. Also, if you look to places in Europe, teachers get payed more than most CEO’s do in America because they understand their value. Clearly an argument based on ignorance, but at least it shows where our society is at and where we need to start creating change.

Kelly Simons said...

Um, excuse me? How insulting. And I'm not most upset that this author said arts were a useless degree, I'm most upset that he thinks that EDUCATION is on the list of degrees that "waste" taxpayers money. You understand, although probably not, that in order to even write this article, you were taught. By a teacher. Who more than likely has a degree in education. Please advise on how this makes sense, Stephen. Also, can we please note that is guy holds a degree in philosophy, who is also a teacher? I would categorize philosophy as a soft science, on par with psychology. No, strike that, several rungs below psychology. How can this man claim that economics and marketing are below his choice of study? You got a degree, and a masters in order to teach (Maybe even a PHD) in a field that can be most simply be described as training in how to think. And not think about ideas that actively help society, like a scientist, but more thought exercises that don't really help the general public. The taxpayer public. Who paid for your education. This level of cognitive dissonance (learned that term in a psych class, by the way) of this man is nearly incomprehensible.

Ali Whyte said...

I just found this article to be incredibly insulting and not at all helpful in any way. The most surprising, despite the fact that I think the arts are a very important part of society, was education. How could he argue that majoring in education does not contribute to society or have much value? As a teacher. I think that good education systems are the basis for a functional society, and the people that do that work are amazing and talented because I know I definitely could not. There are many teachers right now in this country, especially in Arizona, who are currently fighting for decent wages and conditions because their jobs are important, but it is articles like these that make a lot of people see educators as lower and less important, even though they are the ones teaching and guiding their children. I am just honestly shocked at the blatant disrespect and lack of understanding of the contents of this article.