Parents insist their kids go to college to get business degrees. Administrators respond by defunding the humanities and social sciences, while hiring business profs at ~2X what historians get paid. Meanwhile, businesses say over and over that they want to hire humanities and social science majors.
I was a business major with an accounting emphasis. The classes I remember decades later are mostly the electives in English, Psychology, History, and Science.
Accounting major. Went into Big 4 (In my day the Big 8) and had my ass handed to me on writing skills. Buffed up on my own. Tech knowledge was a given. Soft skills could make or break you.
Also business degrees often depend in large part on courses taught outside the biz school….eating their own seed corn etc
My son has a BS in Poly Sci and a BA in Accounting. The Poly Sci degree taught him more about critical thinking, statistics and computer programming than the Accounting degree.
So many of our problems grow from the 90s In this scenario I'm thinking about how liberal move from " education is a right that includes society" to " education is to produce workers" Devasting political shift for us
I think I just heard that the majority of college students are now taking their classes online. Sorry, boys and girls. You’re missing out on one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences you’ll ever have the opportunity to participate in.
"Obviously I’m biased here." Or maybe it's that you know from experience that reading & understanding history & literature are essential in learning how to think. In both, you're presented w/problems that are difficult or well nigh impossible to solve. There's not a better gift you can give yourself
People do not understand the difference between training and education.
Too may universities have obfuscated the differences.
Yes. Especially the diminishment of academic requirements that introduced 18 year olds to humanities and social sciences. Tech bros who fancy themselves political and cultural observers are the perfect examples of trained ignorants.
I got a BA in English before getting my Accounting degree. In every position I have had, my ability to write cogent arguments has been treated like an amazing feat. Business majors are not taught how to write so much as a professional letter.
I’m often complimented by colleagues on my emails, which I find hilarious. It’s just an email, but apparently writing a few coherent sentences is a feat.
Which businesses are saying that? I earned an M.A. and then spent years making $10-$12/hour in jobs that didn't require a degree at all. I had to go back for another degree to get a career and a living wage. Yes, the skills from my BA and MA are important, but the credentials didn't pay the rent.
Gosh. Why can’t we teach both humanities & a trade like carpentry/plumbing/nursing/engineering to anyone who is willing in this country? That we do not heavily invest in education is confounding to me.
It's intentional and part of Reagan era Republican scheming. "An educated proletariat is dynamite" so they intentionally made education harder to afford over the decades and currently are destroying the university system.
I tell my middle schoolers that most undergraduate degrees are about showing an employer you can think and complete a 4 year project with success. Choose a major that is broad enough to show you can do most tasks and something you find interesting so that you are successful.
This is the best advice!
I must have seen this recommended somewhere recently as it was at library when we went yesterday. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mat...
My son has a masters degree in public health, a field that desperately needed people even a few years ago. Now he is struggling to even find a job because of this administration. I have no idea what the solution is.
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Not sure if businesses are saying this to college kids. Both my daughters have liberal arts degrees, the one that graduated keeps saying "I should've gotten a business degree" because she can't find a job that will pay her rent, while her friends in finance/marketing are making bank.
(And they've been hearing from me their entire lives that a liberal arts ed is MILES better than a biz degree, w/ unlimited possibilities) I was a chem major (from a lib arts college)-->med school & their dad was a history major-->med school
I am a law professor (with a bachelor's degree in multiple areas of the humanities) and I'd much rather see students study the humanities more generally than pre-law as prep. Reading, writing, analysis, and critical thinking are all front and center there.
False, businesses do not want to hire anyone. Hence the slapshod rush to replace every profession with AI
When they realize AI can’t actually deliver what it promises, they’ll either go out of business or start hiring people again.
I’m really happy to read this. My son is a history major at a liberal arts college and I would never have tried to dissuade him when he picked his major (it is a long-time interest). I think he (and I) are unsure what he will do after graduating. He loves archival work but needs other options too.
Or science or math or carpentry or…
Businesses may want skills developed in pursuit of a humanities degree, but they don't hire for them. You have to be able to get in the door before any of those skills start to matter.
I wish I could have found one of those businesses. I graduated with a degree in English Lit in 2004. Then I spent a decade making $10/hr working at the only places I could get hired (temp agencies, call centers, etc.). I had a lot of regret over not picking something more practical.
My dad's a chemist turned corporate exec, and he always says a business degree is completely useless. You want to hire someone who actually starts out knowing something and you can teach them how business works on the job
My son is a summa cum laude undergraduate with a degree in the humanities. Concentrations in International Relations and Economics. MA summa cum laude in IR. He’s been job searching for over a year . . .
This is an outcome of the flattening of the tax code at the top, insuring that pursuit of income never slows down, steamrolling the broader set of values that used to drive society.
Undergraduate business degrees are basically worthless garbage outside like a half dozen top ranked undergraduate business programs, as far as I can tell.
Obviously I’m biased here. But i just want to say that the history majors I’ve known over 25 years of teaching have gone on to have good lives and careers across many different fields. Their employers appreciate them because they can think, talk, and write with nuance, intelligence, and maturity.
Who woulda thunk that the ole Critical Thinking was gonna be so important in life...
Will also say that many architecture majors are taught to think and solve problems. The answer are never if A then B, because when you look at issues from a multidisciplinary view there is never one correct answer
This fosters creativity which is invaluable across every aspect of life
My English major kid is doing quite well for herself in the business world.
My kid is a history major (with my full support). If you want somebody who can do research, evaluate many different kinds of sources/material, summarize/organize/synthesize their findings and analysis, and then communicate all of that others - in various ways - a historian is your best bet.
Can't remember who said (roughly) this: The question is not "what can you do with a history degree?" The question is "What do people with history degrees do?" The list is endless.
I feel the same way about my English degree from UCLA. Never got rich, but I've never regretted it, despite getting a lot of flak from people who didn't understand the value of well-developed critical thinking, creative, and communication skills.
English major in full agreement over here.
I got a degree in accounting and finance and can confirm that business majors are often dummies who couldn’t cut it anywhere else. The economics professors I had lamented about being attached to the business school and the quality of students they had.
Fellow accountant here. Most accounting majors were pretty smart and motivated, but outside of that the students and classes were not particularly good.
Yes! Once I got into upper level classes, definitely was with more serious/motivated people.
My economics class Income Inequality was one of the most important courses I ever took, though. Really taught me about how things are stacked against poor people and how investments in education and infrastructure would save us so much money and strife… in the long term.
I was a history major who went into tech. I wholeheartedly agree. It made a world of difference.
I get why parents and HS kids (especially from families with little historical experience with college) think a business BA is a good bet. It just makes sense. Want to make money in life? Get a degree in money making! Duh.
There is a huge mismatch between the actual value of a college education and what consumers (parents and HS students) THINK they are getting out of it. This is, in part, a failure of higher ed to market itself as anything more than a slightly upmarket vocational school w/ nice gym facilities.
The purely instrumental value of a BA will decline as more undergrads rely on AI to complete their work and as more colleges cut costs by using AI to deliver curriculum and grade. That model might persist for a while, coasting off the fumes of what a college degree used to mean, but it's a dead end.
One of the best things to happen to my college-bound kid was an AP research teacher who was AI-pilled. She got to see first-hand all the crap that AI spits out in the humanities context and went “nope!” I hope she’s not unique this way
Who wants to pay $100k to submit AI work and get AI grades? There'd be no market for that.
Either colleges produce graduates who have been transformed by 4 years of study in ways that are valuable but hard to quantify, or they produce interchangeable widgets with pieces of paper that say they jumped through a series of hoops, probably with the assistance of chatbots because who wouldn't?
My 2024 summa cum laude History major graduate is currently studying for the LSAT, but when he has actively looked for a professional position, it has been hard going. Employers WANT interchangeable widgets from what I can see and aee demanding 3+yrs of experience for entry-level jobs. It's madness
IMO, colleges can either start clearly and effectively articulating the value they offer to students and employers that AI can't, or they will be replaced by shitty, but very affordable, AI simulacra of higher ed.
The conventional wisdom was always that my BFA & MFA were a waste of time & $. But I learned critical thinking, problem solving & how to write. (SO MUCH writing in grad school!) In 25+ yrs as a designer I’ve mostly worked with ppl with marketing degrees who can’t write their way out of a paper bag.
My experience over 25 years of teaching college is that, for the most part, 18 year olds have not changed all that much. Most are curious, hungry for knowledge, anxious about what their future might hold, & desirous of figuring out what it looks like to be a good person in a fucked up world.
It's that last bit (how can I be a good person in a fucked up world?) that has notably intensified since the early 2000s when I started teaching, and for obvious reasons. Neither I nor my colleagues have any good and easy answers to that question, but at least we don't tell them to stifle it.
And if we are going to find our way into a less fucked up world, it's going to be the rising generations who will play a key role in that. I consider it a great privilege, now that I'm middle aged, to be in a position to learn from the energy & insight the rising generation is bringing to the world.
Me too. It seems like technology is stifling them and I want them to be free.
One of the functions of a university is sorting: telling future employers which students are better or worse than others. Brutal, but true. I suspect focussing on the ability to perform that function in the AI era is key to HE survival.
from your lips to God's ears, my friend and compatriot.
I'm teaching my own class for the first time this term and I had my students read this: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
I teach an intro to higher ed course, so it's a challenging bit of reading for them, but I wanted to sell them on finding joy in the present and choosing a path they value for their own reasons. we also read and talked about self-authorship early on.
The primary issue is that rather than expanding minds and exposing impressionable young adults to ideas and values that might serve them well later in life, college is now seen as a critical career accelerant, catapulting them into the world of late stage capitalism.
That’s encouraging to hear that from the trenches, as it were
Nowadays, only once or twice a year do I walk into a classroom full of chit-chat. So quiet: their focus is on a phone or a computer. If I do find them talking, like 25 years ago, I hate to interrupt them for their lecture.
If we stop educating people to ask these questions, that problem will be solved. The market wins again.
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I feel like the architects of the current regime would value drones more than free thinkers. Terrifying future in that thought.
eh, they want drones more than they want free thinkers, but don't let that imply the pay won't go down. and don't confuse the fascists with the actual people hiring to (good) jobs. Lots of managers are going to be mourning the loss of our education system as their companies fade in global influence
They want widgets that meet their specs. Uniformly reliable and predictable. Business bosses don't have the intellectual flexibility or imagination to deal with irregular inputs. I worked in corporate compensation for a couple decades, these leaders are the product of mediocrity producing b-schools
I think about this college president op-ed all the time, and how the problems of US universities precede all of us.
Thank you for making a connection. Robert M. Hutchins’s ideas went underappreciated. "If we say that education is a process that must go on through life, then the object of the college is to give the student those habits, ideas, and techniques which he needs to continue to educate himself."
"some" higher ed, Seth
US News rankings rule the world of college administrators, apparently. But those rankings mostly replicate the socioeconomic status of the student body, hence the emphasis on nicer facilities, D1 football, and Greek letter clubs.
Sad thing is that families with historical experience have also partaken of the kool aid. I’ve heard folk who have first degree’s in humanities bemoaning that their kid had to take a minor, because why should that matter when they do well in the major.
History grad here in business and sales. My ability to argue and make a point coherently is why I can do sales. I also spent time doing adult ESL and it’s helped with communication and informing customers who are non technical about technical things.
But surely Grok can do all those things? /s
Moreover, I plan to cover the gap in business capability with community college night courses and possibly an MBA as a mature student. But my foundation in humanities is absolutely essential to where I am.
Nods. Yup.
I would say the same about art majors.
This regime has made this a whole lot harder, unfortunately. One thing I’m noticing about companies now is that they give too much responsibility to business majors and titles; Especially, in technical fields. Cheap today can easily translate to catastrophic results tomorrow. Not all companies.
In my area it’s STEM. I teach HS ss whose families largely define/model success as STEM work so many ss are laser focused on that path from early in HS. If I can get ss to consider adding a humanities minor to their college plans, that’s a win. When I get one who falls in love with history it’s 🎆!!!
whenever this topic surfaces, I always think back to the Alfred Bester story “Disappearing Act” – and how so many of us from the Old School are now Bradley Scrim...
Thank you for this!!
I love it. I'm not scrim though. they're unable to find me at the end of that story.
Hell, I have a STEM PhD and have routinely found those with liberal arts and humanities backgrounds blended in are *vastly* better hires.
Can say the same as a tech employer.
Saw it in graduate students in my comp-sci program as well as industry and lab settings. The pure STEM folks almost always struggled outside of basic coding and pattern matching.
Espec in a consulting context, where a quick grasp of someone else's landscape, ability to think on your feet, and excellent communication skills are critical. We need mandatory humanities electives for STEM. Cross-disciplinary edu also offers a healthy reality check to the ego.
Talk to any BA grad from the last 5-7 yrs about their job search. Ads want specific skills for specific positions, none of them are "be good at synthesizing complex information into a summary" or "be able to cogently discuss an area of knowledge". Also, applying for jobs is broken for any age.
Most companies are really bad at figuring out what they want from their employees, and it's impossible to get that from just looking at a resume anyway, so they default to basic criteria. Applicants react by claiming to be experts on every tech skill they've heard of. The result is a job casino.
The best preparation for law school is a degree in history or English or philosophy. It is NOT "pre-law."
Liberal Arts grad here. Perhaps businesses should give us "older" workers another look instead of being ageist. As an added bonus, our experience in dealing with a variety of "stuff" gives us adaptability and creativity that you can't learn in school.
Would I be off base if I thought it sounds like we focus way too much on theory in many areas of education and give almost zero attention to application.
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YEARS ago — 15 or more — students of mine who reported back on their optional modules in the Business School couldn’t believe how easy they were. A textbook to read, nothing much to write, think, or even remember. A doddle, but good for the CV apparently. I am sure it must be much more rigorous now.
I have been thinking this thing and as a STEM person, I am curious about what this might look like from the humanities side: Our students take a certain number of gen ed courses/credits. Not sure of the exact number but maybe six or seven courses plus writing and speech?
What if we gave students an alternative where they could choose to, for example, major in STEM, minor in humanities and not worry about the gen ed categories? Seems like we would be giving students a choice so maybe they are more invested? More depth as opposed to breadth?
And I hope this doesn't come off as dismissing the humanities. What I'd really like is for our majors to see the value of those courses but I feel like its just box checking for so many of them.
My husband says he picked his degree in part because it didn't have a math requirement. And then, shortly after college, the temp agency called because their client was looking specifically for liberal arts majors. They needed people who could communicate clearly and make decisions on the fly.
Basically he was a phone troubleshooter for a very technical installation that was happening in every convenience store across the state. Within a few years, he was managing computer operations for a multi-million dollar, high pressure, and very public operation.
Karma.
English major here. As an editor for over 30 years, you wouldn't believe some of the dog's vomit writing that passes my desk, from MBAs and Statisticians. If I ate a bowl of Campbell's Alphabet Soup, vomited into a fountain pen, and mailed it to the zoo's Primate House, I'd get better writing.
It pains me that you involved a fountain pen.
Hallmark of Coalition RW conservative govts in Aust. Privatise publicly owned institutions +services to your mates or donors. Increase fees for easier accessible courses in Humanities so less students and inevitability less informed, less questioning and less critical thinking population.
Yup, I have a BS in business admin & a master’s in accounting from a public Ivy. Those degrees didn’t help my career in auditing and fraud investigation as much as my classes in liberals arts did (UNC required lots of humanities classes the first 2 years) for communication (writing/interviewing).
Same, I learned to code and handle data on the job. The value of my UNC degree is derived from classes in Religion, Sociology, and Music as much as Math.
I have a son in college getting a degree in English...please show me all these places looking to hire. I don't see them.
My girlfriend teaches writing at a university. Can confirm this is the case. Also can confirm that said university pays humanities professors tens of thousands less than they pay business professors—she makes mid-40s (w/a Ph.D!) while biz profs make 6 figures.
You could just say business majors are often imbeciles, unable to converse well on any topic.
The academic circus.
In no small part because we humanities majors know how to read, write, and think critically.
J Walter Thompson said, I can teach advertising. I cant teach life.
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True. Problem is parents pay tuition not companies.
I worked in industry for a decade before becoming a professor for that same industry. Some business people say they want employees with humanities degrees, but in my experience they default to hiring people with business degrees.
After 25 years in IT, some of the best I've worked with were people who majored in history or theater and taught themselves computer skills. Show me the good work you've done, and I'm going to see a humanities major as a bonus.
It's like the recent few years where so many people went in to get law degrees, then there was this massive influx of lawyers & nowhere to work. On the other hand, GOOD Intellectual Property attorneys, that usually require strong science degrees like chemistry or engineering, are lagging behind.
It’s a fucking conundrum that eludes our best minds. 🤷🏼
I think we need to look at the race for "stats" that colleges participate in as well. Lots of applicants with super high "stats" and lots of rejections of applications make a college look "exclusive" and "competitive" in the ranking systems.
So colleges push their business colleges, and spend money on "names." They don't even necessarily fit, or teach well, or even do the kind of research that has impact and meaning. But it draws in the applications.