Liberal Arts Degree

[Brighteye]

As to what you learn, if done properly, a liberal arts degree should make you able to quickly digest and anlyse large amounts of information, to reinterpret it in ways to make it intelligible in some narrative form, and to see more points of view on a matter than readily apparent to everyone.

I suppose one of the intangible, yet good things about a liberal arts degree is that it teaches people to teach themselves. It's a bit like the "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" philosophy to some extent I suppose.

If done properly, any degree should teach someone to think for himself, and be able to teach himself. That's certainly the case here. We don't have equivalents of the liberal arts degree, however, in which people can learn almost nothing about almost everything. We call that GCSE.

Liberal arts degrees sound fun and interesting, and I'm not deriding the personal satisfaction to be got out of them, but they certainly don't seem to confer any advantage to a career that any other degree (done properly) wouldn't.

I don't dislike most Arts degrees. Most of them are worth doing.

What I dislike is non-degrees -- airy fairy degrees with waffly titles, or "specialist" degrees, like "agricultural engineering" or "sports science". There's no point in them even existing.

This is more of a problem over here. A degree in English is better than a degree in media studies, even if applying for jobs in the media.

 

[Nylan]

If done properly, any degree should teach someone to think for himself, and be able to teach himself. That's certainly the case here. We don't have equivalents of the liberal arts degree, however, in which people can learn almost nothing about almost everything. We call that GCSE.

From my experience with GCSE, it does a much better job of teaching these intellectual necessities than most if not all American curriculum. That is, in fact, why I have any amount of understanding on the subject at all. Most American education does not teach students to think for themselves.

 

[CCA]

Liberal Arts degree seem to be unfortunately stuffed to the full with the bad type of students. There are plenty of good students but the immature retards unfortunately outweigh them.

 

[Archbob]

Liberal Arts degree seem to be unfortunately stuffed to the full with the bad type of students. There are plenty of good students but the immature retards unfortunately outweigh them.

Because immature retards like to go the easy path and most Liberal arts degrees just don't require the work of an engineering or even the work of a business degree to achieve. Also liberal arts majors have the lowest SAT and GPA requirement to get in or switch into.


That being said, the best skill you can learn in a non-engineering and non-hard science major is bullcrapping. It is more useful that all that other so-called "knowledge" you learn. Being a good bullcrapper gets you far in life and in the business world.

 

[downtown]

Also liberal arts majors have the lowest SAT and GPA requirement to get in or switch into.

That depends totally on the school and the institution. For large state universities, there are liberal arts programs that are more selective than their engineering or business schools.

 

[Fifty]

Because immature retards like to go the easy path and most Liberal arts degrees just don't require the work of an engineering or even the work of a business degree to achieve. Also liberal arts majors have the lowest SAT and GPA requirement to get in or switch into.

I'd agree about engineering generally being harder than a liberal arts degree, but there is no way that is true of business. Business majors consist nearly exclusively of moron guys who want to be the next Donald Trump, and moron girls who want to be a "cute and successful marketing exec." who wears cute suits to work every day! Cute! Most good schools don't even have undergraduate degrees in business, because they are so ********.

Economics is supposedly the "hardest" of the broadly businessy-type majors, and even that is retardedly easy in undergraduate.

 

[Rambuchan]

It seems that Liberal Arts is known to Europeans as "The Humanities", right?

Exactly my point. The people in this thread slamming liberal arts degrees
seem only to be interested only in making more money, doing what they
call something "useful" or getting into higher management positions.
What about the joy of actually learning about life and the world?
If all education means to you is a fast track to employment, then get
an apprenticeshjp, be a plumber and make the really big bucks!

The way I see it, undergrad is to get an education, not a job.

100% agreed.

Whatever happened to "knowledge for its own sake"? Does everything we do in life have to be geared towards making cash money? I'd take a £30k job that's fascinating and fulfilling over a £60k job that isn't, any day.

I have a friends who are engineering and finance graduates who now work as city analysts. They may make a lot of money but they (a) don't have any time to spend it or see their friends and (b) are miserable as a result. Many of them are getting old and remain single owing to their lack of leisure time. When they retire, they will have amassed a fortune, but their life will have gone by while doing so and they will only have cruises with other smelly pensioners to enjoy it. It constantly amazes me how such intelligent people can be so stupid when it comes to living life.

Further, most of the business, engineering and science graduates that I know are generally very boring people to hang out with (and the economics ones are interesting but in that full sh!t and always spurting it kind of way). Their presence in my life is nowhere near as enriching as those who have studied the humanities.

As to what you learn, if done properly, a liberal arts degree should make you able to quickly digest and anlyse large amounts of information, to reinterpret it in ways to make it intelligible in some narrative form, and to see more points of view on a matter than readily apparent to everyone.

I know that's what successful liberal arts majors I know are doing, working as business analysts, the national intelligence service etc.

Quite true this. The skills are highly transferable. I did one of those degrees that Mise thinks are worthless, but have found that the skills can be used in the field of finance (as well as the film production I did formally), demonstrating exactly what you have written above. Experience in the multitude of jobs that are directly related to such humanities degrees can easily lead onto other fields that are not.

 

[I'm Cleo!]

Isn't the term "liberal arts" being somewhat misused here? Basically, people mean "humanities / social science" rather than "liberal arts". I was under the impression that you attend a "liberal arts" university, which teaches in a particular style -- broad areas of study, requirements like English / cultural understanding / &c. -- and that you can major in whatever the school offers. I attended a "liberal arts" university and got a degree in Physics.

Generally, I think Irish Caesar is right:

considering the make-up of the average internet forum, I would guess that the ratio of science/tech degrees to liberal arts degrees is noticeably tilted towards the former. Therefore, bragging about a tough degree when compared to a liberal arts degree is no different from any other backslapping and whatnot: welcome to the science degree old boys' club, my friend.

Cleo

 

[The Yankee]

I suppose I have a more unique perspective since, although I am a Finance major, I've also taken a Political Science minor and several History courses along with it. There are some genuinely tough things in both of the other fields. And there's plenty of the rote recitation also, when it comes to theories and the like. My favorite Political Science classes have dealt with politics as they are (including an internship with my city councilman and a current political events class I took four times and would have done a fifth if only I didn't have to hurry up and graduate already).

I've usually done very well in both those other fields, since it does come down to having to think on your feet or pull together various resources to come up with a final product. Sadly, I've seen a lot of students lacking these skills. If that is one thing to take away from liberal arts majors, it should be that, then applying it to whatever field you're actually in.

 

[Arwon]

At my university in Australia, the Arts Faculty consists of the following:

History
Politics and International Relations
Philosophy
History and Philosophy of Science
Linguistics and Languages (with a variety of majors such as Korean Studies, Japanese Studies, European Studies, Spanish and Latin American Studies, etcetera)
Sociology and Anthropology
English
Performing Arts (music, film, drama)
Education

The two standard degrees are "Arts" or "Social Sciences" though both can roll in majors from other faculties like Economics or Geography or Psychology or International Business and some interdisciplinary stuff like Political Economy.

How does all that compare to "Liberal Arts" as used in the US?

And here in Spain just to be confusing they call the faculty "Filosofia y Letras" which means Philosophy and Letters...

 

[The Yankee]

That seems to cover most of the big ones. Of course, we have "English" as a major here, though I don't know how it compares to other countries or your Languages degree.

I think Gender/Women's Studies also falls in our Liberal Arts big tent.

 

[downtown]

At my university in Australia, the Arts Faculty consists of the following:

History
Politics and International Relations
Philosophy
History and Philosophy of Science
Linguistics and Languages (with a variety of majors such as Korean Studies, Japanese Studies, European Studies, Spanish and Latin American Studies, etcetera)
Sociology and Anthropology
English
Performing Arts (music, film, drama)
Education

The two standard degrees are "Arts" or "Social Sciences" though both can roll in majors from other faculties like Economics or Geography or Psychology or International Business and some interdisciplinary stuff like Political Economy.

How does all that compare to "Liberal Arts" as used in the US?

And here in Spain just to be confusing they call the faculty "Filosofia y Letras" which means Philosophy and Letters...

Yeah, thats typically what we have too.

 

[Arwon]

It's basically English literature.

Those are just the main schools or faculties though, there's other majors like "development studies" and "international studies" which are homeless/interdisciplinary.

We're big on interdiscplinarity in Australia.

 

[Merkinball]

Isn't the term "liberal arts" being somewhat misused here? Basically, people mean "humanities / social science" rather than "liberal arts". I was under the impression that you attend a "liberal arts" university, which teaches in a particular style -- broad areas of study, requirements like English / cultural understanding / &c. -- and that you can major in whatever the school offers. I attended a "liberal arts" university and got a degree in Physics.

Generally, I think Irish Caesar is right:



Cleo

Colleges teach cultural understanding? Who's wasting their money at this institution?

 

[I'm Cleo!]

Merkinball,

You know what I mean, right? At "liberal arts" schools, students have a particular requirement to take "non-western" courses, like foreign languages, comparative religion, or things like Asian or African history. Maybe some fine arts requirements, like Art History. The particular liberal arts school I attended also had science requirements for non-science majors, which are just as much a part of "liberal arts" (traditionally understood) as chemistry majors having to take two semesters of history.

Cleo

 

[GoodGame]

Basically you are correct.
It stems mostly from the original universities which were basically keeping alive education from the classical era. See the courses at the front of this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts

Being a Sociology or English/Education major wouldn't classify one as Liberal Arts in my opinion.

Modern bias against Liberal Arts isn't just tech nerds versus english and sociology majors, it's more about people wanting to make big bucks right out of college (e.g. engineering, financial management) because of the incredible tuition costs. And also because a lot of people have to settle for community college or military education because of personal finances while there is a drive to get more and more of the population through some kind of secondary schooling.

I myself did get to spend about a year at a liberal arts college and found it enlightening, but was gladder that I left it to complete some sciences degree. It's definitely not for everyone.

Isn't the term "liberal arts" being somewhat misused here? Basically, people mean "humanities / social science" rather than "liberal arts". I was under the impression that you attend a "liberal arts" university, which teaches in a particular style -- broad areas of study, requirements like English / cultural understanding / &c. -- and that you can major in whatever the school offers. I attended a "liberal arts" university and got a degree in Physics.
Cleo

 

[Kyriakos]

Academic career would seem to be the more prestigious path for such a degree.

 

[Archbob]

That depends totally on the school and the institution. For large state universities, there are liberal arts programs that are more selective than their engineering or business schools.

I'm saying in general, most of the Univerisites I've looked at had higher GPA to get into the B-school that to get into LAS(Language,arts, sciences).