Maths major, and it was great. Easiest major -- no books to read, no papers to write, just pass the tests every week *and* remember everything from every maths course I ever took. HOWEVER, chemistry courses got me a job, and my philosophy courses were essential to make sense of it all. I also got a MA in music composition.
Great video! My major in College that I graduated with was Kinesiology. I feel it was beneficial knowledge wise, but career wise in the real world of jobs, no one cared that I had a degree haha and I discovered that it was based off personality and presentation.
Great vid… my undergrad years were a wild mess I bounced from major to major finally settling on psychology and honestly after watching your vids I can say it was worth it
I was a psychology major and am currently not using it lol. All throughout college though I had a set plan to go to grad school but once I interviewed I had a change of heart. Not sure if it’s worth it yet but I don’t regret it. I appreciate everything I learned and like you said about English I think it keeps my options open
Great points! Liberal arts degrees are fine if you have a reasonable plan. Here is a way you can reduce the risk: Is a liberal arts degree worth it? 1. Technical/ business/math related training- if you minor or add courses in business, math, and/or technology related courses it can help upgrade your resume greatly. Accounting and programming are two great choices. You can break into the business and tech world like this. 2. Professional graduate degrees- JD, MBA, MD, etc. can help improve you employment prospects. These lead to highly esteemed professions which can be quite lucrative. You can get in with any degree and a liberal arts degree can serve as a stepping stone. For law school and MBA programs you should consider the employment prospects of the program you are enrolling in because they are saturated. 3. Target in demand occupation: there is a myriad of things you can do with a liberal arts degree. You need to target one specific profession and specialize your degree in it. Government, military, and even certain jobs in the business world simply require a bachelors and do not care about what degree you have. Also, if you are aiming to work in your field it can be tonight because creative, and socially conscious, artistic careers are usually hard to get but some may be attainable. 4. Ivy League schools: being a liberal arts major at Harvard is a whole another ball game than at a state u. Sometimes top school might help.
Humanities by its nature are all encompassing. One of the major theme of humanities is to mold an independent thinker. As such they are supposed to be capable to face any challenge as you doing.
Forgive me for the long quotation, but it is relevant (and as a philosophy minor hopefully you will find it interesting): “[T]he exchange of labor power for wages that is required of every worker may be a free contractual relationship in formal terms, with complete parity between the two sides, but in reality, of course, the workers will face hunger and have nothing to live on if they do not enter into the contract, and are thus forced by the objective circumstances to sign the contract far more than is the entrepreneur, who - viewed as an overall class, at least - can generally wait until the worker sees reason, as the saying goes, namely subjective reason, and accepts these terms. If, for a second, you do not take what I am conveying to you as individually as I have presented it but, rather, extrapolate to the conditions of society as a whole, what this means is quite simply that the decisive exchange act, namely the act of exchanging live labor for wages, in fact presupposes the class system; and it is decisively modified and modelled by this class system in such a way that the semblance of freedom for all parties which is created by the legal contract of the wage agreement is, in reality, nothing but that: a semblance… One can witness time and again - assuming one is not persuaded otherwise, against one’s better judgement, by studies in sociology - how, if one is born as a worker, unfreedom persists objectively despite the semblance of levelling and equalization… …every single one of us, can, in spite of everything, also experience this when for example we find ourselves in a job-seeking situation. It will be experienced primarily in the fact that what is expected of us as someone who - please forgive the impolite formulation, but I fully include myself here - has to sell themselves on the market is not what we ourselves would like; that is, we cannot actually realize our own possibilities and talent but must largely follow what is demanded of us. And, on top of that, the ideology is that precisely this is the higher ethos, the only way in which all of us can be drilled to become real members of human society, that this will cure us of our bad and stupid thoughts. Incidentally, it seems characteristic - perhaps I can close with this - of the present situation, especially for intellectual workers, that is, university graduates, assuming they do not become simple officials, but also in a great many other areas - and I think people have not really thought about this - that, despite the oft-cited lack of staff, the relationship between supply and demand does not work. What I mean is that, while one side is constantly whining about a lack of staff, what one finds on the other side is that highly qualified people in all sorts of fields, as soon as they really want to get in, cannot do so and suddenly, to their surprise, find the door firmly shut. I would think that this fact shows how the entire economic situation in which we live, and the entire balance of supply and demand we are dealing with, that this has a synthetic element to it, an element of being imposed from above, and that it does not actually result spontaneously. And I think that essentially, despite this prosperity, power - also in the sense of calculating changes, of a calculus for the future, leaving aside the immediate situation - expresses itself in the fact that, in this society, we all potentially experience ourselves as superfluous in terms of our work, that we live our lives only by the grace of society, one might say, even if society and we ourselves want us to believe that we are living on our own terms, and that this deep sense of superfluity is really at the heart of the general malaise, the need for security and the uncertainty that one can speak of today.” - Theodor Adorno, Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society We are all potentially superfluous in capitalism. This is especially true of humanities majors: the supply is much greater than the demand. I am speaking from my own experience, as a poli sci major (which provided no hard skills for future employment) and with little relevant employment experience. On the other hand, one of my engineering friends is now working a retail job at Target. The experience of superfluity is universal. Wishing you luck on your future job search(es).
I think that the humanities (and the arts, which I tend to think of separately) are essential in the 21st century. However, I think that it is necessary to end the siloing of subjects, a là C. P. Snow. Everyone needs history, philosophy, English, etc., even if only a few people will actually major in the subject. To use my own field of maths as an example, The percentage of people taking higher level maths courses in college who end up majoring in the subject is actually quite small. Most of the students are physics, biology, engineering and economics students. Society would benefit if there were more art history and romance language majors who knew a bit about modern maths. At the same time, it is a good idea for Computer science and statisticians to know about how real languages work. To give one example, it is almost axiomatic that a 'message' consisting of random numbers has the highest possible information content. This made sense in the context of Signal processing at AT&T, but it is entirely wrong in the context of a real language, where a random sequence has zero information content. Another example is the way people think that ChatGPT can write poetry because it can construct a Haiku. It would be very useful for an actual poet to explain the difference between poetry and doggerel in terms that a computer scientist can understand. If higher education is not to become just another layer of 'training'. we need to re-integrate the curriculum. Every department has something to offer to every student, even if only a few students will make a career out of the field. It may be romantic of me, but I think that at one time, college was primarily an intellectual adventure, not at trade school. This is what I think it should be. Right now, there are many practical obstacles -- exorbitant tuition, pervading sexism and racism, and (financial) elitism -- that need to be tackled. There is also the tendency in business to require a college degree for a position that does not need one, forcing a lot of people who really are not interested to pursue a degree (and accumulate debt) when in reality, they can do just fine in the job (and have an excellent prospect of advancement) without a BA or BS. my 2¢.
I wanted to be a teacher, but I never finished my degree or took any English classes beyond what was required. Now I'm a professional writer, and looking back on the classes I did take, I think teachers and peers tend to review writing much more harshly than do professional editors, so the level of mental toughness you need to deal with that is not something you would actually need in real life.
I really feel like my BA in English is useless by itself, I'm hoping to pursue a Masters in education so I can use my degree. I agree though I did really enjoy my undergrad.
Let me know what your major was in college & whether or not you thought it was worth it!
Maths major, and it was great. Easiest major -- no books to read, no papers to write, just pass the tests every week *and* remember everything from every maths course I ever took. HOWEVER, chemistry courses got me a job, and my philosophy courses were essential to make sense of it all. I also got a MA in music composition.
Great video! My major in College that I graduated with was Kinesiology. I feel it was beneficial knowledge wise, but career wise in the real world of jobs, no one cared that I had a degree haha and I discovered that it was based off personality and presentation.
Great vid… my undergrad years were a wild mess I bounced from major to major finally settling on psychology and honestly after watching your vids I can say it was worth it
I was a psychology major and am currently not using it lol. All throughout college though I had a set plan to go to grad school but once I interviewed I had a change of heart. Not sure if it’s worth it yet but I don’t regret it. I appreciate everything I learned and like you said about English I think it keeps my options open
Great points! Liberal arts degrees are fine if you have a reasonable plan. Here is a way you can reduce the risk:
Is a liberal arts degree worth it?
1. Technical/ business/math related training- if you minor or add courses in business, math, and/or technology related courses it can help upgrade your resume greatly. Accounting and programming are two great choices. You can break into the business and tech world like this.
2. Professional graduate degrees- JD, MBA, MD, etc. can help improve you employment prospects. These lead to highly esteemed professions which can be quite lucrative. You can get in with any degree and a liberal arts degree can serve as a stepping stone. For law school and MBA programs you should consider the employment prospects of the program you are enrolling in because they are saturated.
3. Target in demand occupation: there is a myriad of things you can do with a liberal arts degree. You need to target one specific profession and specialize your degree in it. Government, military, and even certain jobs in the business world simply require a bachelors and do not care about what degree you have. Also, if you are aiming to work in your field it can be tonight because creative, and socially conscious, artistic careers are usually hard to get but some may be attainable.
4. Ivy League schools: being a liberal arts major at Harvard is a whole another ball game than at a state u. Sometimes top school might help.
Majored in civil engineering. So glad I did. It's flexible. Once you get professionally licensed, finding a job is a cinch.
Humanities by its nature are all encompassing. One of the major theme of humanities is to mold an independent thinker. As such they are supposed to be capable to face any challenge as you doing.
Forgive me for the long quotation, but it is relevant (and as a philosophy minor hopefully you will find it interesting):
“[T]he exchange of labor power for wages that is required of every worker may be a free contractual relationship in formal terms, with complete parity between the two sides, but in reality, of course, the workers will face hunger and have nothing to live on if they do not enter into the contract, and are thus forced by the objective circumstances to sign the contract far more than is the entrepreneur, who - viewed as an overall class, at least - can generally wait until the worker sees reason, as the saying goes, namely subjective reason, and accepts these terms. If, for a second, you do not take what I am conveying to you as individually as I have presented it but, rather, extrapolate to the conditions of society as a whole, what this means is quite simply that the decisive exchange act, namely the act of exchanging live labor for wages, in fact presupposes the class system; and it is decisively modified and modelled by this class system in such a way that the semblance of freedom for all parties which is created by the legal contract of the wage agreement is, in reality, nothing but that: a semblance…
One can witness time and again - assuming one is not persuaded otherwise, against one’s better judgement, by studies in sociology - how, if one is born as a worker, unfreedom persists objectively despite the semblance of levelling and equalization…
…every single one of us, can, in spite of everything, also experience this when for example we find ourselves in a job-seeking situation. It will be experienced primarily in the fact that what is expected of us as someone who - please forgive the impolite formulation, but I fully include myself here - has to sell themselves on the market is not what we ourselves would like; that is, we cannot actually realize our own possibilities and talent but must largely follow what is demanded of us. And, on top of that, the ideology is that precisely this is the higher ethos, the only way in which all of us can be drilled to become real members of human society, that this will cure us of our bad and stupid thoughts. Incidentally, it seems characteristic - perhaps I can close with this - of the present situation, especially for intellectual workers, that is, university graduates, assuming they do not become simple officials, but also in a great many other areas - and I think people have not really thought about this - that, despite the oft-cited lack of staff, the relationship between supply and demand does not work. What I mean is that, while one side is constantly whining about a lack of staff, what one finds on the other side is that highly qualified people in all sorts of fields, as soon as they really want to get in, cannot do so and suddenly, to their surprise, find the door firmly shut. I would think that this fact shows how the entire economic situation in which we live, and the entire balance of supply and demand we are dealing with, that this has a synthetic element to it, an element of being imposed from above, and that it does not actually result spontaneously. And I think that essentially, despite this prosperity, power - also in the sense of calculating changes, of a calculus for the future, leaving aside the immediate situation - expresses itself in the fact that, in this society, we all potentially experience ourselves as superfluous in terms of our work, that we live our lives only by the grace of society, one might say, even if society and we ourselves want us to believe that we are living on our own terms, and that this deep sense of superfluity is really at the heart of the general malaise, the need for security and the uncertainty that one can speak of today.” - Theodor Adorno, Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society
We are all potentially superfluous in capitalism. This is especially true of humanities majors: the supply is much greater than the demand. I am speaking from my own experience, as a poli sci major (which provided no hard skills for future employment) and with little relevant employment experience. On the other hand, one of my engineering friends is now working a retail job at Target. The experience of superfluity is universal. Wishing you luck on your future job search(es).
I think that the humanities (and the arts, which I tend to think of separately) are essential in the 21st century. However, I think that it is necessary to end the siloing of subjects, a là C. P. Snow. Everyone needs history, philosophy, English, etc., even if only a few people will actually major in the subject. To use my own field of maths as an example, The percentage of people taking higher level maths courses in college who end up majoring in the subject is actually quite small. Most of the students are physics, biology, engineering and economics students. Society would benefit if there were more art history and romance language majors who knew a bit about modern maths.
At the same time, it is a good idea for Computer science and statisticians to know about how real languages work. To give one example, it is almost axiomatic that a 'message' consisting of random numbers has the highest possible information content. This made sense in the context of Signal processing at AT&T, but it is entirely wrong in the context of a real language, where a random sequence has zero information content.
Another example is the way people think that ChatGPT can write poetry because it can construct a Haiku. It would be very useful for an actual poet to explain the difference between poetry and doggerel in terms that a computer scientist can understand.
If higher education is not to become just another layer of 'training'. we need to re-integrate the curriculum. Every department has something to offer to every student, even if only a few students will make a career out of the field.
It may be romantic of me, but I think that at one time, college was primarily an intellectual adventure, not at trade school. This is what I think it should be. Right now, there are many practical obstacles -- exorbitant tuition, pervading sexism and racism, and (financial) elitism -- that need to be tackled. There is also the tendency in business to require a college degree for a position that does not need one, forcing a lot of people who really are not interested to pursue a degree (and accumulate debt) when in reality, they can do just fine in the job (and have an excellent prospect of advancement) without a BA or BS.
my 2¢.
I wanted to be a teacher, but I never finished my degree or took any English classes beyond what was required. Now I'm a professional writer, and looking back on the classes I did take, I think teachers and peers tend to review writing much more harshly than do professional editors, so the level of mental toughness you need to deal with that is not something you would actually need in real life.
My major was computer science and game programming. The only thing I benefited from getting this degree was building my network. Lol.
Great video! Thank you! ☺️☺️☺️
I got a arts degree and used it to get into my local state university because my high school was basically worthless to me.
Philosophy. I loved it and don't regret it!
I really feel like my BA in English is useless by itself, I'm hoping to pursue a Masters in education so I can use my degree. I agree though I did really enjoy my undergrad.
Me, studying biological anthropology: I am both… or am I none?
Read the *Two Cultures* essay by C P Snow?