Liberal Arts. A Defense. (bachelor's, counseling, internships, geology)
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It is obvious that, in common parlance, most people equate liberal arts with the humanities. Or they put them in the same category of "arts and humanities."
Science and math are more closely associated with engineering and technology. They used to be called engineering and the hard sciences. Hence, a reason the STEM acronym has caught on.
This is more or less what I am seeing today, the Liberal arts are the history, the English, the psychology, sociology etc... whilst the engineering, nursing, mathematics, computer science falls under the STEM label. Now as to whether or not the previous mentioned classification/reasoning is correct, I have no idea.
This is more or less what I am seeing today, the Liberal arts are the history, the English, the psychology, sociology etc... whilst the engineering, nursing, mathematics, computer science falls under the STEM label. Now as to whether or not the previous mentioned classification/reasoning is correct, I have no idea.
A few weeks ago, I had to explain to my students how HIV spreads because most of them had misconceptions. There are a lot of seemingly common sense things most people don't know. A few times before, I have posted many definitions from dictionaries and university websites that include mathematics and the natural sciences as liberal arts. I'm not going to post them again because it obviously does no good. People are going to believe what they want to believe. I'll just say this: the liberal arts are called liberal arts because they are the subjects free people classically studied in Western Civilization. Anything that counts toward general education requirements at most schools is usually a liberal art. These subjects are inherently theoretical even though they can be used for practical purposes. Engineering and information technology are applied subjects. I wouldn't even classify nursing as STEM; it's healthcare. Interestingly, a couple of government agencies have classified many of the social sciences as STEM, but do not include healthcare degrees made for practitioners. They only include things like medical science.
There is more to computer science than mathematics. Physics is very math-heavy, but it's not mathematics.
Physics uses math to describe the physical world. Computer science IS math. What part of computer science would you not consider a branch of mathematics?
There's nothing wrong with liberal arts degrees per se. The problem is employers increasingly want specialized knowledge and they don't view liberal arts degrees that favorably. That has essentially made liberal arts degrees a luxury that middle class people can't afford.
Physics uses math to describe the physical world. Computer science IS math. What part of computer science would you not consider a branch of mathematics?
I have a computer science degree. A significant portion of the course load, and the actual topic, has nothing to do with math. Just a few examples:
Computer architecture - the Von Neumann machine - is all about stored instructions computing machines. It is not math though it was a solution to computation problems
Databases - the relationship between data elements, and how it is stored and accessed
I/O - the transmission of data
The business of computer programming today, such as what people at Microsoft, Apple, or Google do, is not about math at all.
The problem with the article above is that the idea of college paying off has become a self fulfilling prophecy. Employers want to see college because it's easier for them to weed out job applicants. And it's hard to say whether the degree is getting them the higher pay or whether many of these students would have done well without the degree.
I have a computer science degree. A significant portion of the course load, and the actual topic, has nothing to do with math. Just a few examples:
Computer architecture - the Von Neumann machine - is all about stored instructions computing machines. It is not math though it was a solution to computation problems
Databases - the relationship between data elements, and how it is stored and accessed
All these are math. The Von Neumann machine is a model of computation. The relational model is a model of data management. We build physical machines which approximate these models, as opposed to the sciences where we build models to approximate physical reality.
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I/O - the transmission of data
If you're talking about the physical way it gets done, you're getting into engineering, but I don't recall that being a part of the computer science curriculum.
Quote:
The business of computer programming today, such as what people at Microsoft, Apple, or Google do, is not about math at all.
Which is why Microsoft, Apple, or Google call their programmers "developers" and "engineers" rather than "computer scientists". They all have computer scientists doing research also however.
There's nothing wrong with liberal arts degrees per se. The problem is employers increasingly want specialized knowledge and they don't view liberal arts degrees that favorably. That has essentially made liberal arts degrees a luxury that middle class people can't afford.
A liberal arts degree is an education. Education is not a "luxury". You have it all wrong.
There's nothing wrong with liberal arts degrees per se. The problem is employers increasingly want specialized knowledge and they don't view liberal arts degrees that favorably. That has essentially made liberal arts degrees a luxury that middle class people can't afford.
This simply isn't true. Employers do look for people with LA degrees, and those degrees can support a family quite well. Here's the list Lafleur posted a few pages back; a partial list of jobs LA majors are qualified for:
There's sales, logistics, purchasing, contracts, administration, supply chain management, customer service, human resources, data analytics, project management, inventory control, warehouse management, marketing, paralegal, technical writing, public relations just to name a few.
I have a relative who got a BA a few years ago with a focus on sales. He now owns a home in the Bay Area and is supporting a family of 3, including a SAHM looking after a new baby. I know a guy who's some kind of special events coordinator outside of WA DC. He's raised 2 kids in a high-end home with a swimming pool on 2 acres with his lowly LA degree. One woman I know was a graphic designer, which she said was unbelievably lucrative, working in the PR department of a local hospital. It allowed her to buy a house and raise a family in the Seattle area as a single mom most of the time, and send her kids to college. Others become area specialists and grants administrators at non-profits and charitable foundations working domestically and around the world. These jobs pay well enough for people to live in the Bay Area and NYC.
These aren't isolated cases. Do some people with a liberal arts degree have a harder time, and settle for working as admin assistants? Sure. And if many more people went into STEM, who would do those office jobs? Do all STEM Majors hit it big? Is that a field that guarantees some kind of 6-figure salary? IDK, you tell me. I know quite a few guys who majored in engineering who have never used their engineering degrees. They went into grad school in other fields, or got accounting training.
There's sales, logistics, purchasing, contracts, administration, supply chain management, customer service, human resources, data analytics, project management, inventory control, warehouse management, marketing, paralegal, technical writing, public relations just to name a few.
That's just business careers, which are, of course, very important. But there also careers - many of them quite lucrative - in law, government, teaching, educational administration, nonprofit organizations, social services. Many of these require a graduate degree, but a liberal arts undergraduate degree is the best preparation for that kind of graduate work.
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