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How is it that you think that engineering, accounting, and business are very poor degree programs in isolation?
Because they provide very poor general educations, they are essentially trade programs that masquerade as university educations.
Now, in terms of getting a reasonably paid career after you finish them? They are alright.
Quote:
Originally Posted by texas69
i just dont see how people can major in something so general and expect a job. I was just watching a show on mtv and one girl said she was a philosphy major and i cringed. i started to think..what is she going to do with that??
People don't major in things like Philosophy expecting a plush job after graduation, they major in it because they have an interest in it. But the general skills learned by pursuing such a degree are applicable to numerous careers, you just have to adapt to them.
Its funny that people are so hard on Philosophy, yet not with Mathematics. The two degree programs are very similar, the latter is just more formal than the former. Mathematicians, like Philosophers, have no direct employment opportunities as well, yet people with either degree do well income wise.
This is actually a very simple discussion. You contend that engineering is an inflexible degree because it is too narrow. These are my responses:
1. You contend that exposure to logic and other areas in math, the sciences, and philosophy is critical to professional success absent direct vocational skills. But you never prove this to be true. You cite no empirical research and provide no analytical warrants.
Now, I'm aware that there is a lot of uncertainty in this area and I don't expect you to provide a fully rigorous explanation. But there is literally no way for you to win this argument if you can't explain the effect of general courses because you need to do so in order to show that engineers don't get enough of them. You can't just say that you don't know how much is needed but you do know engineers don't get enough. Justice Stewart may know porn when he sees it, but that kind of glib explanation will not suffice in this situation.
2. All degrees - at least in the US - involve some unrelated courses, and all people have the choice to focus on other things outside of school. Thus, the ideal engineer can access any benefits you describe. And engineering is the degree that offers the most flexibility (accounting is another contender) provided that the engineer makes the right choices.
Obviously, a true double-major isn't applicable here. But a major plus some additional study is, and there's no denying that an engineering major provides unique benefits solely as a result of the accredited degree that will never be available to someone with another major.
3. Given the above, I challenged you to prove that on average engineers have poor career flexibility compared to philosophy grads. And this is the truly critical point: I don't need to prove the converse. My contention is simply that a smart and motivated student can access the most career flexibility with an engineering major. You are the only one who has to prove anything about what the average student in a program does. And you need to answer all of my other points in order to do so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
I didn't ignore anything, your "data point" doesn't provide any information here. To derive any information from it you'd have to know the type of corporation the ex-engineers are employed at, most corporations are executive from within so its only natural for some engineers to pop-up in executive positions in firms that are strongly associated with engineering. This says little about how engineers, on average, do when they try to apply for management and/or executive positions.
Furthermore, even with the above information, you still only know about programs ~30 years ago and not today. Much has changed.
Right and I've already stated this, namely, that some managers and executives in engineering oriented corporations are likely to be ex-engineers since corporations often hire within. Again, this tells you nothing about how engineers fair in general in management and executive positions.
You've still missed the mark. I'll bold it this time: The study I reference looked at S&P 500 companies. The S&P 500 is specifically designed to track the largest companies representative of all the industries in the US economy. If the US economy is so related to engineering, that actually supports my argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
You seem to be pretending as if I've stated that engineers (as individuals) can never go into management, but that is silly, instead I've stated that engineers due to the narrowness of their education will have a difficult time outside of engineering absent additional education. Furthermore, I've suggested that due to the time requirements of engineering programs few engineering undergrads end up doing much outside of their degree program, there just isn't time.
But you have no proof for this statement. The only empirical evidence available - the Spencer Stuart study of top CEOs - implies exactly the opposite conclusion.
Regarding time, there usually is room in an engineering program for a few courses not directly related. And because you've never proven exactly how much generalization is necessary to yield benefits, you can't prove that this isn't enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
Engineering programs don't even attempt to teach logic, mathematics, science, etc so how exactly would one come out of an Engineering program with a solid understanding of these topics, in particular, the underlying methodologies employed by them? Do they learn it via osmosis from the mere existence of the other departments on the campus?
A graduate from a good Philosophy program will usually walk away with a good understanding of 2-3 of the topics I mentioned, an engineering student will walk away with a good understanding of none of them.
Please list "a good Philosophy program" so I can look at the curriculum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
By their existence in numerous fields, Philosophy students have no nature career paths yet they find reasonable employment in a variety of industries.
Fine. But that says nothing about how philosophy students do relative to engineers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
This makes no sense, the flexibility of the degree depends entirely on the underlying skills developed by the programs, not by the existence of jobs that explicitly require the degree.
Again, your argument seems to be that Engineering is "more flexible" because they can get the engineering jobs and if trained in other things they could get other jobs as well. This makes no sense, what you're really talking about is a double major. Whether you spend the time in school learning or outside of school is immaterial.
In terms of data, I never intended to support by position with "data", I know of no study that explicitly looks at what I'm talking about, to give you data I'd have to do the study myself.
It doesn't really matter to me if engineering is more narrowly focused. The fact remains there are way more jobs in engineering that pay well and a philosophy major can NEVER become an engineer. Philosophy majors I know are frustrated with the companies recruiting at school. Broadcom wants electrical engineers, JPMorgan Chase wants accountants/econ/finance majors, Allergan wants chemistry/biology students or bio/chem engineers, State Farm Insurance wants mathematics/actuarial/econ majors, etc... The constant theme is employers want students that know how to CREATE things or HANDLE MONEY. Philosophy majors know how to ponder and be creative, which is why they usually end up trying to go to law school, go to grad school for a more technical degree, go into marketing, go into sales, or go into journalism.
In my opinion an under-grad engineering degree and an MBA is a great combination. You will be very desirable to many companies because the fact is, many companies have engineering.
I'd like a list of what philsophy majors can do, that an engineering degree CANNOT do due to their degree. You don't NEED a philosophy or any other liberal arts degree to be a journalist for example. There are journalists that didn't even go to college out there. A well rounded engineer could also be a great writer for a newspaper for example. However, a philosophy majors can't walk in and try to be a nuclear engineer.
For example, I can't think of jobs that specifically say, "We are interested in a philosophy major" on the job board. Usually philosophy majors just apply to jobs that say, "College degree required." Techinically, an engineer could apply to that as well since it is in fact a college degree. However a philosophy major cannot apply to the countless jobs that say, "Finance major required or Electircal engineering degree required."
Some random careers a philosophy major cannot go into just with their degree:
1.) Medical research, pharmaceuticals (unless working in sales)
2.) Finance (Unless insurance sales)
3.) Accounting
4.) Engineering
5.) Computer Science
This is actually a very simple discussion. You contend that engineering is an inflexible degree because it is too narrow. These are my responses:
1. You contend that exposure to logic and other areas in math, the sciences, and philosophy is critical to professional success absent direct vocational skills. But you never prove this to be true. You cite no empirical research and provide no analytical warrants.
Now, I'm aware that there is a lot of uncertainty in this area and I don't expect you to provide a fully rigorous explanation. But there is literally no way for you to win this argument if you can't explain the effect of general courses because you need to do so in order to show that engineers don't get enough of them. You can't just say that you don't know how much is needed but you do know engineers don't get enough. Justice Stewart may know porn when he sees it, but that kind of glib explanation will not suffice in this situation.
2. All degrees - at least in the US - involve some unrelated courses, and all people have the choice to focus on other things outside of school. Thus, the ideal engineer can access any benefits you describe. And engineering is the degree that offers the most flexibility (accounting is another contender) provided that the engineer makes the right choices.
Obviously, a true double-major isn't applicable here. But a major plus some additional study is, and there's no denying that an engineering major provides unique benefits solely as a result of the accredited degree that will never be available to someone with another major.
3. Given the above, I challenged you to prove that on average engineers have poor career flexibility compared to philosophy grads. And this is the truly critical point: I don't need to prove the converse. My contention is simply that a smart and motivated student can access the most career flexibility with an engineering major. You are the only one who has to prove anything about what the average student in a program does. And you need to answer all of my other points in order to do so.
You've still missed the mark. I'll bold it this time: The study I reference looked at S&P 500 companies. The S&P 500 is specifically designed to track the largest companies representative of all the industries in the US economy. If the US economy is so related to engineering, that actually supports my argument.
But you have no proof for this statement. The only empirical evidence available - the Spencer Stuart study of top CEOs - implies exactly the opposite conclusion.
Regarding time, there usually is room in an engineering program for a few courses not directly related. And because you've never proven exactly how much generalization is necessary to yield benefits, you can't prove that this isn't enough.
Please list "a good Philosophy program" so I can look at the curriculum.
Fine. But that says nothing about how philosophy students do relative to engineers.
See my overview up top.
You can't possibly be proud of that stuffy, pedantic post, can you?
You can't possibly be proud of that stuffy, pedantic post, can you?
Posting on anonymous message boards isn't a big part of what determines my self-worth. I'm only "proud" of posts that help someone with a problem, which was never going to happen in this thread. So probably not.
On the other hand, I'll stand by every word of it.
1. You contend that exposure to logic and other areas in math, the sciences, and philosophy is critical to professional success absent direct vocational skills. But you never prove this to be true. You cite no empirical research and provide no analytical warrants.
2. All degrees - at least in the US - involve some unrelated courses, and all people have the choice to focus on other things outside of school. Thus, the ideal engineer can access any benefits you describe. And engineering is the degree that offers the most flexibility (accounting is another contender) provided that the engineer makes the right choices.
3. Given the above, I challenged you to prove that on average engineers have poor career flexibility compared to philosophy grads.
1.) I never suggested I "proved this to be true", I made claims and gave explanations for the claims. This is a forum, I have no intention of proving my assertions with research.
2.) The fact that an engineer can further his/her education says nothing about the flexibility of an engineering education in itself which is what my claims are about. Anybody can further there education at any point if they decide.
3.) No thanks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by barney_rubble
And this is the truly critical point: I don't need to prove the converse. My contention is simply that a smart and motivated student can access the most career flexibility with an engineering major.
This is the critical fallacy in your thinking, your claim is not the "default position" here, you are making a positive claim that needs to be supported just as mine would.
Quote:
Originally Posted by barney_rubble
The study I reference looked at S&P 500 companies. The S&P 500 is specifically designed to track the largest companies representative of all the industries in the US economy. If the US economy is so related to engineering, that actually supports my argument.
The S&P 500 is not a random sample of corporations, hence using it as such makes no sense whatsoever. Secondly, the US economy is not "so related" to engineering, engineering is an important aspect of the US economy but it in no sense represents the majority of economic activity.
The information you cited tells us absolutely nothing about the topic, its a non-random sample of corporations looking at a single (and very unique) position. Large corporations have hundreds of management and executive positions, looking at one position makes no sense. To make matters worse, its all backwards looking by 30 years or so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by barney_rubble
Please list "a good Philosophy program" so I can look at the curriculum.
Anyhow, I'm not sure why you think I'm some how obligated to "prove" my assertions to you, I really don't care what you think nor am I trying to "win an argument". I made an assertion and I provided an explanation of what I meant, nothing more nothing less. If you are aware of any study that addresses these issues, I'd love to see them, but positing a study that can't even in principle provide information on the topic only demonstrates a poor understanding of logic.
1.) I never suggested I "proved this to be true", I made claims and gave explanations for the claims. This is a forum, I have no intention of proving my assertions with research.
2.) The fact that an engineer can further his/her education says nothing about the flexibility of an engineering education in itself which is what my claims are about. Anybody can further there education at any point if they decide.
3.) No thanks.
You don't have to prove anything to anyone if you don't want to. But, as you say, this is an online forum. We are anonymous. Nobody really cares about our opinions. We simply have a disagreement, and I have done my best to explain why I believe your position is incorrect. If you are satisfied with the arguments you have put forward, that's your call. I personally think they need more warrants in order to be persuasive, and I've said so. End of story.
My reasoning is that the value of any education is going to be totally dependent on what the student does with it. Rather than continuing to go in circles, for the sake of debate I will temporarily grant that the Stanford program you mention might teach a student more about flexibility than a standard engineering program. But I think it's ultimately quite clear that a student with only one degree will have the most potential flexibility if that degree is in engineering. I absolutely agree with you that it would be great to have more logic taught in engineering programs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
This is the critical fallacy in your thinking, your claim is not the "default position" here, you are making a positive claim that needs to be supported just as mine would.
My positive claim relates to what is possible, not to what is done most frequently or on average or by default.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
The S&P 500 is not a random sample of corporations, hence using it as such makes no sense whatsoever. Secondly, the US economy is not "so related" to engineering, engineering is an important aspect of the US economy but it in no sense represents the majority of economic activity.
The information you cited tells as absolutely nothing about the topic, its a non-random sample of corporations looking at a single (and very unique) position. Large corporations have hundreds of management and executive positions, looking at one position makes no sense. To make matters worse, its all backwards looking by 30 years or so....
The S&P 500 is made up of large corporations from all major sectors of the economy. I only said that the US economy is related to engineering because of your argument that the S&P 500 has many engineering-related firms.
I was following your logic here. If engineers become CEOs because they are at engineering companies and move into management, either every engineer who attempts this becomes a CEO or there are other engineers lower down in management working their way up.
The fact remains there are way more jobs in engineering that pay well and a philosophy major can NEVER become an engineer.
This depends what you mean by "engineer", some engineering careers have formal requires and a degree is required but many don't and you will find Philosophy folks in them (though, by no means in large numbers).
For example, I can't think of jobs that specifically say, "We are interested in a philosophy major" on the job board. Usually philosophy majors just apply to jobs that say, "College degree required."
Yep, not many jobs that explicitly mention Philosophy degrees, on the other hand there are tons of jobs that require strong (abstract) analytic abilities and Philosophy provides the strongest training in such.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coo77
Some random careers a philosophy major cannot go into just with their degree.
You are wrong about all of these, I know Philosophers in each of the the things you mentioned. In fact, Philosophy is heavily involved in 3 of them! The last one is especially ironic as computer science evolved out of Philosophy and Mathematics.
So I just got off the phone with one of my friends and I tried to give him the best advice that I could. He got his degree in french with a business minor. While the minor is good, he doesnt want to teach. So what is he doing right now? He works at a major retailer as a cashier. I also have another friend that has a degree in history that is also working as a cashier. I feel bad because i have friends with no degrees that work in IT and make way more than them. It seems that liberal arts and BA degrees are a bad idea. What do you guys think? My friend with the french degree wants to get his masters in business but in france and the other is undecided between a masters in spanish/history or a masters in business. Both have admitted to me that they are bad in math though. So is it just me or should BA degrees in the arts be avoided?
I have a BA in History and make six-figures as a senior buyer for a major US retailer. I'm in my early 30's. Most of my friends were also liberal arts or studio/performing arts majors (ranging from Art History to Radio & TV to Spanish to Economics and English) and are also making similar or better incomes in a wide range of careers. Some went to grad school, others didn't and do just fine. Some of their careers are non-profit administration, attorney, consultant (business, media, education & government), public policy work for US State Department, Emmy-winning screenwriter, urban developer/ city planning, outside sales/ sales management, investment banker, etc.
Employment and success comes from much, much more than just getting a diploma. I recruit for my company and look for two key things- a track record of leadership (someone who is respected by & can influence/direct both peers and subordinates) and passion for my business/industry. I rarely notice what the degree is in, just check to make sure gpa is good (3.0+).
But I think it's ultimately quite clear that a student with only one degree will have the most potential flexibility if that degree is in engineering.
Yes, that is your position and your reasoning for it makes no sense at all. You think the engineering degree is more flexible because an engineering graduate can further his/her education in other topics, but that is entirely vacuous, this holds for any major.
I really don't know what you're thinking, it seems to be that you believe Philosophy (and its underlying skills) can be learned by reading a few books, where as Engineering is something that takes serious study. But that is far from the case, if the Engineer decides in the future to learn Philosophy he/she will have to spend the same time on the subject that he/she would have if they picked it as a major.
The above is the critical issue, if an Engineer decides to study another topic they will start at home-base. That is, their engineering background will help them learn the other topics. On the other hand, the Philosophy can start many things on 1st, 2nd, etc base. This is precisely the sense that degrees like Philosophy are more flexible, they enable people to more rapidly learn a large class of additional fields because they have already developed the underlying skills required by them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by barney_rubble
The S&P 500 is made up of large corporations from all major sectors of the economy.
And yet, its not a random sample, you can't make generalizes from non-random samples. But the more serious issue is that its only looking at CEOs which is a very unique position in a corporation. I mean c'mon, I made a claim about a large class of careers, only one of which was executives, and you are trying to use statistics from what amounts to around .001% of executives...
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