The Venus de Milo, sculpted between 130 and 100 B.C., stands armless in the Louvre.
The well-intentioned handwringing over what to do about the slow asphyxiation of the traditional American humanities education continues over at Salon.com, where novelist Kim Brooks laments the failure of liberal arts colleges to prepare students for professionally and financially rewarding careers. Some might argue, however, that the real failure belongs to the crafters of broken domestic economic policy, not professors, artists and intellectuals.
“Why do even the best colleges fail so often at preparing kids for the world?” Brooks asks. That the “real” world is currently managed by men and women who have no visible concern for the welfare of the academy or the life of the mind and are principally and disastrously motivated by profit does not seem to factor large in her search for an answer. —ARK
Kim Brooks at Salon:
The answer, at least according to a recent article in the New York Times, is rather bleak. Employment rates for college graduates have declined steeply in the last two years, and perhaps even more disheartening, those who find jobs are more likely to be steaming lattes or walking dogs than doing anything even peripherally related to their college curriculum. While the scale and severity of this post-graduation letdown may be an unavoidable consequence of an awful recession, I do wonder if all those lofty institutions of higher learning, with their noble-sounding mission statements and soft-focused brochure photos of campus greens, may be glossing over the serious, at-times-crippling obstacles a B.A. holder must overcome to achieve professional and financial stability. I’m not asking if a college education has inherent value, if it makes students more thoughtful, more informed, more enlightened and critical-minded human beings. These are all interesting questions that don’t pay the rent. What I’m asking is far more banal and far more pressing. What I’m asking is: Why do even the best colleges fail so often at preparing kids for the world?
When I earned my diploma from the University of Virginia in the spring of 2000, it never occurred to me before my senior year to worry too seriously about my post-graduation prospects. Indeed, most of my professors, advisors and mentors reinforced this complacency. I was smart, they told me. I’d spent four years at a rigorous institution honing my writing, research and critical-thinking skills. I’d written an impressive senior thesis, gathered recommendations from professors, completed summer internships in various journalistic endeavors. They had no doubt at all that I would land on my feet. And I did (kind of), about a decade after graduating.
... Of course, there are certainly plenty of B.A. holders out there who, wielding the magic combination of competency, credentials and luck, are able to land themselves a respectable, entry-level job that requires neither name tag nor apron. But for every person I know who parlayed a degree in English or anthropology into a career-track gig, I know two others who weren’t so lucky, who, in that awful, post-college year or two or three or four, unemployed and uninsured and uncommitted to any particular field, racked up credit card debt or got married to the wrong person or went to law school for no particular reason or made one of a dozen other time- and money-wasting mistakes.
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Yes it sure is interesting to see the foreign students come here to our great universities and then go back home to get a job with a multinational that is headquartered here- with lower wages there which mean higher profits here for the said multinationals which then pay a pittance in taxes or none at all here.
Now being that I am not as smart or educated as most that post here, can someone tell me if I missed anything?
The universities themselves are not blameless. They are largely inhabited by timid little careerists who care far more about their own hide than they do about social justice, truth or wisdom. There are curricula that are a nauseating waste of money and time: everything from “queer studies” to literary deconstruction to absurd “pomo” classes. Let’s face it: the ranks of tenured professors are full of hacks and swollen with men and women who are terrible teachers.
On the other hand, the complaint that education needs to better accommodate itself to the rigors of the work-world is quite disgusting. Knowledge should not be capital’s “little bitch.” Learning should be divorced from, rather than married to, worldliness. What the world desperately needs and doesn’t have are people who are intelligent, sensitive, and kind, rather than selfish, ignorant, stupid, amoral, Machiavellian, and conformist.
The universities themselves are not blameless. They are largely inhabited by timid little careerists who care far more about their own hide than they do about social justice, truth or wisdom. There are curricula that are a nauseating waste of money and time: everything from “queer studies” to literary deconstruction to absurd “pomo” classes. Let’s face it: the ranks of tenured professors are full of hacks and swollen with men and women who are terrible teachers.
On the other hand, the complaint that education needs to better accommodate itself to the rigors of the work-world is quite disgusting. Knowledge should not be capital’s “little bitch.” Learning should be divorced from, rather than married to, worldliness. What the world desperately needs and doesn’t have are people who are intelligent, sensitive, and kind, rather than selfish, ignorant, stupid, amoral, Machiavellian, materialistic, and conformist.
Part of this recurring and resentful argument over “liberal arts degrees” is popular among people of conservative persuasions, often without college diplomas themselves, and often resentful of those who have attended college for four or more years
IMO it is the word “liberal” that causes automatic resentment, acting as a threat to “conservative values” such as “business,” “practical experience,” “knowledge of the real world,” and “ordinary, everyday common sense values, etc.”
This outcry against “liberal arts” has been increasing recently—that is, within the last 20 years, particularly since worldwide communication presents superficial knowledge of an increasingly threatening world of complicated problems, and since employment among graduates has become increasingly difficult in the last decade.
It is curious that blame falls on liberal arts education rather than on the economic downturn and political mismanagement that has reduced employment opportunities across a broad spectrum of the economy, whether due to “outsourcing” or due to a general economic depression that affects all jobs, not just those for which liberal arts is the traditional preparation.
The humanitarian and eclectic values of the “liberal arts” are self-evident and of long-standing validity—as most people with a liberal arts background would probably attest in spite of any job-finding difficulties they may have experienced. Such studies are not called “the humanities” for nothing, and their apposition to “business” or “economics” or “technical’ or “scientific” majors involves generally agreed- upon understanding of differences in both quality and content. By general agreement, the “liberal” arts are less specific, less precisely defined, broader in concept, less specialized—in brief, freer, more open, less restricted, more free-ranging. It is this very freedom that makes them seem threatening to people who require more structure and confinement for personal security.
I will not be surprised if many commenters jump on this attempt to “explain” this boring controversy, but I did my best. It’s a huge subject—too big for a brief article. But people who write sentences like the one in the main article above: “But for every person I know who parlayed a degree in English or anthropology into a career-track gig,... etc. ” leave a lot to be desired, by way of both content and sentiment, IMO.
Too much emphasis in the States to go to Uni. 95% of the folks actually in uni are not there for the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom. They are there because of family or societal pressure to get a piece of worthless paper in pursuit of a higher earning job in the machine. This will allow the pursuit of all the superficial material goods and false needs that are engrained in their frontal lobes.
Without the burden of a job, we’ll all have more time to read.
Creative souls will always push our vision forward. It was a fallacy to believe
that the masses could rise to the challenge of university. I would be
disheartened by this report, if it were true that “[university] makes students
more thoughtful, more informed, more enlightened and critical-minded human
beings.” But it doesn’t. In my undergrad and grad programs I would look
around and see nothing but drooling mouth breathers check their facebook
updates. Even the profs know what a racket this uni-scam is.
I think we might have more luck if we made University something special again.
Top ten percenters deserve to be there and would serve to challenge each other
in new and exciting ways. We could drop places like Arizona State and FSU off
the map and nobody would know the difference. In fact, everyone else could
learn something useful and start their lives fresh without a mountain of debt.
Yet, it is so easy to decry, and bemoan, the disappearing of humanities education, like an endangered species, that we hopelessly watch become extinct. The price that those unfortunate animals pay for our civilizations growth. But on the other hand, meaning requires connecting the dots. It’s a little like stuffing yourself with vanilla ice cream, while you dream of being thin, but being unable to understand a requirement for action.
College has become a place dedicated to the production of debt slaves, people farmed for the debt they incur while in school. Nothing more. Because the plutocracy has decided to send those students future jobs overseas, while brain washing people into believing that it’s inevitable, and for their own benefit.
Conservatives don’t like to fund any sort of liberal anything, because they consider progressive college professors the enemy; why fund your enemy?
Instead, put them out of work, then it will be more difficult to infect the young, i.e., your future employees, with the peculiar ideas of the left. Peculiar ideas, that used to be called, liberalism. Maybe that’s why liberal studies are no longer called, liberal studies, but instead called Humanities.
So as you watch, your wide screen T.V., and eat your GMO infected junk food, enjoy a sigh, as the jobs continue to go overseas, including jobs that used to go to Doctors, lawyers, & engineers. Your political leaders, won’t do anything about it, because you demand nothing from them, not even a straight answer.
Meaningful jobs requiring creative thinking and problems solving are not plentiful in the ‘real’ world. Schlepping for a paycheck in a rote position that requires accumulation of wealth as its reward is the norm. Even those are scarce now. Now you can schlepp overtime for a paycheck that barely makes ends meet.
When a country has no ideal beyond the accumulation of wealth it suffers from a lack of creative, imaginative, and moral direction. Why, then, should these qualities be respected in the populace?
Bravo, ARK! Your expressed sentiment is
medicine for the worsening illness in our
universities.
The ‘real world’ should be shaped by our
education, our continuous & ongoing learning &
enlightenment - nothing could be more ugly or
non-human than compelling education to
conform to society the way it is & things the
way they are.
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By prisnersdilema, June 20, 2011 at 8:09 am Link to this comment
For you Gerard, and Morongo Bill…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46p-nAkHZG0
Report thisBy morongobill, June 19, 2011 at 11:14 pm Link to this comment
Yes it sure is interesting to see the foreign students come here to our great universities and then go back home to get a job with a multinational that is headquartered here- with lower wages there which mean higher profits here for the said multinationals which then pay a pittance in taxes or none at all here.
Now being that I am not as smart or educated as most that post here, can someone tell me if I missed anything?
Morongobill
Report thisLiberal and unashamedly so.
By MK77, June 19, 2011 at 9:55 pm Link to this comment
The universities themselves are not blameless. They are largely inhabited by timid little careerists who care far more about their own hide than they do about social justice, truth or wisdom. There are curricula that are a nauseating waste of money and time: everything from “queer studies” to literary deconstruction to absurd “pomo” classes. Let’s face it: the ranks of tenured professors are full of hacks and swollen with men and women who are terrible teachers.
On the other hand, the complaint that education needs to better accommodate itself to the rigors of the work-world is quite disgusting. Knowledge should not be capital’s “little bitch.” Learning should be divorced from, rather than married to, worldliness. What the world desperately needs and doesn’t have are people who are intelligent, sensitive, and kind, rather than selfish, ignorant, stupid, amoral, Machiavellian, and conformist.
Report thisBy MK77, June 19, 2011 at 9:52 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The universities themselves are not blameless. They are largely inhabited by timid little careerists who care far more about their own hide than they do about social justice, truth or wisdom. There are curricula that are a nauseating waste of money and time: everything from “queer studies” to literary deconstruction to absurd “pomo” classes. Let’s face it: the ranks of tenured professors are full of hacks and swollen with men and women who are terrible teachers.
On the other hand, the complaint that education needs to better accommodate itself to the rigors of the work-world is quite disgusting. Knowledge should not be capital’s “little bitch.” Learning should be divorced from, rather than married to, worldliness. What the world desperately needs and doesn’t have are people who are intelligent, sensitive, and kind, rather than selfish, ignorant, stupid, amoral, Machiavellian, materialistic, and conformist.
Report thisBy gerard, June 19, 2011 at 9:16 pm Link to this comment
Part of this recurring and resentful argument over “liberal arts degrees” is popular among people of conservative persuasions, often without college diplomas themselves, and often resentful of those who have attended college for four or more years
IMO it is the word “liberal” that causes automatic resentment, acting as a threat to “conservative values” such as “business,” “practical experience,” “knowledge of the real world,” and “ordinary, everyday common sense values, etc.”
This outcry against “liberal arts” has been increasing recently—that is, within the last 20 years, particularly since worldwide communication presents superficial knowledge of an increasingly threatening world of complicated problems, and since employment among graduates has become increasingly difficult in the last decade.
It is curious that blame falls on liberal arts education rather than on the economic downturn and political mismanagement that has reduced employment opportunities across a broad spectrum of the economy, whether due to “outsourcing” or due to a general economic depression that affects all jobs, not just those for which liberal arts is the traditional preparation.
The humanitarian and eclectic values of the “liberal arts” are self-evident and of long-standing validity—as most people with a liberal arts background would probably attest in spite of any job-finding difficulties they may have experienced. Such studies are not called “the humanities” for nothing, and their apposition to “business” or “economics” or “technical’ or “scientific” majors involves generally agreed- upon understanding of differences in both quality and content. By general agreement, the “liberal” arts are less specific, less precisely defined, broader in concept, less specialized—in brief, freer, more open, less restricted, more free-ranging. It is this very freedom that makes them seem threatening to people who require more structure and confinement for personal security.
I will not be surprised if many commenters jump on this attempt to “explain” this boring controversy, but I did my best. It’s a huge subject—too big for a brief article. But people who write sentences like the one in the main article above: “But for every person I know who parlayed a degree in English or anthropology into a career-track gig,... etc. ” leave a lot to be desired, by way of both content and sentiment, IMO.
Report thisBy zonth_zonth, June 19, 2011 at 7:55 pm Link to this comment
Too much emphasis in the States to go to Uni. 95% of the folks actually in uni are not there for the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom. They are there because of family or societal pressure to get a piece of worthless paper in pursuit of a higher earning job in the machine. This will allow the pursuit of all the superficial material goods and false needs that are engrained in their frontal lobes.
Report thisBy thethirdman, June 19, 2011 at 1:19 pm Link to this comment
Without the burden of a job, we’ll all have more time to read.
Creative souls will always push our vision forward. It was a fallacy to believe
that the masses could rise to the challenge of university. I would be
disheartened by this report, if it were true that “[university] makes students
more thoughtful, more informed, more enlightened and critical-minded human
beings.” But it doesn’t. In my undergrad and grad programs I would look
around and see nothing but drooling mouth breathers check their facebook
updates. Even the profs know what a racket this uni-scam is.
I think we might have more luck if we made University something special again.
Report thisTop ten percenters deserve to be there and would serve to challenge each other
in new and exciting ways. We could drop places like Arizona State and FSU off
the map and nobody would know the difference. In fact, everyone else could
learn something useful and start their lives fresh without a mountain of debt.
By prisnersdilema, June 19, 2011 at 12:51 pm Link to this comment
Yet, it is so easy to decry, and bemoan, the disappearing of humanities education, like an endangered species, that we hopelessly watch become extinct. The price that those unfortunate animals pay for our civilizations growth. But on the other hand, meaning requires connecting the dots. It’s a little like stuffing yourself with vanilla ice cream, while you dream of being thin, but being unable to understand a requirement for action.
College has become a place dedicated to the production of debt slaves, people farmed for the debt they incur while in school. Nothing more. Because the plutocracy has decided to send those students future jobs overseas, while brain washing people into believing that it’s inevitable, and for their own benefit.
Conservatives don’t like to fund any sort of liberal anything, because they consider progressive college professors the enemy; why fund your enemy?
Instead, put them out of work, then it will be more difficult to infect the young, i.e., your future employees, with the peculiar ideas of the left. Peculiar ideas, that used to be called, liberalism. Maybe that’s why liberal studies are no longer called, liberal studies, but instead called Humanities.
So as you watch, your wide screen T.V., and eat your GMO infected junk food, enjoy a sigh, as the jobs continue to go overseas, including jobs that used to go to Doctors, lawyers, & engineers. Your political leaders, won’t do anything about it, because you demand nothing from them, not even a straight answer.
Report thisBy kerryrose, June 19, 2011 at 10:59 am Link to this comment
I second the ‘Bravo.’
Meaningful jobs requiring creative thinking and problems solving are not plentiful in the ‘real’ world. Schlepping for a paycheck in a rote position that requires accumulation of wealth as its reward is the norm. Even those are scarce now. Now you can schlepp overtime for a paycheck that barely makes ends meet.
When a country has no ideal beyond the accumulation of wealth it suffers from a lack of creative, imaginative, and moral direction. Why, then, should these qualities be respected in the populace?
Report thisBy Daye, June 19, 2011 at 10:22 am Link to this comment
Bravo, ARK! Your expressed sentiment is
medicine for the worsening illness in our
universities.
The ‘real world’ should be shaped by our
Report thiseducation, our continuous & ongoing learning &
enlightenment - nothing could be more ugly or
non-human than compelling education to
conform to society the way it is & things the
way they are.