
So you're considering a liberal arts degree - llambda
http://jacquesmattheij.com/So+you+are+considering+a+liberal+arts+degree
======
muhfuhkuh
I majored in English, and that led me to becoming a technical writer. I
could've become a journalist/blog writer, novelist, advertising copywriter,
movie or TV show writer, academic, etc. I had an aptitude and interest in
technology that pushed me to technical writing. After 5 years writing
professionally, I was making 80k; last year (my 11th in technical writing) I'm
into 6 figures (and in the Southeast US, to boot) including bonuses. Not bad
for an English major. And, not at all rare.[1]

I knew from the beginning that you can't pick just any major unless you wanted
a deep, abiding knowledge of that concentration and/or had a natural
inclination or aptitude for it. The "losers" making your coffee as you go to
your programming job? They were _always_ going to end up there, just like I
read in forums how programmers in flyover states in the US Midwest have been
out of work for over 99 weeks or what have you.

Ultimately, it matters less what you major in. If you're motivated and
talented. you'll find a satisfying, relatively well-paying job; if you were
amotivated and/or did poorly in college, wake up and make them lattes.

Sure, even the mediocre computer science major can get work, but you think
they'd survive in Silicon Valley? Just like you can't write off every English
major as a coffee whipper-upper, you can't automatically say a computer
science degree is a path to a six-figure salary.

[1][http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Senior+Technical+Writer&...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Senior+Technical+Writer&l1=san+jose%2C+ca)

~~~
irahul
> I could've become a journalist/blog writer, novelist, advertising
> copywriter, movie or TV show writer, academic, etc.

That's what I am trying to say in another thread here. You picked a major, now
pick a job which is backed up by it, or augment your education on your own and
grab the job you want. One can't just claim "education is more than training
for jobs", "I am well rounded" and grab a totally unrelated job.

~~~
mbreese
There are lots of jobs (good ones) whose job description is little more than
"don't be an idiot". I'd go so far as to say that for most non-technical jobs,
it doesn't matter what your degree was in. If you need a programmer, you'll
look for someone with some experience or training in programming, but for most
jobs, the major just isn't as important.

HN in general is a pretty specialized group of people that skews heavily
towards engineering and technical jobs. And those aren't the other jobs out
there.

Just as the GP could have been a journalist, copywriter, etc... they just as
easily could have been a doctor, or a lawyer, or gotten an MBA.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"they just as easily could have been a doctor, or a lawyer"_

No, he/she really couldn't have. You just listed two heavily regulated
professions where not having the right degree means _complete_
disqualification from holding a job. There is no way for GP to be a doctor or
a lawyer without going to medical school, or law school, respectively.

At least here in the tech industry you're not _legally mandated_ to have the
right degree for the job.

This seems to _support_ the notion that one ought to look at a degree's
employment ramifications before jumping into one.

~~~
mbreese
Sorry, I thought it was implicit in my comment that they'd have to go to
medical/law school. My point is that the _undergraduate_ degree matters less.

------
mbreese
I went to a liberal arts school, and the concept isn't about wasting your time
studying soft subjects that can't get you a job. It's about being a well-
rounded person. The idea is to learn a little about a wide variety of subjects
and go in depth on one specific subject. Just because you major in English
doesn't mean that you are stuck trying to be an English teacher or a writer...
the subject is important, but the process is more important.

I happened to study biochemistry, which was somewhat useful. I purposefully
didn't major in CS, because the department wasn't very strong - I could learn
more on my own projects (I minored in it). My wife went to a different school,
but she studied French (including literature). She's now a doctor, which is a
fairly useful career.

Your major doesn't restrict what you can do later in life.

~~~
quanticle
_I went to a liberal arts school, and the concept isn't about wasting your
time studying soft subjects that can't get you a job. It's about being a well-
rounded person._

What, precisely, is the difference? I have heard many a liberal arts major
justify their major under this categorization - as if well roundedness was an
end in itself. I have heard precisely _zero_ engineers, doctors, lawyers or
professionals speak about their degree making them a more "well rounded"
person.

Moreover, if taking courses in English makes an engineer more well-rounded,
shouldn't the converse apply as well? Why are we programmers forced to take
courses in English when English majors aren't forced to take introduction to
programming?

I agree that your major doesn't restrict what you can do, but it does restrict
what you can do _easily_. For example, I started out in the Computer
Engineering department. If I had graduated as computer engineer, I would have
had far more exposure to digital logic design than to programming. However, I
graduated with a Computer Science degree. Sure, I _could_ do digital logic
design (I know the fundamentals, and can work upwards from there), but I
certainly can't do it as easily or as naturally as someone who's spent 4 years
studying that field. By the same token, a computer engineer probably wouldn't
be as good at coding webapps as I am.

~~~
DanBC
> _I have heard precisely zero engineers, doctors, lawyers or professionals
> speak about their degree making them a more "well rounded" person._

English universities talk at length about the personal development benefits of
the university experience, even for people reading maths or sciences or
engineering.

~~~
quanticle
That's precisely the point I was speaking to. Engineering colleges don't need
to use "personal development" as a way to justify their expense. Medical
schools, law colleges, and other professional degree programs don't need to do
so either. The fact that liberal education needs to refer to something as
diffuse and difficult to value as "personal development" should raise hackles
in an era when a college education costs almost as much as a house.

~~~
_delirium
It _is_ a common justification for some of the science core curriculum, such
as why computer scientists should have to take two semesters of physics, while
it'd probably be more useful for future employment to just take more CS
courses. General well-roundedness / being an educated person is the usual
argument.

------
danso
It's true that much of what you learn in a liberal arts program can be gained
by going through the library or through online resources. But that's only a
piece of it; ostensibly, a strong liberal arts program not only exposes you to
the best of art, but challenges you to critically examine it.

If anything, it seems just as easy to learn tech skills, particularly
programming, on your own. And you are easily able to test and prove them to
the real world. Think you have a great idea and good design chops? Then launch
a site. It doesn't even have to be profitable, just something that can impress
one of the many communities of developers (such as HN).

Where does that outlet exist for liberal arts majors? As most liberal arts
fields don't yet primarily communicate to the web, you could publish a
brilliant research paper that is never seen by the "serious" academics; same
as if you disseminated your theory and findings through a blog.

Of course there are exceptions. It's possible that the next Harry Potter could
come from a computer scientist who spends his/her off-hours writing a novel
and then self-publishes with a viral marketing campaign. But it's far more
likely for a self-taught programmer to build out a great concept, make it Web
accessible, and have it seen and spread among the people who are most likely
to hire him/her.

------
marchustvedt
Every time this discussion comes up eventually it's necessary to invoke the
power of the signaling effect that a completed college degree has,
particularly from a top tier university.

In an inefficient labor market with weak signals a degree is still relevant in
demonstrating academic rigor, commitment, and follow-through. The drop-out
sends a countersignal that would need to be balanced with a strong body of
work outside of school.

Look, I think no matter what your degree was in, we're at a point where some
amount self-directed study is expected of all job seekers. Most of my peers in
CS at Michigan studied languages outside of the curriculum and regularly built
side projects. That's expected with or without a degree.

An English degree at most top schools is no cakewalk. I would look seriously
at hiring one, even for a product/technical position if they complemented it
with self-taught skills that we needed.

Plus, you can build a team culture that isn't solely homogenous.

~~~
cperciva
That signalling effect mattered when 5% of the population had post-secondary
education. It still matters a bit if you can get a degree from a top tier
institution.

If you get a degree from a non-top-tier institution (and there isn't anything
exceptional about your degree as compared to everybody else graduating from
the same institution) you haven't sent a meaningful signal at all.

~~~
_delirium
True, but it still sends a baseline "did the normal thing" signal, or put
differently, avoids sending the "college dropout or didn't go to college"
negative signal.

------
grot
A liberal arts education teaches you many useful things: grammar, for example.

Read his opening paragraph again.

"As usual I get a ton of mail on subjects that are controversial, and one of
the more painful ones was the fact that the Dropping out is probably not for
you post gave people the impression that I'm against studying the arts,
literature or any other non hard science."

Awkward, no? That's because it's a run on sentence.

The things that a liberal arts education teaches you are not always obvious.
Of course you can read Plato or Homer or Augustine by yourself, but unless
you're in a collegiate environment, it's very very easy to be lazy.

How many times have you picked up a book, skimmed through it, and never opened
it up again? How many times have you actually read a book, and then for some
weird reason, forgotten all of its contents very soon after? Formal schooling
forces you to reengage with texts again and again. Formal schooling forces you
to be critical of yourself and your own work before someone else has a crack
at it. All of these things can be accomplished by a very motivated and
disciplined individual. But how many of us are actually that motivated and
that disciplined?

~~~
bermanoid
_Awkward, no? That's because it's a run on sentence._

Awkward, perhaps, especially when cut-and-paste de-highlights the link around
"Dropping out is probably not for you".

But it wasn't a run-on sentence, jacquesm properly connected the independent
clauses with a conjunction instead of just smooshing them together.

As opposed to the sentence that I just wrote, which did not, and actually
constitutes a run-on sentence (though some purists might object to lumping
comma-splices together with run-on sentences).

If you're going to insinuate that someone's education is lacking based on
their grammar, please make sure to actually point out a grammatical mistake.

Or better yet, let's leave the grammar policing aside, it doesn't add much to
the discussion given that jacquesm writes plenty good English for blog-format
prose...

~~~
georgefox
In fairness, it was awkward, and there are quite a few comma splices and other
grammatical errors in Jacques's post (e.g., the second paragraph). I actually
found this a little distracting myself. That said, I agree that grammar
policing is kind of a low blow.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm happy to accept the low blows, being a non-native English speaker/writer
anything that will help me to improve is more than welcome.

Of course it would be nice if such comments were accompanied by suggested
fixes and/or constructive criticism of the content. But you can't have
everything ;)

~~~
georgefox
If English is not your first language, then you're obviously doing quite well.
As a fairly typical American, I can only speak English, and I have much
respect for anyone that's bilingual. (Incidentally, most of the bilingual
Americans I know have liberal arts degrees.)

Here's my feedback, though: I thought your post read as if it had been written
hastily. There were some mistakes that seemed careless, like not capitalizing
_Wikipedia_ or omitting hypens and dashes in constructs like _non-hard
science_ and _pro-education_. Additionally, there were some issues with
sentence structure, especially comma splices, which bermanoid referred to
above. For example, the second paragraph:

 _I guess it was to be expected the way I phrased things there so let me take
a moment to correct this perception, the offending lines are right at the
start in:_

The comma there isn't valid, as it splits two independent clauses without a
conjunction. I'd use a period instead, but I'd also rephrase slightly:

 _I guess it was to be expected with the way I phrased things, so let me take
a moment to correct this perception. The offending lines are right at the
start:_

I'll take one last example:

 _You can study those subjects to your hearts content and there are lots of
places online where you can discuss them until the cows come home._

First, _hearts_ vs. _heart's_ seems like another hasty oversight. This
sentence, though, is a different type of run-on. Technically, if you put a
comma before _and_ , you're safe, but without it, us grammar nerds call it a
fused sentence. This is a pretty serious nitpick, and this is very common
among native speakers as well, but two of these in a row caught my eye.

~~~
jacquesm
> I thought your post read as if it had been written hastily.

It was written while being disturbed about 30 times by a very active toddler
:)

I'll take your points to heart and fix the post tomorrow morning, it's getting
late here.

I'd have missed the 'heart's'.

What bugs me about all this is that many years ago I came to terms with
working with people from many different backgrounds. Immigrants from all over
the globe, in a single company that I ran in Toronto. We learned to look past
the mistakes in grammar or pronunciation to the essence of what someone was
trying to pass on.

Of course it helps if all written communication is perfect and if everybody
would speak perfect English. The fact of the matter however is that language
is a vehicle for expressing ideas and thoughts, and to pass those thoughts
from one head to another, mostly intact.

Here on HN there is a tendency to ignore the message but to focus on the
delivery. This is just a subtle way of attacking the person rather than the
subject matter and I always wonder how we would have fared in that office if
every mis-spelled word or wrongly pronounced word would have been pounced upon
like that.

I think I'm doing ok in English, not perfect but it will do for most everyday
conversation. A while ago there was a vocabulary test that floated around here
and it tested the most uncommon words to get an idea of how big your
vocabulary is.

Such tests miss the point entirely, as does the nitpicking about grammar and
spelling. What matters is the idea behind the message and those that manage to
look past the errors will sometimes find that that dyslexic or first
generation immigrant over in the third cubicle has a very valid point, poorly
expressed.

We'd do well to remember that and to always try to digest the message rather
than the wrapper that it came in.

So, I really will take your advice , and I hope that it will stick (it's hard
to teach old dogs new tricks). Over the last couple of years I think my
writing has gotten a little bit better but it is very hard for me to measure
my progress due to a serious lack of objectivity.

Thank you once again.

~~~
georgefox
My apologies if I came across as making some sort of ad hominem attack here
based on the grammar in your post. Let me re-iterate: for a non-native
speaker, your English is very impressive. Sure, there were a few awkward
phrasings and some grammatical errors in your post, but I think I'm much more
sensitive to these things than most people are, and it in no way affected my
ability to understand the message you were trying to convey. I just so
happened to respond to the grammatical tangent in the comments here. :)

Honestly, the intent of my original comment was specifically to legitimize the
non-grammar-related part of grot's comment. Looking back, I failed miserably
at that, and the conversation centered even more on grammar. I distinctly
remember having written something else that I apparently deleted before
commenting. Let me go back and make a comment that's actually valuable.

 _> Of course you can read Plato or Homer or Augustine by yourself, but unless
you're in a collegiate environment, it's very very easy to be lazy._

Personally, I can strongly relate to this. I'm very interested in literature,
for example, but I'm not very well read. There are plenty of libraries around
me and plenty of resources available on the internet to help me self-study,
but I just don't do it. I can self-study node.js just fine, but I need some
coercion to get into Shakespeare. This is something a formal education in
liberal arts can provide. Whether or not it's affordable depends on a variety
of factors, so it's hard to make a sweeping statement in support of or in
opposition to such a degree. But I think people are very prone to looking at
educational choices as business decisions, where a negative ROI is obviously
bad. I think this is a limited perspective, but unfortunately, it's a reality
a lot of people have to deal with.

------
lists
>I hope that clears up any misunderstandings. If you're wealthy enough or you
already have earning power enough that you can decide to pursue a degree or
advanced education in something that will not help you earn a living then more
power to you, but I suspect that that is a very minor fraction of the
population.

Aristotle said approximately the same thing over two thousand years ago in two
different places: (1) that philosophy is possible only once a society has
secured subsistence ( _Metaphysics_ ); (2)virtue can only be pursued as as
goal once one is financially secure ( _Nichomachean Ethics_ ). Is it
significant for any idea of progress that such statements are still possible
despite occurring in distinct historical contexts, one of which premised
itself on slavery? Is this evidence of an antinomy between the claims of
democracy (Yes, we live in a constitutional republic, but it is dressed as the
guarantee of equal opportunity and this is what public activism premises
itself on lest I'm mistaken) and the claims of the market?

------
droob
Self-directed study can be great, but it can also lead you into intellectual
ratholes. It's important to have regular challenges to your thinking.

For most people, the dialogue, structure, and deadlines of a college course
make all the difference.

~~~
prsimp
Exactly. All of the points made about free or semi-free education can just as
easily be applied to the 'harder' subjects, and while there are plenty of
examples of well-versed, successful, _self-trained_ members of all
disciplines, they are generally the exception and not the rule.

~~~
argv_empty
Not quite as easily. First, learning those subjects often requires access to
specialized equipment and facilities. Second, depending on your threshold for
"successful," a liberal arts degree may not be much more helpful than self-
study. The typical result of a liberal arts degree seems to be that the
student has spent a lot of time learning about the field in question but still
has little chance of being employed in that area. By comparison, a degree in
engineering brings a huge improvement in employability as an engineer.

------
irahul
Study "History of art" if you are inclined to. Everybody will be happy if you
acknowledge:

1\. It isn't relevant to most of the jobs.

2\. You aren't entitled to a job.

3\. Your well-roundedness and other things you bring to the table is your
perception - it might or might not be real and the employers might not feel
that way.

4.

"You are a English Major. Great. So why aren't you doing what English majors
do."

"You majored in Music. But this is a software development position."

You might not even get a chance to prove you are good(and justifiably so - you
aren't qualified), and you might blow up given a chance because you somehow
thought your English major makes you qualified for all jobs.

If you are majoring in English, and you want a job in software development,
you will have to develop software, build your github profile before people
start taking you seriously. Don't expect your degree to play a part.

5\. You realize that science and engineering disciplines require a certain
amount of time and labor, before you can be considered qualified to work. You
can not weasel your way in citing "bah but I learned critical thinking".

6\. Steve Jobs' quotes about Mac and liberal arts isn't going to do you any
good. Apple hires A grade designers(both UI and industrial designers), and
won't care about your English degree unless you have a track record of
delivering great designs.

~~~
alextingle
Study "Theoretical Physics" if you are inclined to. Everybody will be happy if
you acknowledge:

1\. It isn't relevant to most of the jobs.

2\. You aren't entitled to a job.

3\. etc...

This condescending arrogance is a simple example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Most academic disciplines have little application in the workplace. Education
has a deeper purpose than you think. The mechanism by which educated people
get ahead in society is far more complex and subtle than the "learn useful
work skills => better at work => more promotions" caricature.

~~~
irahul
> Study "Theoretical Physics" if you are inclined to. Everybody will be happy
> if you acknowledge:

I realize you are posting an analogy. I would still like to point out I am yet
to meet someone who studies theoretical physics and doesn't realize how it's
going to play out. There is no sense of entitlement, they are aware they will
be going for PHD while their classmates get jobs right after their undergrad,
and ever after PHD, things are uncertain and they might end up lecturing 1st
years.

All I am pointing out is study what you want - it's your life and no one gives
a damn - but don't build false perceptions about the way it works, or worse,
feel that the world owes you something for you followed your passion.

> This condescending arrogance is a simple example of the Dunning-Kruger
> effect.

No, it's not. Saying that your English Major won't help you get a job which
doesn't need an English Major, doesn't say you are dumb to major in English,
or I am smarter to not major in it.

> Education has a deeper purpose than you think. The mechanism by which
> educated people get ahead in society is far more complex and subtle than the
> "learn useful work skills => better at work => more promotions" caricature.

I don't know which part of my post you are responding to.

Education has a purpose, all sorts of educations has, and there is a common
subset. That common subset doesn't make you eligible for unrelated jobs.

~~~
alextingle
It's not an analogy, it's a parody. I'm parodying your words to try to
communicate the essential point that you seem to have missed...

 _No_ education makes you "eligible" for a "related" job (unless the job is
"college professor").

~~~
irahul
> It's not an analogy, it's a parody.

Whatever it is, it's fundamentally flawed. People studying to be theoretical
physicists know it's a long and hard path. Also, they are eligible for a
number of quant jobs.

> No education makes you "eligible" for a "related" job (unless the job is
> "college professor").

So, those doctors, lawyers, nuclear physicists, rocket scientists, architects,
civil engineers, mechanical engineers... should have just got an English
major, since their education didn't do shit.

That's outright ridiculous, and wrong. Pretty much anything in hard sciences
and technology(programming being a notable exception) requires a related
formal education. And it's not bureaucratic - the job needs the background.
Your well roundedness and critical thinking and whatever doesn't make you a
doctor.

------
EiZei
Not directly related to the article but I have noticed this tendency that in
countries where education is tuition-free the proportion of STEM students to
liberal arts student seems actually higher. I haven't found good enough data
for comparison for this but I do find it a little curious that there are so
many English majors in a country where getting a degree is quite possibly the
second most expensive thing you will ever do in your life. Meanwhile countries
that provide universal access to education often seem to have a glut of
engineers.

~~~
Swizec
Perhaps explained by the fact that engineering degrees are _hard_.

You wouldn't want to fail getting a degree if you're paying that much for it
now would you?

------
kevinalexbrown
My problem with liberal arts is not "it's useless" it's the expectation of a
job _just_ because you have a degree, when it's fairly clear going in that
there are less jobs there.

If your poetry study helps you do something, that's awesome but you shouldn't
be surprised that others might not find it as useful as you, and are less
willing to pay you as a result.

------
jeffreymcmanus
I've hired about fifty people over the past five years. With maybe one or two
exceptions, I can't tell you what any of their college majors were.

------
sedachv
Philosophy and mathematics are both liberal arts. Software is nothing but
applied analytic philosophy, with some mathematics thrown in here and there in
specialized domains.

My first degree was in pure mathematics. Now I wish I had done more
philosophy, but thankfully it is not a difficult field for an autodidact.

------
Mz
Discussion of this sort comes up quite often on homeschooling lists (or did,
back in the day). The short version is that this is the difference between
"training" and "education". "Training" is what America generally wants to
provide to, say, people on welfare so we can tell them "get off the dole and
get a job" (while simultaneously making it outright illegal to aspire to a
better life/follow your dreams -- last I heard, you can attend a two year
degree program while on welfare but not a four year degree program).
"Education" is broader preparation for life, not just preparation for a job
per se. Lots of American universities are increasingly offering degrees that
are essentially intended as "job training" of some sort.

Slice of life: I happen to have an Associate of Arts in Humanities and a
Certificate in GIS. The certificate in GIS was gotten as "job training" and I
am still paying on the student loan that was needed. I have never worked in
GIS and the job I do have started at about half the pay as the GIS-related
jobs I was interviewing for. On the upside, attending GIS school helped me get
boatloads of life-saving drugs from doctors who wouldn't prescribe me anything
while I was mostly bedridden. So I consider that student loan kind of a
"medical bill"/cost of survival, never mind my (relatively mild) bitterness at
how utterly my well-laid career plans* fell through.

<shrug>

* FWIW: those career plans included a future Master's in Urban Planning. There are relatively few bachelor's programs in urban planning. For this reason, most planners have some other major at the bachelor's level. Liberal Arts majors (at the bachelor level) are not terribly uncommon in that profession, from what I gather.

~~~
DavidChouinard
I am reminded of a quote by Mark Twain:

 _"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"_

~~~
Mz
That's a beloved quote among homeschoolers. :-)

------
keiferski
_Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna
start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact
that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you
dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you could of got for a
dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.

Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree. And you'll be servin' my kids fries at
a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip. _

Unfortunately, I think that more and more liberal arts majors/grads are coming
to this realization. It's become increasingly obvious that the degree is not
worth the debt. Been to Starbucks lately? 9/10 of the employees there have a
degree.

(And in an ironic twist, the guy with the degree _won't_ be the one going on a
skiing trip; he'll be the one serving fries.)

~~~
mbreese
But most people aren't Will Hunting...

~~~
keiferski
Obviously not.. it's just a movie. The point is that a liberal arts degree
might not be worth going into serious debt for, especially when you can get
90% of the same information for free at the library.

That's not to say that liberal arts degrees are "useless"; far from it. But
not everyone has 30k+ lying around to indulge in a degree just for fun.

------
pnathan
Round and round the college and anti-college hordes go once again. It'd be
nice if people used more common sense.

ROI is the proper consideration here. Two questions govern degrees:

1\. What's the expected ROI of your degree?

2\. Can you financially afford that?

A degree is an investment into your future. It pays off in various ways:
financial, social, networking, mental, etc. It financially costs a lot at some
schools, less at others. Some degrees pay more money than others. What can you
afford? What are you going to college for?

It is indisputable that _execution_ of the degree program is a big deal. Some
students are in it for the party, others are in it for the knowledge, etc.

Cost of US college has risen faster than health care costs in the last thirty
years. This is becoming an acute problem. I have no idea how I will support my
children in college in any significant fashion at that rate of increase. I
suspect the whole business will undergo a systemic collapse and reset by then.

Many engineering types are not in college for an education, they are in it for
training. They have no desire or interest in underlying principles governing
their work, or any other knowledge besides their degree. They want to get out
and make money ASAP. I do not like that attitude, it's very short-term and
narrow of thought.

Liberal arts types usually are in college for a broad education, having a wide
understanding of things. That doesn't work out so good financially quite
often. There's little call for a philosopher in the bottom-line lean style
world of business. (editorial: That might be a reason why we have ethics
problems in business too...) I think it's very important that liberal arts
degrees exist. The ideal government policymaker, among their other skills, has
a broad knowledge of the world and its cultures.

It is notable that the liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric) were considered
in antiquity the proper study of a free person, and slaves were the
technicians/manual laborers.

~~~
Mz
_It is indisputable that execution of the degree program is a big deal. Some
students are in it for the party, others are in it for the knowledge, etc._

A lot seem to be in it for the sheepskin more than the knowledge per se. I
took a college class where classmates explicitly advocated for the teacher to
go easy on us and skip some stuff, it wouldn't matter, they just wanted their
credits, did not want to have to work too hard for them (ie they wanted that
class checked off their schedule, whether they learned anything or not). My
reaction: What if you need to actually know that stuff (for a later class or
your, oh, job)?

This did not make me popular. It just made me more of a nerdy social outcast.

~~~
pnathan
Ha! Yes! 'Cs get degrees' is also another execution of the college strategy.
Another one is to take easy courses ( _cough_ humanities) to inflate the GPA
for the GPA-as-only-signal employers.

Like you, I wound up being more ultimately interested in the knowledge.

------
stevenelliottjr
I majored in technical writing; all the while I was hacking with Python and
contributing to open source projects. Now I am the CTO of an awesome company
in NYC. People always are amazed that I got to where I am without some sort of
formal computer science-type of degree and ask my secret. I always tell them
not to underestimate the power of great communication skills.

Sure it's very important to have the technical chops, but it's often more
important to be able to bring together people from all facets of the business.
Solid writing skills are very important in general and, as many have said,
programming is a skill that can be learned just like anything else.
Programming is just like writing good prose and good writing is often a sign
of clear thinking.

Just my $.02

Sent from my iPhone so please forgive grammatical errors.

------
seigenblues
It amazes me that so much writing on this subject is so reductionist. I read
so many of these comments talking about the "return on your degree" and ROIs
like they can be measured, and i'm kind of flabbergasted.

I have two observations: A liberal-arts degree gives you _perspective_ ,
_context_ , and _judgement_ . Contrary to popular belief, these are not innate
traits. Given that we just read a very well-received essay about how important
judgement is to a coder ([http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/the-number-one-
trait-of-...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/the-number-one-trait-of-a-
great-developer/)), it amazes me that we could just sort of forget about other
ways these things can be developed.

The other observation is that people talk about being well-rounded like its an
inherent good. Perhaps we should spell out why: It increases your luck surface
area and exposes you to positive low-probability events.

Being well-rounded means you are better able to place new information in a
meaningful framework, because you have a broader and wider set of contexts in
which to cross-reference and evaluate your new information. The broader you
are, the more likely it is that you can make some useful association with new
information. Unfortunately, for the highly-specialized, not only do they not
make those associations, but they also don't even know they are available to
be made... How do you compute an ROI when so many of the benefits appear to be
random?

An example. My father majored in history and english. He ended up writing law
and arbitrating disputes. His history background let him understand and
contextualize the people he dealt with -- where did they come from? What did
they want? What did they value & why? etc... His degree ended up being _very_
useful, even if he didn't obtain his job because of it.

------
protomyth
When I was in college, what struck me about many of the liberal arts
professors was their absolute disdain for my major (CSci). I'm hoping its much
different now, but when the environment was so "technology ruins art" or "I
don't need to learn science / math", it makes it very hard to believe that
their subjects are worth my time.

// I really love history and economics books, but the classes were painful

~~~
impendia
There are assholes in every walk of life. Please do not think that they speak
for everyone with whom they have something in common.

~~~
protomyth
Doesn't really matter that they don't speak for everyone if they are the
gatekeepers.

------
mathattack
Depends on the school too. Its easier to parlay a philosophy major from
Princeton into a good job than philosophy from Ohio State.

------
jeffreymcmanus
The first sentence of that post is a run-on sentence.

This fact brought to you by a liberal arts education.

~~~
jacquesm
Actually, it wasn't but I've removed the comma and made it a bit easier to
read.

This fix brought to you by someone with just grade school.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_%28grammar%29>

versus: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence>

And thank you for making my point in a much more eloquent way than I ever
could.

~~~
pmiller2
I'm only replying to tell you this because you mentioned being a non-native
speaker of English, but, typically, in English, "grade school" is what comes
before "high school," which typically starts at 9th grade. The fact that we
refer to students by the "grade" they're in in high school as well doesn't
mean anything. Saying you have "just grade school" implies you dropped out of
high school.

~~~
jacquesm
> Saying you have "just grade school" implies you dropped out of high school.

And that is exactly what I meant.

------
jorkos
so the argument here is to follow the steve jobs model....if you want to study
liberal arts, drop out so you don't have to pay and just sit in on classes.

~~~
mbreese
> drop out so you don't have to pay and just sit in on classes

No, I think he was just arguing that you should go to the library and anything
that you don't understand you should look up on Wikipedia.

Because undirected study in a rich subject is a great way to understand it.

~~~
Fargren
I think what he's arguing is that if you spend lots of monwy on something, you
should either be quite certain that it's an investement, or it should be money
you don't care about. Bassically, don't get education you cna't afford. He
jsut mentions the library and wikipedia as alternatives to college because
they are affordable ways to get some of the same knowledge, not because they
are viable replacements for one another.

~~~
mbreese
But he is arguing that they can be replacements for formal education, which
they are not. For most people, the level of understanding that you can gain
from lectures given by an expert in a subject is much better than what you can
get just from just reading about it.

For example, which would you rather do: spend a few hours/days reading about
existentialism or participate in a dynamic class about 19th century
philosophy? Which will you get more out of?

Now switch that to machine learning algorithms versus watching Andrew Ng
explain it to you in videos.

The two are not the same.

~~~
hdctambien
He's arguing that you can replace (a formal education AND a $30k student loan)
with (library books/the internet AND $0 student loan).

If you have the cash to pay for it, then go ahead and get any education you
want.

If you already have the skills you need to get a job and pay off your loan,
then go ahead and get any education you want.

If you don't already have a marketable skill and the education you are going
into debt for isn't going to increase your employability, then you might want
to reconsider your options.

If you think of yourself as a start-up, you should get your MVP first (a skill
someone will pay you for). Then when you have a paying customer (a job or a
nest egg) add all the cool, extra features (a well rounded, liberal arts
background)

------
wyclif
_I'm pro eduction_

You've got to spell check posts on this subject.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you, fixed.

It's absolutely inexcusable that any post on any subject would contain typos,
let alone one about education.

