Posted on 01/04/2012 1:23:06 PM PST by SeekAndFind
College kids may choose to spend their campus days studying the glories of Plato, Shakespeare and Le Corbusier.
But, as a new study points out, there may be a steep price to pay.
Recent college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture experienced significantly higher rates of joblessness, according to a study being released Wednesday by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
Among recent college graduates, those with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), according to the study.
The recent college graduates with the lowest rates of unemployment had degrees in health (5.4 percent), education (5.4 percent), and agriculture and natural resources (7 percent.) Those with business and engineering degrees also fared relatively well.
“People keep telling kids to study what they love — but some loves are worth more than others,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, one of the study’s authors. “When people talk about college, there are all these high-minded ideas about it making people better citizens and participating fully in the life of their times. All that’s true, but go talk to the unemployed about that.”
The analysis, which was based on 2009 and 2010 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, comes amid an increasing debate over the value of college education as an economic investment. Over the past two decades, the average amount of debt a student takes on has roughly doubled in real terms, leading to greater scrutiny of the financial returns of college.
Carnevale and his team have also quantified the value of various majors in terms of wages. Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business were as much as 50 percent higher
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You don’t like the art that you see? Then encourage your kids to get into the arts (even on an amateur level) to change the culture. Conservatives long ago ceded the arts to liberal nutcases and you can see the results.
I, personally, will never allow libs to get away with their bad art. My husband and I work every day to promote truth and beauty in the arts. We don’t always succeed but sometimes we do.
What do you guys do if I may ask? I’m an engineer but sometimes I wish I had done something in the arts. Like I think industrial design would’ve been fun.
I’m a playwright and former actor. My husband is a producer. He only produces the most wonderful of plays. We been rich and we’ve been poor but we’re still here.
I have an AA in liberals arts and two bachelors, one in pol-sci, the other in crim. I’ve never been without a job. However, I’ve never been a high wage earner. I returned to school at 40 for an MBA in Healthcare Management. Im rolling the dice but I think Ill be ok.
Good for you. I love it when liberals tell me you can't define art. I shoot right back at them with Ayn Rand's definition of art.
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.
They never know what to say. They've always been taught that art is undefinable and that, therefore, anything must be accepted as art. It never occurred to them you could actually nail it down.
And the CAD jockey will not be able to do the architect’s job.
Thank you.
It’s the same thing in architecture.
There is a lot of cr@p out there but instead of complaining, I just design completely differently than 90% of architects, and so far I’ve been pretty successful.
There is always a market for real quality, you just have to position yourself to find it.
Thank you.
It’s the same thing in architecture.
There is a lot of cr@p out there but instead of complaining, I just design completely differently than 90% of architects, and so far I’ve been pretty successful.
There is always a market for real quality, you just have to position yourself to find it.
Funny how the old-timers (ya know like Leonardo and Michelangelo) knew what was good and what stunk. The idea of rebel art and art in conflict with the establishment/religion is a modern idea. When it works, it works. When it fails, it’s bad art.
Perspective drawings and cardboard models? Picking out surface treatments and window types? Sidewalk layouts? Floorplans? I think some of them could handle that.
Good for you! Keep up the dissident art!
Oh, please. Have you ever seen cardboard models created by architecure students? They are mindblowing. 25 years ago this was the only way they could show their ideas (I assume it is computer-generated stuff today). The creativity and dexterity of these artists was something to behold.
“Arts” are like “sports”: a lot more people try than can reasonably expect to succeed. It would be interesting to know what percentage of successful people in “arts” - drama, visual, musical, anything I’ve missed - got a college degree in that field, and what percentage of people who got an arts degree have used their education professionally. Even in today’s economy, not everyone who goes to college intends or needs to use their education to earn a living.
I use my management degree (which included accounting, finance, law, and real estate) for basic survival, with a nuclear family of 12 plus elderly parents, and my Spanish classes for the church, but if I had the chance to do my college years again, I would take some vocal performance classes, and maybe piano, instead of four semesters of Asian history, cool as that was, because it would be more useful now.
That’s not architecture, those are tasks incidental to architecture
So many Freepers consider themselves to be oh so practical people. On these kinds of threads you often see admonition after admonition for everyone to drop the major they have and go into the engineering school and you know the reasonL the monetary payoff .
I've often wondered why we don't just drop the advanced education requirements (you know, history, foreign languages, philosopy, and the such) and set up engineering institutes for these people where they won't bothered by such requirements. They clearly cannot differentiate education from job training.
Because this is America? We can choose life as we wish. The mentality is truly scary. Keep the govt out my education. I can thrill my education as I wish.
Given that somewhere between 50-60 of formerly practicing architects were unemployed in 2009, the number seems low.
You can thrill your education?
Yeah, I’ve been scratching my head about that one, too.
And putting the government into education? Heck, I would try to get it out of education, i.e., remove the engineering depts. from govt.-sanctioned universities and place that discipline in private “institutes” where they can’t be bothered with all that “education stuff.” You know?
The less government involvement in anything, the better the -thing will be.
If we’re speaking of spherical college degrees in a vacuum (to make a “Big Bang Theory” joke, for those who have a Sheldon in the family), there’s no reason anyone should care what anyone else studies. Each student (or his parents) should attempt to evaluate the cost vs. the financial+non-financial benefit of the education he buys.
Some degrees have a better chance of producing financial rewards, either because Chemical Engineering jobs pay more than Early Childhood Development jobs, or because more people get jobs as accountants than as opera singers. Nonetheless, if a person wants to accept a high risk of failure, or accept a lower-paying field, who else should care?
A legitimate public concern arises when everyone is paying, through government subsidies to schools, grants/loans to students, and so on. A theoretical concern, at least. A twit with a degree in Victim Studies is more of a problem when she gets a civil service job than when she’s just blowing money on the degree.
To me, the more important issue is the percentage of students who attend college for years but never graduate. My oldest son is starting community college next week, and our agreement is that, as long as he’s doing well in the sensible state-approved tuition-free courses he’s taking, he can continue to envision his brilliant future as a starving, lice-ridden alternative rock guitarist. If he actually attempts to embark on that career, he’s financially on his own!
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