In today’s world, do liberal arts matter?

The vast majority of my friends and peers who are still starting jobs in finance next year are not Economics majors. English, History, Political Science (though not a humanity) all come to mind. Getting a lucrative job offer has 0 connection with the perceived "utility" of an undergraduate degree.

The main reason humanities is so popular at Yale is because the classes are graded much easier than natural science and mathematics. Impose a harsh curve like that found in Cell Biology and you may see a new distribution of interest. People may pursue their interests, but they also pursue what is easiest.

The first error in this article is to equate "liberal arts" with "humanities." A proper liberal arts education will include both humanities and sciences. A computer science major can be as much a liberal arts major as an English major. It is a reflection of the narrow-mindedness of humanities majors not to think they are missing something when they avoid the sciences.

If you want to graduate and get a regular job, why attend Yale? Yale is for those of us who are already wealthy and want to pad our credentials. If I wanted a regular computer science job, I would have gone to Harvard.

Not everyone wants a finance job.

Join the military (now that, compliments of Our Dear Leader, war is peace), get some hard skills, then go to grad school.

Seriously.

This article presents a false dichotomy between the liberal arts and "preprofessional" fields. While it's true that some majors, like computer science or economics, give students particular real-world skills (programming and financial analysis, respectively), the core of those disciplines is as intellectually rigorous and thoughtful as anything in the humanities.

Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.

I present to you the Seven Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Technically speaking, every degree out of Yale is a liberal arts degree.

Technically…

job market = finance sector?

False.

Academia, publishing, research, non-profit, law, medicine, NGO, teaching, business, art, foreign policy …

A few points:

1. "The Answer…" -- Why on earth would minors fix the "problem" of students choosing "relevant" academic concentrations? If a student has majored in one field, but has taken substantial coursework in another, he/she may already list this on a resume. Therefore, what would a minor add to a student's profile?

2. It is not entirely clear why there is increasing focus -- both in the YDN and in general campus discourse -- on this allegedly unfair plight facing humanities students who seek entry-level positions in industry directly after college. As an Economics and Computer Science double-major myself with substantial leadership involvement as an undergrad as well as several accolades and awards for finance know-how, I can attest that neither majors nor skill level seem to have any bearing on full-time or intern recruiting. Though I had several six-figure job offers after senior year, none of them were in my target field of sell-side or even buy-side finance. By contrast, Yale students with very little intuition [or even basic understanding] about markets and with limited quantitative academic background are regularly among analyst classes at leading financial firms.

3. It's a sad truth, but the majority of students at Yale and at other Ivy schools who receive high-end finance opportunities immediately after senior year tend to come from well-connected families who assist their kids in either procuring a position at a well-known firm or who help them receive a position in a smaller operation (again, via a family contact) which then qualifies a student for a position at a well-known firm straight out of college. For example, many investment banking programs at top-ranked institutions ask that even entry level analyst applicants present prior investment banking experience in order to be considered competitive candidates. This perpetuates a system that preferences students of connected families and while this is not necessarily a bad thing (in business, bear in mind that what often counts is not what you know, but who you know), it is high time that those who are intimately involved with the finance recruiting process openly acknowledge how the process usually works.

4. Grading in some of the humanities departments (e.g., WGSS, American Studies, etc.) is much more forgiving than elsewhere at Yale and therefore attracts somewhat lackluster students. By contrast, the math/natural sciences tend to attract better-performing students but then subject them to a more challenging grade curve. Thus it is foreseeable that a student in Yale's biology program outranks a student in Yale's American Studies department who has the same GPA based on core competencies (e.g., problem solving, writing, and other logical reasoning skills). Until and unless Yale performs a comprehensive review of grading standards across departments, this gross meaninglessness of some departments' grades will continue. (It is of no surprise, therefore, why some of Yale's most prominent recruiters nonetheless ask students to submit SAT scores along with their applications.)

5. AW -- While the average Yale student is a much better writer than most, this has more to do with the fact that Yale students come to campus as better writers to begin with. The number of classes in Yale College that assess the quality [rather than pure content] of writing assessments is minimal largely by virtue of the fact that neither Yale -- nor any other Ivy school -- could possibly hire enough personnel to meaningfully assess more than a few extended writing pieces on average per student over a four year academic career.

I'm a little bit shocked by the repeated suggestion that because humanities classes aren't graded on a curve, the work is somehow less challenging. Humanities courses require students to engage in highly intricate analysis, factoring in all the various influences and nuances of meaning, and accounting for vast ranges of contradictions. Familiarizing oneself with a work of literature or art is labor intensive and delicate. And then, when writing a paper, one must subsequently explicate those complex thought processes in a sensitive, comprehensible, carefully phrased way. These analytical skills will be enviable in absolutely any field. Moreover, the writing skills acquired along the way are valuable and increasingly hard to come by. These fields are called the "humanities" because each of these disciplines speaks to some unique and important aspect of human nature, and this sensitivity to who we are as a race will serve well those who enter professions that involve or affect people.

The assertion that humanities classes aren't challenging simply because of the way they are graded is a sign of disturbing ignorance. It speaks to egotism of the worst kind--the kind that assumes that the consideration of humanity as a whole is useless, and that manipulation of hard facts is the only worthwhile kind of analysis.

Consider these hard facts: philosophy majors do the best on the MCAT; English majors come in next. I challenge more Yalies to take courses in the humanities. It's not so straightforward as you assume.

FYI: Professor Freudenburg's name is Kirk Freudenburg, not Kurt.

PS -- thank you very much for your comments, Pre-med English major!

A liberal art edu includes both science and humanities. But Yale has too many easy science classes for those history major students.

Yes humanities can be just as difficult as science or math courses, but the main difference in grading is that in humanities you are likely to be rewarded for your efforts. In science and math you can work extremely hard and end up with low grades. This is because these classes tend to be FAR more competitive, with more students vying for the top grades. ugh. premeds you see

--From another premed

Try getting an A in a real engineering class. Then you can come and talk about how difficult humanities are.

Question for pre-med English major- if you want to be a doctor, why don't you major in bio, chemistry or biochem? Right, because you're not good at those subjects and you want to pad your GPA with easy classes to get into med school. Don't tell me, you took orgo over the summer at your local CC. Wow, you are clever for sure.

In a world that is increasingly complex, interdependent, and changing, whatever jobs or careers we select to pursue as students in college will probably change as knowledge turns very quickly.

Therefore, one of the key values of a Yale liberal arts education is sculpting minds so we can become lifelong learners.

In today's globalized economy, our second-to-none critical thinking, leadership, and communications skills will serve us well in whatever field of human endeavor we choose to pursue.

For those Yalies who also invested time participating in sports or other competitive endeavors, we also learned how to work in teams, compete under adversity and pressure, and how to fine-tune our emotional intelligence.

Jobs, careers, and professions will continue to change, so the foundational thinking and communicaiton skills that we cultivated at Yale as undergrads will continue to pay dividends for years to come.

For some Yalies, in this slow economy, the next investment in their lifelong education may mean attending a professional or graduate school or graduate school.

Yalies should look for jobs during the summer to build marketable skills. Perhaps the alumni should do a better job of working with the University to place students in worthwhile co-op jobs and internships.

I've lost count how many times my doctor has run out to consult a reference book or database on my list of symptoms. They aren't walking encyclopedias of knowledge; they can only memorize so much!

And referring me to a specialist? That isn't being a doctor! That's being a member of bureaucracy!

You're spouting absolute BS, and I'm not talking about the degree. Highly skilled? Our Sciences classes are glorified sessions of rote memorization and the re-application of learned formulae and little else. Of course they are important, but if you think that in the GRAND scheme of things they are hard? You have another thing coming to you. If they are difficult it's because the current method and pedagogy of teaching sciences SUCK. My Best Friend is a science major at Johns Hopkins and grade curves are the average. Get a 45? You've passed kid! At my own school, Gen. and Orgo. chem are "fundamentals" yet somehow, they are also the weeding classes. What gives? Why so hard?

That seems very, very, very, very broken to me. Someone is doing something wrong.

Let me ask you this: What do you think is harder? Writing a book? Or constructing a Nuclear Weapon? Here's a hint: Between the two, there's only one where someone can say, "You're doing it wrong."

And that's the difference.

Honestly, i have met more open-minded people with a solid understanding of human nature in the sciences. Are you honestly claiming that English somehow "teaches" you human nature because you read some old dead guy? No thanks, i'll take my chances with classes, which have "human nature" in the title.

also, why do you keep wondering what will get you a finance job when the finance itself is becoming more and more irrelevant?

Regarding post #38, I was a math major, and I had a similar career experience. So what's the point? Why is choosing science equivalent to picking a track prematurely, while choosing humanities is not?

And let's not forget, both sciences and humanities are liberal arts.

In response, to "Over-rated", post #39, yes, I was a humanities major. Also, the point: computer science was used as an example of something likely-to-lead-to a job in the article we are discussing. So I used it as an example as well, that's all. My comment about tracks really was attempting to make the point that people are too focused on jobs and career while thinking about what to study. There is more than that. And, no, I had no money coming to college and no one in my family had gone beyond high school before -- and I still studied what I wanted, found all sorts of great jobs and here it is 22 years later.