A practical matter
For more than a century, debates have erupted over the real-world value of the humanities. As far back as 1891, Andrew Carnegie, the self-made millionaire, was taking aim at the less practical.
What is a major worth
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“In the storms of life,” he asked during a commencement speech at a business and shorthand college in Philadelphia, are graduates “to be strengthened and sustained and held to their post and to the performance of duty by drawing on Hebrew or Greek barbarians as models? . . . I rejoice, therefore, to know that your time has not been wasted upon dead languages, but has been fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting.”
Today, in an era of shrinking budgets, high unemployment and international competition, the debate has taken on heightened interest.
“As the economic downturn has continued, there has been more of a focus on return on investment from college,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid.org, which offers financial advice to students. “Even in 17-year-olds, we’re seeing emphasis on maximizing returns on investment — that is, getting trained in areas that pay better.”
Job creation
Earlier this year, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has become a force in education debates, weighed in on the side of aiding college departments based in part on what jobs might be created from them.
“It’s actually very interesting when you take higher ed and think of it in that way, the amount of subsidization is not that well-correlated to the areas that actually create jobs in the state — that create income for the state,” he told a meeting of the National Governors Association earlier this year.
The Center on Education and the Workforce has been funded in part by the Gates Foundation.
But others, many of them in academia, warn against relying too much on averages.
“These types of correlations are a little bit dangerous,” said David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College. “There are lots of individual cases, and everyone is different. . . . Parents should be very careful about pushing their kids in directions that are not right for them.”
Oxtoby noted that a person who majors in English might be less interested in making a lot of money and that the disparate salaries might reflect the preferences of an individual rather than the value of a major.
Others said that the American ideal of a “liberal education” — one that offers a broad knowledge of science, cultures and society and high-level analytical and communication skills — is being copied internationally.
A quality liberal education “is the most powerful form of learning we offer in this country, and even today, Asian universities and Middle Eastern leaders are trying to import it,” Carol Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said by e-mail. “The major itself (whatever it is) is only a part of a strong liberal education.”
But with college debt weighing heavily on students, Carnevale said it’s important to know how the job market considers what’s valuable.
“The engineering major makes more money because he or she is more productive. In the end, the market is very discriminating,” Carnevale said. “There’s this business about people in college following a dream. But how do you know it’s a dream? Students have a right to know what kind of career they’re headed for.”
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