WE'VE ALL heard the joke. The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
This joke may be funny for students who are pre-med, in the Engineering School, or in the School of Commerce.
For those of us not lucky enough to be number-crunchers or problem-solvers, however, it's not as funny. The ability to be amused by it is lost because the joke makes us wonder. Should we study something we really love, even though it may not be on a direct path to having a job, or should we choose something that we may not be passionate about, but will lead to a lucrative job offer in the future?
One of the largest questions underlying the decision of what to major in is the extent to which the major you choose will help you in your search for employment after college. The general perception is that majoring in things like English or philosophy is shaky ground for future job prospects unless you want to become a teacher. There isn't much demand for philosophers these days, after all.
This reality strikes fear into those oriented toward the liberal arts. The prospect of putting four years of tuition money into an education that will land you straight back in your parent's house is not an attractive one. Not to mention all the studying and work that goes into those four years.
Engineering, Commerce and pre-med track students have a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel when they're in the midst of final exams and only half-jokingly thinking of dropping out of school. They virtually are guaranteed a lucrative career if they graduate. This is not to say that everyone studying science or business is only in it for the money. One of my friends on the pre-Commerce school track is often unjustly accused of pursuing that path simply because of the salary she's likely to get after graduation. In fact, my friend actually gets excited about things like accounting, hard though it may be for some of us to understand.
Unlike those studying business or science, liberal arts majors are far from being guaranteed anything. After graduation, most of them have yet more school to look forward to through graduate studies, or a job search that more often than not lands people in jobs that don't have anything to do with what they studied anyway, like English majors becoming computer programmers.
Confronted with these somewhat less-than-stellar prospects, those inclined toward the liberal arts may wonder whether it's best to find a major that will definitely lead to a career while they're still in school.
Along with their own anxieties, students also have to deal with something much more intimidating than their own fears: namely, the parent factor. At dinner the other night two of my friends got into an argument about it.
One of my friends had been thinking of majoring in the liberal arts, but her parents are concerned that she won't be able to support herself if she doesn't choose something that has a more definite future. They said that they would stop paying her tuition if she was going to major in something that would result in her getting a job that would pay less than what it cost to educate her.
This horrified my other friend. Her parents haven't taught her to view college as a stepping stone to a career. Instead, she views the whole thing as a life experience, and thinks that the things she learns from her experiences here are far more important than what she learns in the classes she takes. Her focus is on life education and not academic education, in other words.
These are two opposite ends of the spectrum, but it raises another fundamental question: What, really, is the point of college? Should college be all about how it shapes you as a member of the job industry, or how it shapes you as a person?
Obviously, if you can combine both by getting a job doing what you love that also will allow you to support yourself, you're one of a lucky minority. For the rest of us, however, it comes down to a question of what is more important: success through financial security and wealth or success through having a job that makes you happy but may not support you financially. It's something every prospective liberal arts major has to decide for themselves.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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