Useless Majors

The Daily Beast article is idiotic. Animal sciences, useless? Really? The arts useless? Art is what differentiates us from our fellow animals. It's what makes us human. Nutrition is of the utmost importance in this economy of crap food. Chemistry, agriculture, mechanical engineering, all critical to our society.

I'll agree that advertising and fashion design are worse than useless: They are destructive of our quality of life.

 

I think by "useless" they mean "can't get a job in that field when you graduate."

 

Rule of thumb: anything grinded down into a report card or slide presentation is going to be an inanity.

EG, In this case someone counted how many students who studied chemistry say they work as chemists, but the question of how much did the study of chemistry contribute to your landing your job and doing well is too hard to answer and is ignored.

GIGO

My son is a a chem and math degrees kid, so I picked on chem. The problem though is general.

 

You should pursue what your heart tells you to, not which degree makes the most money or gets you the best job.

At least that's what I tell my kids, I might be wrong though.

 

The heart is a metaphor for the emotional side of your brain. If you discard all logic you end up doing stuff you shouldn't.

Better advice is to listen to your brain.

 

Looking at my brother-in-law who used logic to study finance and works in a bank as a team leader, but hates the job... I wonder.

I let my logical part of my brain dictate a lot of decisions I make, especially in consideration to keep a roof above my kids head. But I'm torn if this is really the right way to live my short life.

 

I find F-sharp major pretty useless - too many sharps!

Tom

 

Actually most majors are useless. And we could do with a lot less colonels and generals, too.

 

I don't think you could say that after listening to the Prelude & Fugue in F-Sharp Major, BWV 858 by Bach, from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

It really SHOULD be played on the harpsichord, which was Bach's instrument. The piano didn't exist yet. I have the whole set played by Christiane Jaccottet. But I cannot find this performance on YouTube, so here's a performance on the piano.

 

I would agree with the list with the exceptions of chemistry and mechanical engineering. I don't comprehend how anyone could say that modern life would continue on without them. Meckies get the easy engineering degree (as we always tease them ) but in reality is is much harder than everything else on the list except chemistry and actually contributes to society.

The rest have their place in society, but really would anyone care if they never found those "hidden" images under paintings from many centuries ago? And even then, it is the chemist, physicist, and engineer that got the image and the historian said "look here". It makes for some interesting news every now and then but that's about it. If you like to paint, then I doubt a 4 year degree on the history of painting and various styles is going to influence you any. It only makes people want to mimic others.

 

Back when I was in college, I took Journalism courses as part of my TV/Radio Production and Engineering Degree. While not required, it did help round me out to make me a better TV engineer!
That was in the 70's, when we had 3 networks that took major pride in the quality of their reporting and engineering.
Now we have more cable networks producing more crap that would have NEVER been acceptable or tolerated.
In our quest to hire TV engineers that have some background and training, I am astounded at the number of "YouTube" engineers that are coming out of the woodwork expecting to get a Network entry level job. They have no clue how Network level television is supposed to be technically run, much less have an idea what is quality and what is not! All are rejected, qualified applicants only PLEASE!

Standards are dropping fast everywhere, I think it's about time we start getting some of them back.

 

I'm glad to see that my Philosophy Major did not make the list. We beat out Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering. Awesome! In your face, hard sciences!

People used to ask me what I was going to do with a philosophy degree, and I used to say, "We're not allowed to tell."

 

Majors, schmajors. I had at least 4 majors before finished undergrad

 

There can be a difference between how useful the major is to the person and how useful to the larger population.

The following story I always found interesting. A very smart and productive EE I worked with got irritated at a technician who could not decide on what he wanted to do for a degree. I asked why the irritation? His story was simple.

He found himself in a deeply rural foundry plant, working for minimum wage, 18 yrs old with a pregnant wife. After working there a few weeks, he found out that the most senior workers who had been there decades were earning like a dollar more. At that point he realized he was going to become another bubba unless he made some drastic changes. With no money, they decided they needed hard core engineering degrees to get a decent jobs. To make a long story short, he and his wife worked every possible job, lived (beyound) extremely simply, and made sure he got his EE degree and she got her SW Eng degree.

A lot of decipline came into play to make this work when the bills were almost insurmountable, raising the babies was always needed, time for odd job work hours, and very hard EE/SW courses left no time to sleep. It was a long hard journey. Yet, they made it and have done very, very well since then.

So back to the irritation that started this story. The concept of not taking the most practical major possible just struck him as insanely stupid. How could I argue?

 

Putting himself in a position where he had to make those choices to get himself out of the hole he dug was even stupider.

Pulling himself out of the hole he dug was very admirable, but is sure doesn't put him in a position to be giving other people advice on how to plan their education and life.

 

Philosophy is what you get when you apply the rules of logic and reason to assumptions that are unprovable at best, or preposterous at worst. The difference between science and philosophy is that science tests its conclusions. Philosophy does not. If a scientist follows a line of reasoning that concludes that the sun will rise in the west, he then goes outside and looks. When his observational experiment shows the conclusion was wrong, he rejects it. The philosopher dispenses with the experiment, and spends the rest of his life believing that the sun rises in the west.

That's how we get religion.

 

I see you never took philosophy. Have you ever heard of the philosophy of science? That is what corrected the erroneous scientific method that you are speaking of. Here is an old saw:

The sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
How do you know?
Because the sun always rises in the east.
How do you know that it therefore will tomorrow?
Because nature is constant.
How do you know?
Because the sun always rises in the east.

Philosophy is also responsible for sentential calculus, or the "reasoning" behind computers and artificial intelligence. Our philosophy department was deeply bound to the computer science department, and some professors taught in both colleges.

Science, as it were, owes its corrected methodology and purpose, to the more rigorous methods of philosophers. I am also very fond of pointing out the rational constructionist arguments (logical fallacy) that underlie religious dogma. So the whole religion thing is off base as well.

Still, a joke I used to tell in the 70's (before computers): The head of the science department asked the dean for an increased budget for more equipment. The dean says, "Why can't you be like the math department, they only ask for paper, pencils, and erasers." He thinks for a minute and says, "Better still, be like the philosophy department, they don't ask for erasers."