“I hear Goldman is really looking for a bunch of classics majors to pay some six-figure starting salaries to this year,” I often joke to a friend who considers majoring in that field. While I make these comments facetiously, I should reconsider them, especially after Republican governors’ onslaught against a number of liberal arts degrees.
For example, Gov. Pat McCrory, R-N.C., has said, “If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.” Similarly, Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said that his state didn’t need more anthropologists — it’s “a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here.” (Ironically, Scott’s daughter has a degree an anthropology from the College of William and Mary, a public institution.)
Despite the apparent hypocrisy, Scott wishes to offer financial incentives toward STEM programs, like a $3,000-tuition cut in Florida public universities for students who earn STEM degrees. However, public education should mean affordability for all, not just for those interested in careers that the state favors. This tuition break would be funded by cuts to other programs, like psychology and history, since learning about the brain and being aware of the past are so overvalued.
Dartmouth students, luckily, need not worry, since these governors will let us study whatever we want at our private school. But if McCrory and Scott had their ways, students at public universities would face pressure to enter STEM fields. Such a policy, if looked at purely in terms of personal satisfaction, would not the deliver the goods. And besides that, it’s simply bad economics.
A liberal arts education is a desirable asset on the job market. A 2008 study of 502 technology companies determined that while 92 percent of CEOs had earned bachelor’s degrees or advanced degrees, a mere 37 percent had degrees in computer technology or engineering. Moreover, the last U.S. Census showed that fewer than 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies’ CEOs held advanced degrees of any sort. Steve Jobs once said, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” No wonder, then, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that recent English literature majors have a lower unemployment percentage than those who hold degrees in information systems and architecture.
Am I criticizing STEM programs? Of course not. These studies are socially important, and people who wish to pursue careers in these fields should, by all means, do so. However, people drawn to non-STEM fields also have a right to pursue their passions. I believe our campuses, workforces and societies as a whole are better off when students study what excites them. Every discipline offers valuable tools and different insights. For the all important business goal of innovation, everyone on a team has to bring different perspectives and approaches for tackling problems. And, of course, not everyone can, or should, be an engineer.
The arts, too, are important. Culture remains America’s biggest export. In most countries around the world, American film and music are as ubiquitous as blue jeans. Even with reduced revenues due to online piracy, Hollywood films and DVDs still earn just a little shy of $100 billion a year worldwide. The U.S. music industry earns another $15 billion despite its inability to curb the ever-growing threat of piracy. And theater productions on Broadway and in community theaters continue to attract business and enrich our lives. Like the humanities, the arts should remain an integral part of any educational institution.
A college education, specifically a liberal arts one, should not have cranking out as many workers as possible to plug the next hole as its main objective. We need to abandon a factory line mentality. Policy makers should not simply look at college graduates as those who can fill some pre-determined place in the national economy.
