Our family's liberal arts college experience

[Bestwifeever]

Frankly, pushing a kid into engineering when their heart isn't in it is a recipe for a bunch of failed classes and extra student loan debt.

The kid has to have both the aptitude and desire to slog through it. If either of those is missing, they are almost guarrenteed to fail out.

Heck, a pretty large portion of the kids with the aptitude and desire fail out.

And worse, what if we were living in a world engineered by people who really had no aptitude for it or pride or passion in their work but felt they had to get that ROI on a degree so struggled through? Oops, that building just fell over. Oops, that bridge just collapsed. Oops, my tires are four different sizes but it's okay because my car stopped starting after two months.

 

[Hamlet]

At the U of Minn, there was a GPA requirement for each engineering major at the start of the 3rd year. So you would need a 2.7 to start the "upper division" classes for Mech Engineering, or a 2.5 for EE, etc. They used it to control the number of applicants to the various majors. If a major got more or less popular, they would raise or lower the GPA requirement to get the number of students they had room for.

I remember that a lot of engineering students that were passing with C's but couldn't meet that GPA requirement ended up in Economics. It was one of the majors that had requirements that kept all of the Calculus from being wasted.

They say 50%, and at my university, that was true. When I think of my classmates in engineering, about 10% just quit college. The other 40% switched majors. Many went into education, although a few went into business and liberal arts. Two of my friends are very successful in business now. One runs his own landscaping business, the other is a manager at a manufacturing plant.

And then there are those who make it through to the working world and flame out there. The #1 reason I see that happen is lack of communication skills. STEM is great, but if you are at a college that somehow allows you to never have to write a paper or express yourself in written and spoken thought, you are sunk. Seen that a few times.

 

[38Chevy454]

While it's simplistic to assume that you'll automatically get rich if you "follow your passions", life is too short to go into something you don't like just for the money.

I will also add the corollary (made up by me ):

"Life is too long to do something you love that won't pay the bills"

I agree that the kid has to do something they like and interested in. However it is important to understand consequences of decisions to get a degree in a major with poor employment prospects and poor future earning potential. Most of use on E-R.org are able to do it because we do have sufficient income to provide enough for savings and ability to build up an amount that can support our desired lifestyle in retirement. Even LBYM can be tough if you barely make enough to survive.

 

[ProGolferWannabe]

Could you elaborate some on the degree to which the college provided access to jobs for graduates in terms of things like internships, career advisory/placement activities such as job fairs and corporate visits, networking with alumni, etc.? My observation is that these become especially important outside of the non-STEM majors, and it is important for a school to be strong in these areas and for students to take advantage of them.

So, this is one of the areas where I think the colleges fell short. While both schools had a career center where the kids could go and research internships, get lists of alumni, get help with updating a resume', etc. for the most part, the schools were not particularly successful as acting an an intermediary in terms "connecting" the kids to strong employment opportunities. One of my children was able to find a couple of opportunities for summer internships, and worked (unpaid) at a museum and a newspaper. He found both of these opportunities independently of the school. In terms of their post graduate employment, same story--neither got a job via a school "job fair" or such. They both basically did a bunch of searching on-line.

Maybe I had greater expectations of the schools' services than what was realistic.

 

[ProGolferWannabe]

I doubt many will say a liberal arts degree is literally useless. Absolute zero is a very low bar to clear. The questions are whether the same value can be obtained by spending less or whether they will get more value if they studied something else or somewhere else with the same education budget.

"Useless" was certainly a silly choice of wording. But, as you say, I think there is a significant body of people who believe that a liberal arts degree has limited economic worth. I was just trying to express that the kids did better than what I expected in terms of their employment outcomes.

 

[ProGolferWannabe]

I am glad the Liberal Arts degrees worked out for your family, but most parents in the U.S. don't have enough saved for retirement let alone a spare $100K per kid to spend on college -

A Look at Household Net Worth and Household Income By Age Group from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances

Student debt in the U.S. is at $1.2 trillion (trillion with a T). A liberal arts degree paid for with loans and a poor ROI is not a good financial investment for most students, and families not needing loans and $100K+ in savings to spend per kid on college may want a better ROI for that kind of money.

So, first, we certainly have been fortunate. Our family income while not top 1% (probably not even top 5%) has allowed us to provide for our kids by paying for their college. Obviously, we accumulated funds over 18+ years of saving/investing, so like many of the folks on this board, it was a long haul to save up the necessary capital to pay for school. Nonetheless, I do agree that what were able to achieve is beyond the means of many families. While our "threshold" for paying for school may have been different than many families, we did, however, have a limit. I felt it was unwise for us (or the kids) to go into debt to get their BAs--I probably would have felt that way even if they had studied engineering, computer science, etc. As I mentioned, the kids got into some very fine schools where they got no merit based aid----would have been $200K to go there (per child) for 4 years. I was personally can't see sending that for any degree---STEM or otherwise.

 

[ProGolferWannabe]

Now there are tons of mediocre schools and tons of people with touchy-feely degrees and employers can be a lot more picky. I'm happy to read about the OP's kids but I think they're exceptional. If I had a child who wanted to go for a non-STEM major I'd make sure he/she had a good idea of what they might be able to do with it and what compensation that might entail.

Of course my kids are exceptional--they are my kids!

 

[ERD50]

...
So, on the whole, I was pretty happy how things worked out. While they were in school, I was honestly, a bit dubious that they would be able to find work with just their BAs in "touchy feely" fields, but I was apparently wrong. So, I am not yet ready to pile on and say a liberal arts degree is useless---kind of gives me some hope that liberal arts are still viable.

Sounds good to me. There are many roads to Dublin.

I think some of the 'pile on' you refer to is more along the lines of some reports of students racking up many $$$ in debt, and earning a degree in a field with limited job prospects (and maybe not getting good grades along the way), and then 'moaning' about all this student debt and no job offers.

I'm not sure what kind of jobs your kids got, but certainly one of the major (the major?) skills to take away from any education is to learn how to learn.

When unemployment was lower, a BA in anything was seen as a sign that a person could stick to a goal and achieve it, so the job may have little to do with the degree. In today's market, not so much.

At any rate, sounds like the kids are on a good path, and that's always a good thing (and I'm fortunate to know the feeling!)!

-ERD50

 

[Ronstar]

I started off on the road to an engineering degree, but then dropped out. Later went back and got a BA in business and was a business owner for 20 years after that. We employed several people with engineering degrees that were great at engineering, but generally lacked communication and business skills. I had the communication and business skills, but lacked the higher level engineering knowledge. IMO, a person with degrees in both engineering and liberal arts such as business would be a great asset to an engineering firm. The good thing about liberal arts degrees is that they can be used in a wider variety of professions than those with engineering degrees. The good thing about engineering degrees is that its easier to find a job and make more money than those with liberal arts degrees.

Sound's like OP's kids are on the right track. The toughest part after college is just finding a decent job.

 

[Bestwifeever]

There will always be a place for non-STEM majors, even with companies heavy with STEM backgrounds. The CEO of COMED (Commonwealth Edison), formerly with Motorola, majored in theater and worked in retail until going to law school.

And congrats to the OP's two kids and their gainful employment!

 

[imoldernu]

Reflections on 60 years of happiness, based on four years of a liberal arts education. A different time, a different world where the premium was on personal satisfaction more so than financial expectations. As best I can recall, these are the disciplines that were part of my own experience.

ARMY ROTC
Psychology (major) Abnormal Psych
German (minor)
Calculus
Biology
World History
French
Astronomy
Music
Comparative Religions
Art
Creative Writing
Philosophy
Sociology
Physics... (one short semester)
Chemistry
..............................................
And along the way, because of the cultural atmosphere, some ventures into Anthropology, Paleontology (Maine coast shell heaps), chorus, sailing, and... four hours of swimming 6 days a week (year round). All tied in to being in a Greek Letter Fraternity for meals, entertainment, and hanging. This tempered with working in the kitchen as a dishwasher, three meals a day for 50 'brothers' every other week... and a three hour a week job of polishing brass in the museum.

Overall, the atmosphere of learning was such that there was a rub off from other students that teased one into dipping in to unknown waters. Fond memories of hours spent with headphones in the music lab... parsing symphonies or using the Interpreter's Bible to find meaning from four language translations. 2 AM trips to the top of the physics building in temperatures that were 10 below zero... to use the 12 inch reflecting telescope and track a variable star. Classical music concerts, lectures from world renown authors and experts and study cubicles in the corners of a gothic library.

There is something about the sense of history that pervades a college that has been around since 1794. One absorbs the biographies of famous persons and "must reads" of their writings... Hawthorne, Longfellow, Adm Peary and MacMillan, Franklin Pierce... and hmmm... Alfred Kinsey.

One small point that I didn't appreciate at the time. My roommate's family owned the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, and we would study our ROTC Field Manuals together, in front of the Franklin Fireplace and sitting at the secretary where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

It was a point in time... a turning point, from the vestigial Victorian era, to a more integrated world. Vance Packard and "The Hidden Persuaders", Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye", and Tom Lehrer. Just as important, was that those years were the pivot point for drugs. As far as I know, except for a very few apocryphal stories about peyote and mescaline, the "drug" of choice was alcohol. Timothy Leary was still in the experimental stage, Edgar Allan Poe was a historical anomaly. Sex, language, theater and TV were in the older morality framework... man to man, but never man to woman. Politics and political office was respected.

Off topic of current Liberal Arts experience, but a memory trigger of a very pleasant time of life.

 

[MichaelB]

There will always be a place for non-STEM majors, even with companies heavy with STEM backgrounds.

Reminds me of a college math professor of mine who tried to motivate me to change majors from liberal arts and humanities to math or engineering. His favorite line was "I'll come by and buy a hat from you when you're working in the men's department at ...". It worked out differently.

My view, FWIW, is that core skills, including critical thinking, effective communication and strong reasoning, will help anyone get ahead no matter what they choose to study.

 

[FUEGO]

Reminds me of a college math professor of mine who tried to motivate me to change majors from liberal arts and humanities to math or engineering. His favorite line was "I'll come by and buy a hat from you when you're working in the men's department at ...". It worked out differently.

My view, FWIW, is that core skills, including critical thinking, effective communication and strong reasoning, will help anyone get ahead no matter what they choose to study.

If he was a statistics professor, he would have been, on average, correct to try to persuade you to switch to STEM.

 

[Ally]

I went to a very good liberal arts college and majored in Religion. I was interested in it and couldn't decide on anything else. Later I went back and got a grad degree in education and have worked at a education related nonprofit for 30 years. I loved my college and they taught me to write, to strive towards ethical behavior, personal responsibility and to come out of my shell.

My son majored in Latin and taught school for awhile. But then he taught himself Java and other computer programming languages and he has a great job as a software architect working for a major medical software company. He makes more that my husband and I together. He's so well rounded because he took so many different classes, which helps him on his team.

So, I think there is great value in a liberal arts education, especially for a motivated person.

 

[gcgang]

I have a good friend that worked for one of the major management consulting Businesses. New hires crunched computer code. He did interviewing for new hires in his last few years there. He told me their favorite place to hire was not the STEM graduates of the major colleges, but my alma mater, a small liberal arts school. He said the music and philosophy majors worked out best. He explained it as his company could teach the people how to program, but the school prepared them how to think critically and communicate.

 

[youbet]

The first seems to be whether people should major in liberal arts or STEM. .

This is confusing since many of the majors available at Liberal Arts schools are STEM or involve science and/or math.

I think folks may be interchanging "Liberal Arts" with "Arts and Humanities" or "Social Sciences."

You can go to a Liberal Arts school and carry a STEM major such as Biology, Physics, Math, Geology, Chemistry, Pre-med (Bio-Chemistry), Computer Science, etc. Or, you can major in a quantitative non-STEM major such as Accounting, Economics or Finance.

Attending a Liberal Arts school does not necessarily mean being a C- student in Art History.

 

[lorikmt]

I also have two kids with fairly recently-minted liberal arts degrees, one in English and one in Psychology, both from a state university. I would have preferred that they would have gone into one of the STEM fields. However, the daughter with the English degree is 3 years out of college and making over $70K working as a tech recruiter in New York. The younger daughter with the Psychology degree is making considerably less, but only graduated a year ago and does make enough to live on her own in an apt in Seattle. She has a job that will be stepping stone to something better. Although not having the immediate payoff of a STEM degree, a degree in liberal arts/humanities is still valuable, as it gives the chance for the foot in the door. I really do wish my daughters would have pursued science or tech in college, but neither seemed inclined. I think they will be fine regardless.

 

[haha]

Frankly, pushing a kid into engineering when their heart isn't in it is a recipe for a bunch of failed classes and extra student loan debt.

The kid has to have both the aptitude and desire to slog through it. If either of those is missing, they are almost guarrenteed to fail out.

One thing about engineering, as opposed say to math or physics or chemistry. In school at least, it is boring as hell as soon as you get into the professional engineering courses.

Ha

 

[Al in Ohio]

They say 50%, and at my university, that was true. When I think of my classmates in engineering, about 10% just quit college. The other 40% switched majors. Many went into education, although a few went into business and liberal arts. Two of my friends are very successful in business now. One runs his own landscaping business, the other is a manager at a manufacturing plant.

And then there are those who make it through to the working world and flame out there. The #1 reason I see that happen is lack of communication skills. STEM is great, but if you are at a college that somehow allows you to never have to write a paper or express yourself in written and spoken thought, you are sunk. Seen that a few times.

I started my BS in Engineering in the late 70's and into the early 80's. By the time I graduated less than 20% who started with me ended up with that engineering degree. I was at a state school where the admission rate was higher and if you had the engineering dream and scored a minimum of 25 or 26 on the ACT you could give it a shot. Most failed physics and higher levels of calculus long before any engineering classes even began in year 3. More transferred into business school or something less rigorous than those who dropped out of college entirely. I'd guess at least a third got so discouraged that they dropped out of college (BS) entirely.

My wife is a Dean at a Private LA college and through her knowledge of higher Ed I gained a whole new appreciation for non STEM careers. I admit that Technical minded career folks like me are a little ignorant about the Liberal Arts and Humanities. As she reminds me often: Most CEO's and powerful corporate boards and leaders have a LA degree, not a STEM degree. That is in fact true.

Here's some more interesting facts from the Association of American Colleges and Universities

http://www.aacu.org/press_room/press_releases/2014/liberalartsreport.cfm

 

[daylatedollarshort]

As she reminds me often: Most CEO's and powerful corporate boards and leaders have a LA degree, not a STEM degree. That is in fact true.

That may be true, but only a very small percentage of people in this country are going to become CEOs, so average salaries by major are going to look more like this:

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/majors-that-pay-you-back

What concerns me are the kids we know graduating with liberal arts degrees, worried over low job prospects, parents unprepared for retirement and 6 figure student debt either the kids, the parents or some combination are going to have to pay off.

If it was just one family I would think it was none of my business, but it isn't just one, and nationwide there is $1.2 trillion in student debt which is a drag on our entire economy and causing depression in young adults -

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paigeca...student-debt-can-make-you-sick-and-depressed/

 

[haha]

What concerns me are the kids we know graduating with liberal arts degrees, worried over low job prospects, parents unprepared for retirement and 6 figure student debt either the kids, the parents or some combination are going to have to pay off.

You forgot the taxpayer.

Ha

 

[Katsmeow]

What concerns me are the kids we know graduating with liberal arts degrees, worried over low job prospects, parents unprepared for retirement and 6 figure student debt either the kids, the parents or some combination are going to have to pay off.

I do have a concern about the student loan debt. I also think that college tuition is way, way, way too high for no good reason.

Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media - Salon.com

However, I don't think that liberal arts degrees are really a problem. For three reasons basically. First, as I indicated earlier not everyone has to ability to earn a STEM degree. Second, some would be utterly miserable in such a field. Finally, society does need to have some people in those other fields.

 

[Al in Ohio]

If you read the link I posted you'll discover that less than 20-25% of US students can even hope to graduate with a STEM degree and that's a generous figure if you include nursing etc. The majority of graduates are just not cut out for those degrees. More than half wouldn't even qualify for the admission standards. You don't see that problem stated in the flawed Forbes article.

So if we push more under prepared HS grads into STEM degrees that are too hard for them and higher percentages get discouraged and retention levels fall lower, then more student debt is incurred and those kids dropout with no degree to pay there first year loan back and the problem gets worse.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

I do have a concern about the student loan debt. I also think that college tuition is way, way, way too high for no good reason.

Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media - Salon.com

However, I don't think that liberal arts degrees are really a problem. For three reasons basically. First, as I indicated earlier not everyone has to ability to earn a STEM degree. Second, some would be utterly miserable in such a field. Finally, society does need to have some people in those other fields.

I don't think kids getting liberal arts degrees are a problem either. I am concerned about the kids who go into massive amounts of debt to obtain one in a specific major where their job prospects and ability to pay back their government sponsored loans are poor. $1.2 trillion is a big societal issue. That is more than is owed on credit cards in the U.S.

There are many trade schools and AA degrees with very good ROIs.

 

[Al in Ohio]

There are many trade schools and AA degrees with very good ROIs.

Not so. Almost all the trade schools common from the 1960's until about 2002 are gone. I spent some of my time from 1998-2006 remodeling old high school metal shops, wood shops, welding shops and auto shops into computer science labs and just plain additional classrooms. Due to anti union sentiment the post High School professional trade apprenticeship track has also significantly dried up.