I just thought this was an interesting read from today's NY Times. As someone who is feeling this, and who is likewise looking ahead at grad. school as one of his few options, I feel this article.
I also found it interesting that a lot of the top, private Liberal Arts schools are now offering vocational training to their soon-to-be graduates. Kind of like really, really expensive community college, no?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/ma...MPLOYABLE.html
December 12, 2004
Employable Liberal Arts Major, The
By RACHEL DONADIO
Few questions make liberal arts majors wince more than the time-honored ''But what are you going to do with that?'' (As the accounting student said to the English major.) Now, with tuition costs rising as fast as parental anxiety levels, colleges have begun asking the same question -- and helping their students answer it through professional training programs that look ahead to the day after graduation.
This year, Colgate University and New York University began offering special career-oriented workshops to undergraduates. Colgate's ''Career Development in the New Economy'' program brings in alumni business executives to offer advice and engage in networking; students meet for up to two hours a week, for six to eight weeks during the semester. In its Gateway Program, Colgate will soon offer noncredit courses in fields like law, journalism and marketing and finance. ''The job market is getting competitive, and there are a lot of . . . industry-specific skills that young people need as the professions and the economy continue to diversify,'' said Adam Weinberg, the dean of the college at Colgate University.
At New York University, juniors and seniors with high grade-point averages can enroll in the Professional Edge program and take specialized vocational courses for academic credit in N.Y.U.'s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. An art history major could learn to appraise art, or a language student could learn to become a translator. Other colleges are on the same page. Columbia University allows undergraduates to take professional-school courses for credit, as does the University of Southern California.
Colleges say they aren't abandoning the liberal arts education but rather bringing the ideal slightly more in line with the job-market reality. Colgate's program makes sure the professions don't ''seep in and otherwise corrupt the strong liberal arts curriculum,'' Weinberg explains.
Yet others aren't entirely convinced. ''To dilute the power of the liberal arts with premature professionalism will deprive our society of the thoughtful leadership it needs,'' Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College, was quoted as saying in The Times earlier this year. If they have the luxury of time, he said, students should ''go deeper into the liberal arts, because that is the seed corn of an intellectual life and informed citizenship.'' After all, college is breathlessly short, and the American working life increasingly long. How many professionals think back fondly to those industry-specific lingo-training courses of their undergraduate days?