Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
Well think about the legions of people that graduated with B and below averages in an arts degree. They can't end up working for good money on the basis of their degree alone and their grades are too crappy to get into law, medicine or anything that builds into a well-paying career.
Ultimately all an arts degree gets you in the job world is a leg up on high school graduates for clerical jobs. My guess is that in a place like Alberta if a job making money was of their highest importance, going to a place like SAIT and getting technical education would serve them better. I wonder how many of them ended up in that situation not by choice but rather yielding to parental or societal pressure to go to University.
|
The worst thing to happen to a liberal arts education was its eventual degradation into vocational training. I hate to sound like an idealist, but the arts and humanities are supposed to train and prepare one's soul for living a good and virtuous life. It sort of sickens me, as one who has been educated in the humanities, when it is forced into something practical and necessary to live a prosperous life.
The arts are very difficult, and one has to love them, in order to thrive in them. Most kids are sent to do arts because a) it doesn't have a strong mathematical component, b) the language requirement has disappeared from the undergraduate level, and c) student prose and writing requirements have fallen through the floor.
Thus, a good many students are able to "get by" with C's and B's, but they are totally unhappy, and aimless. They don't know why they are in the arts, only that they SHOULD be in the arts because society or more likely, their silly parents demand it.
My father is a rather successful stone-mason/brick-layer. He would not have the patience, or the required laziness to study Old and Great Books, and not just study them, but make them the love of his life.
There is nothing wrong with this. Students should have the freedom and encouragement to decide upon a respective career that does not involve 4+ years of useless (to them) university education