(no subject)

[ursula]

A link from greythistle on feminism, housework, and choices that aren't makes me wonder about the liberal arts & ambition-- there's no particular reason why an English or sociology degree should doom you to life as a secretary, but so many of my non-math friends seem to feel stuck between temping and grad school . . .

Comments

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking that -- it was an interesting read, and presented the playing field very nicely.

As for the major question, while I agree with you that in an ideal world, a liberal arts degree shouldn't put you in that position, in the real world, statistically speaking, of course it will. All of the professions (and I include the sciences here) have their own training courses, their majors. If you spend four years training for one of those, you have a huge advantage over anyone who doesn't. What's left over are the service jobs -- comparitively speaking, no specific and detailed body of knowledge, but an array of general skills and soft skills. There are some jobs which directly apply knowledge in the field, but they pay is commensurate to their relative capatalistic importance as fields.

I would love to see a world where I thought this would change, but it will never happen. I think a best case solution would be for schools to start requiring a stronger liberal arts core for all degrees, which would definitely help all their graduates, but also perhaps make what are, to be blunt, dead end majors less tempting. That plus aggressive pre-college advising that lets women know what the value and the consequences of their choices are might start to make a difference. I understand the complaints of not wanting to go into the higher paying fields because the work environment isn't as enjoyable, but as more women enter those fields, the environment will change, eventually -- no other mechanism will ever accomplish this.

[ursula]

I don't think it's fair to include the sciences and omit law, government, journalism, and the rest of academia from the professions, though admittedly what I'm wondering about are *not* the professions, but jobs like management and marketing and so forth which do depend on those soft skills, but provide a path where you end up equal to (or managing) the engineers. I also wonder who ought to do the advising: liberal arts schools seem to be slightly better than other universities at explaining to their graduates what one can do with a liberal arts degree besides temp or go to grad school, but it seems silly to expect professors to be experts at finding non-academic jobs, and college career centers seem very dependent on peer counselors, who presumably aren't expert either.

[flammifera.livejournal.com]

But jobs like management and marketing frequently also want more specialized degrees than 'classics', business for the former and...well, I'm not sure what sort of degrees marketing jobs tend to require, but I at least have the conception that it would take more specialized training than I have. Then again, maybe I should see if I can apply to the cool advertising firm a couple floors above my law firm...

[ursula]

You can't get into good business schools without business experience, and they do find applicants somewhere! You might want a bunch of internships or the like before applying to a particular sort of position, but that's what the research stage of the job app process is for :)

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I assume he's not typical, but the sales professional in my department, who does quite a good job too, not only has a BA in classics, but also has a PhD! I'm not actually sure what our marketing director majored in, though.

And the only bank president I know has a PhD in philosophy. So I guess there are at least some unconventional job paths out there.