Should Liberal Arts Majors have Limits on How Much Student Loans they Can take Out?

[Farang]

It also appears many of the CEOs have MBA or law degrees, which suggests they have a liberal arts background in addition to engineering. Nothing in that study suggests to me an engineering degree alone is a great path to leadership

 

[SaurusX]

I voted NO, because if someone wants to spend the money and someone else is willing to loan it to them, then they can have at it. Yes, I understand that student loans are now bankrolled by the government, but they also can't be washed away in bankruptcy. The taxpayers will get that money back one way or another, no matter how stupid the degree is.

 

[cwjerome]

I voted NO, because if someone wants to spend the money and someone else is willing to loan it to them, then they can have at it. Yes, I understand that student loans are now bankrolled by the government, but they also can't be washed away in bankruptcy. The taxpayers will get that money back one way or another, no matter how stupid the degree is.

At the same time, I'm not necessarily a fan of a one-size-fits-all approach in most matters. I'm not saying it should happen, but I would have no problem if loans for some liberal arts degrees were a little lower than loans for other degrees that make a lot more money on average, just as a practical matter. Access to loans is essential in this day and age, yet some variance on loan amount or other details don't bother me if it's based on rational, factual reasoning.

 

[nanette1985]

Everyone should have limits on how much student loans they can take out.

As the parent of 4 college-grad kids, I think it's ridiculous to come out of college with the obscene loans that many of my kids'friends have. (none of mine borrowed any money for college - working, grants, etc.)

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Everyone should have limits on how much student loans they can take out.

As the parent of 4 college-grad kids, I think it's ridiculous to come out of college with the obscene loans that many of my kids'friends have. (none of mine borrowed any money for college - working, grants, etc.)

Everyone does have a limit ~ 30k undergrad ~120k grad. And we have differential limits, with medical degrees caped at about 240k

 

[unokitty]

The study you cited splits business and accounting, liberal arts and economics, while maintaining the broader category of engineering. At many schools these majors fall into the same school, for me as a liberal arts major for example I took multiple high level Econ courses.

If we combine these categories to match the same broad categorization of 'engineering' we see the other schools are competitive with engineering.

You can also see here the difference in engineers and liberal arts majors.. We tend to strongly question premises

Questions don't change facts. And

"...facts are stubborn things. Last January the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University published Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings, and in mid-October the U.S. Census Bureau released a pair of briefings based on data from the American Community Survey, and the two studies reached the same conclusions. Individuals with engineering degrees, they indicate, experience lower unemployment and make more money than graduates with any other major. Undergraduate majors in computer science, mathematics, statistics, business, life sciences, and physical sciences are next in line. Liberal arts majors are at the back of this pack."

Uno

 

[cwjerome]

Questions don't change facts. And

"...facts are stubborn things. Last January the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University published Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings, and in mid-October the U.S. Census Bureau released a pair of briefings based on data from the American Community Survey, and the two studies reached the same conclusions. Individuals with engineering degrees, they indicate, experience lower unemployment and make more money than graduates with any other major. Undergraduate majors in computer science, mathematics, statistics, business, life sciences, and physical sciences are next in line. Liberal arts majors are at the back of this pack."

Uno

I don't think anyone is arguing that liberal arts majors make more than engineers. For the 2nd time, wtf is your point?

 

[Farang]

Questions don't change facts. And

"...facts are stubborn things. Last January the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University published Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings, and in mid-October the U.S. Census Bureau released a pair of briefings based on data from the American Community Survey, and the two studies reached the same conclusions. Individuals with engineering degrees, they indicate, experience lower unemployment and make more money than graduates with any other major. Undergraduate majors in computer science, mathematics, statistics, business, life sciences, and physical sciences are next in line. Liberal arts majors are at the back of this pack."

Uno

I believe your initial post was regarding leadership positions.

To your (new) point..Yes, many careers pursued by liberal arts graduates are not as lucrative. That does not mean a liberal arts major is ill prepared to make money. It could probably be argued in general liberal arts majors care less about money than engineering majors, because a high starting salary is not the driving force in their decision to pursue that study ( not saying it is for all engineers, but surely a certain chunk)

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Questions don't change facts.

The psychology literature indicates that this is demonstrably false

 

[DCal430]

STEM and Liberal Arts are NOT mutually exclusive, Mathematics is a Liberal Arts, and is also part of STEM.

 

[OutHouse]

Good for you. You've made it. I'm talking about the country as a whole. You are an aberration and you know it. If you look at other folks with backgrounds similar to yours can you honestly say that a larger percentage of them are gainfully employed on equal footing compared to you? No you can't because that would be complete BS.

I'll reiterate--the country is hurting as a whole on the education front. Do you think we can sustain our technological superiority as a country if we continue to get generation after generation of students who pursue an education in fluff?

The tide is already turning. Instead of our own students studying science, engineering, medicine, etc, we are importing students from other countries like China and India to fill these seats in our universities.

Not only that, we are also importing a lot of the workforce in these fields to meet the job demand.

If anything, we need fewer political science graduates. Look our Congress members, for instance. How many of them have a background in law and political science? Nearly all of them!

Look at China's government. They are made up of mostly economists, scientists, and engineers.

P.S. The bolded text you've written isn't a sentence. I thought you said you were a writer? I think you could have used a few more of those "5 to 20-page papers."

you are a class "A" elitist prick and totally out of touch with the real world.