![]() ![]() George Anders is convinced we have the humanities in particular all wrong. (Though, of course, this is hardly the only diversity problem such disciplines have). It also perpetuates the stereotype of liberal arts graduates, in particular, as an elite caste – something that can discourage underprivileged students, and anyone else who needs an immediate return on their university investment, from pursuing potentially rewarding disciplines. At worst? Pushing people onto paths that set them up for less fulfilling lives. At best, that could be making some students unnecessarily stressed. It’s also that our assumptions about the market value of certain degrees – and the “worthlessness” of others – might be off. And it’s not just that we’re losing out on crucial ways to understand and improve both the world and ourselves – including enhancing personal wellbeing, sparking innovation and helping create tolerance, among other values. In the UK, government focus on Stem has led to a nearly 20% drop in students taking A-levels in English and a 15% decline in the arts.īut there’s a problem with this approach. ![]() In China, the government has unveiled plans to turn 42 universities into “world class” institutions of science and technology. In the US, politicians from Senator Marco Rubio to former President Barack Obama have made the humanities a punch line. This has been echoed by statements and policies around the world. And no matter what you do, forget the liberal arts – non-vocational degrees that include natural and social sciences, mathematics and the humanities, such as history, philosophy and languages. Not totally sure? Go into Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) – that way, you can become an engineer or IT specialist. Want to be a journalist? Study journalism, we’re told. The exam that brings a whole country to a standstillīut most of us want to maximise that investment – and that can lead to a plug-and-play type of approach to higher education.Broadly, they already do: in the US, for example, a bachelor’s degree holder earns $461 more each week than someone who never attended a university. But given those costs, it’s no wonder that most of us need our degrees to pay off in a more concrete way. Learning for the sake of learning is a beautiful thing. In the US, room, board and tuition at a private university costs an average of $48,510 a year in the UK, tuition fees alone are £9,250 ($12,000) per year for home students in Singapore, four years at a private university can cost up to SGD$69,336 (US$51,000). Still, that alone is no guarantee of a job – and yet we’re paying more and more for one. Today, a degree is all but a necessity for the job market, one that more than halves your chances of being unemployed. In the days when a university education was the purview of a privileged few, perhaps there wasn’t the assumption that a degree had to be a springboard directly into a career. But you’re not majoring in communications?” Read all of the year's biggest hits here.Īt university, when I told people I was studying for a history degree, the response was almost always the same: “You want to be a teacher?”. As we head into 2020, we're running the best, most insightful and most essential Worklife stories from 2019. ![]()
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