Every person who enrolls in college has an important decision to make: what are they going to major in? Choosing what discipline to major in, for the most part, sets the person up for what they’re going to be doing upon completing their degree, what career they’re going to be entering into, and more importantly how the aforementioned career will contribute to society as a whole. This last piece is important because we should all strive to be better citizens and more productive members of society as to improve society as a whole for each and every one of us. Nicholaos Jones, a philosophy professor from the University of Alabama in Hunstville, argues in “Liberal Arts, and the Advantages of Being Useless" that the best way to make people better
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He evokes Tom Gillis, writer for Forbes magazine, to lead into this assertion, “The next billion-dollar company will be run by history majors who are skilled in wading through a massive jumble of facts and who have the ability to distill these facts down to a clear set of objectives that a global team can fulfill.” (Jones 28). Jones goes on to say that because of all of these skills that were acquired through liberal arts degree programs liberal arts degree holders are not at any kind of significant disadvantage compared to other degrees. Edward Conard, American businessman and author, challenges this claim in “We don’t need more humanities majors,” where he talks about the inadequacy of Liberal Arts degree holders filling in jobs in STEM-related fields, “It’s true some advanced degree holders may have earned undergraduate degrees in humanities, but they quickly learned humanities degrees alone offered inadequate training, and they returned to school for more technical degrees.” (Conard 42). He also gives statistics regarding how America is not producing enough knowledgeable people in STEM-related fields to match the ever-growing demand in our country, and because of this the industries have been having to go
He evokes Tom Gillis, writer for Forbes magazine, to lead into this assertion, “The next billion-dollar company will be run by history majors who are skilled in wading through a massive jumble of facts and who have the ability to distill these facts down to a clear set of objectives that a global team can fulfill.” (Jones 28). Jones goes on to say that because of all of these skills that were acquired through liberal arts degree programs liberal arts degree holders are not at any kind of significant disadvantage compared to other degrees. Edward Conard, American businessman and author, challenges this claim in “We don’t need more humanities majors,” where he talks about the inadequacy of Liberal Arts degree holders filling in jobs in STEM-related fields, “It’s true some advanced degree holders may have earned undergraduate degrees in humanities, but they quickly learned humanities degrees alone offered inadequate training, and they returned to school for more technical degrees.” (Conard 42). He also gives statistics regarding how America is not producing enough knowledgeable people in STEM-related fields to match the ever-growing demand in our country, and because of this the industries have been having to go