"Liberal Arts" beats 3 other majors

Here's a CCN/Money article on "Most lucrative college degrees":

http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/07/pf/saving/q_jobless_grads/index.htm

Why do holders of "Liberal Arts" degrees command higher salaries than holders of degrees with 3 specific majors?

Is it because "Liberal Arts" degrees are, in fact, education degrees in disguise, and education is the skill in demand?

Or is it an artefact of the fall/spring separation of the data?

 

Although indeed its role as 'General Education' raises the value for the LA degree, I suspect some sampling artifact is also at work. Not so much by time, but:

(1) I will guess, not knowing the polling data, that 'Liberal Arts' may also include a catch-all for every degree they did not specifically name. So the range may be wider.

(2) Very close to LA are PoliSci, History and English AND Biology! Which may be affected by this: very many of the people with these as their latest degrees in the conventional college stream are right now low-paid graduate/professional students. Very few pursue a BS in biology as a terminal degree, but rather as pre-Med, or if research-oriented as prequel to graduate programs. Similarly, the BA in PoliSci is very often code for pre-Law, BA in English or History a prequel to teaching usually via graduate degrees.

JDiaz, BLA

 

Could it be because liberal arts students are typically more literate?

In a 40 course liberal arts degree, one normally has written close to 80 term papers.

Does this literacy and study in the areas many would consider general knowledge shine through at promotion time?

 

It might be that. Liberal Arts bachelors programs were conceived as, and still to some extent are, preparation for elementary school (multiple subjects) teaching.

Of course, the three majors with lower average starting salaries are political science, English and biology. All three of these can be preparation for high school teaching. I don't think that high school teachers are lower paid than elementary teachers.

In the case of English, I suppose that many graduates are trying to make it as writers, and that's notoriously hard. They edit little magazines that nobody reads, and stuff like that.

Some political science grads might end up as low paid operatives in political organizations, hoping to ride a politician's coattails into positions of power.

Some biology graduates may become environmentalists or park rangers. They become public health inspectors and stuff like that.

My point is that in some majors graduates may accept, or even seek out, jobs that don't pay a whole lot. Since the differences in the numbers are small, it wouldn't take a lot of these individuals to move the mean. That would be particularly true if the sample size is small. I wonder about that because the year-to-year percentage change figures are so large in some cases.

 

That must be it - those damn English majors never have to write papers.

 

Nothing I could ever read and understand.

 

Re: Re: "Liberal Arts" beats 3 other majors

Bill Dayson wrote:

> Liberal Arts bachelors programs were conceived as, and still
> to some extent are, preparation for elementary school (multiple
> subjects) teaching.

Is that the correct chronology?

My impression was that:

* "Liberal Arts" was an ancient designation. (The "liberal" doesn't mean "lenient" or "no-expense-spared", but refers to the education that a Roman liber = "free man" should have).

* "Liberal Arts" degrees coexisted with "Education" degrees at many universities (or pre-dated them, in places where teachers went to "normal school" rather than university. "Normal school" was so called because it was supposed to set a "norm" for other schools).

* But recently, state legislators, out of concern that teachers were being taught how to teach at the expense of what to teach, tried to abolish "Education" degrees.

* So the "Education" academics pilfered the "Liberal Arts" designation.

 

And now for something completely different:

http://evilfate.batcave.net/liberalarts.html