Original Sins #2

[superboyprime]

Comments

[leoboiko]

"liberal arts degree" ouch

[shadowpsykie]

yeah.... i don't know how seriously i should take a howard the duck comic... but ouch... (i am and english major, apparently only one step beneath a LA Degree)

[leoboiko]

Well I did earn a bachelors in computer science before moving to the belles-lettres, so I suppose I at least proved to the world my superior, STEMy intelligence – before forgoing it for brainless topics such as the classics or poetry.

(I see a lot more negativity against "useless degrees" in the English-speaking Internet than I see in my country. My pet theory is that, because higher education in the U.S. is so expensive, degrees are seen as a kind of monetary investment, and so any degree that won't bring about a good job is seen as unworthy. As a result, non-utilitarian fields of knowledge become second-class citizens.)

[nyadnar17]

The monetary return on investment is part of it. I don't know how it is in your country, but in America Liberal Arts Degrees degrees tend to be waaay easier than Science degrees. Its really sad because Liberal Arts is important. Philosophy, Economics, Education, English, Sociology, etc are the foundation on which society is built. That said, when a large number of Science majors view Liberal Arts classes as an guaranteed GPA boost(and vice-versa) Liberal Arts is bound to lose prestige.

Philosophy used to be known as queen of the sciences for goodness sake.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, that sounds about right, if you're going to spend three or four years of your young adulthood NOT actively earning because you are studying, you want to feel that your efforts will be rewarded with a better paying job than if you HADN'T studied, it's not an unreasonable hope, but one that is becoming less and less common in sgnificant parts of the Western World.

(and I say that as an old fart with a Bachelors in Business Studies here)

[doctor_spanky]

Woohoo for theatre majors! We're boned!

[mrstatham]

So liberal arts degree are devoid of any learning, and are a complete waste of time?

I don't know who wrote this - and frankly, I don't want to know - but clearly, an artist, writer, philosopher or something along those lines pissed in their face and shat in their cornflakes recently. Talk about mean-spirited bullshit.

[bizarrohulk]

How many artists, writers or philosophers actually hold liberal arts degrees?

The alleged uselessness of liberal arts degrees is a pretty common joke - even as a politics grad myself, I've still made fun of philosophy or art history grads in the past - so it's kind of a stretch to suggest that the writer (Ty Templeton, by the way) has some kind of grudge against liberal arts graduates.

Personally, I think that a distinction needs to be made between "the liberal arts", and "liberal arts" as a specific field of study. I'd argue that an appreciation of the liberal arts is not only desirable but essential for creating a well-rounded human being, but they should be studied on one's own time. A liberal arts *degree* is largely a waste not only of time, but of money as well.

[mrstatham]

Given I'm English, we don't have liberal art degrees but the closest things are, for instance, the Bachelor Degrees and the like, and I'd personally argue that they're pretty important in terms of developing one's practice as an artist, developing a work ethic and a manner of critiquing yourself and contextualising your work that I don't see would-be artists gaining otherwise.

And the problem is, again, that the 'liberal arts' is pretty freaking broad as a target (in the UK, so-called 'Media Studies' is often the subject of similar jokes), but.. Well, it was my time, my money. I and the other people who work on those courses didn't ask for other to people to foot the bill - even if we took out loans, we're still paying those back and a lot of us still had jobs at the same time.

But this isn't insulting just because of that, but more because Templeton goes out of his way to suggest that these subjects don't require any intelligence because they're not among the more typically 'academic' subjects, and he pretty blatantly says this with Howard ditching science and math for the liberal stuff. Again, it's just insulting and a pretty pathetic cheap shot.

[bardbrain]

In the States, we have liberal arts degrees like Literature or History.

But then we have a Liberal Arts degree which is basically shorthand for a four year degree without scientific or technical training and with no major selected. It's a generalist's degree and therefore one we tend to be snobby about.

The trend that has redeemed this practice somewhat is the introduction of Liberal Studies or Interdisciplinary Studies. Which is still a program in which a student doesn't select the normally offered majors but now requires the student to effectively create a new major from a mix of courses in established fields, take some coursework specifically on how to mediate academic ideas between disciplines.

The "Major in Liberal Arts" was a bachelor's degree without major or emphasis and this is why people make fun of it; it was often supposedly used to justify graduating career students who lacked focus.

The " Bachelor's/Master's with a Major in Interdisciplinary Studies" or "Bachelor's/Masters in Liberal Studies" that has replaced it generally requires much more focus and emphasizes becoming an ambassador between two or more academic disciplines on a chosen topic. I'm sure there are probably Liberal Arts majors (as in "Liberal Arts" being their only designated discipline) but I suspect most of these programs have reformed around the Interdisciplinary Studies model and just kept the old name or been forced to focus specifically on history and theory of Liberal Arts institutions as a theoretical model.

[ensiform]

Thin skin, eh? Since the person who wrote this is a writer and most probably got a liberal arts degree (correct me if I'm wrong), then I would say this falls under the category of 'self effacing joke."

I have a liberal arts degree. Philosophy. Graduate school in history. I thought it was funny. I would have thought most liberal arts graduates would have found it was funny. I guess not.

[bruinsfan]

Templeton also began his comics career as an artist rather than a writer. This has the feel of an in-joke about his own education to me.

[filthysize]

Nah, you're not wrong. I'm pretty sure most people who got a liberal arts degree are well aware how commonly seen as useless our degrees are. It's the fallback degree to switch to for a lot of college students for a reason.

[punishermax]

It's a joke

[pyrrhocorax]

Albert Einstein would be one of those puffy headed ducks I suppose.