[Hong Wu]

Over on reddit, they banned stuff from pro-Trump subreddits from appearing in the general indexes, but stuff like this still appears in the stuff they do allow. The red pilling continues, none of these liberal arts people are going to be able to get jobs related to their degrees.

[SolarCross]

Over on reddit, they banned stuff from pro-Trump subreddits from appearing in the general indexes, but stuff like this still appears in the stuff they do allow. The red pilling continues, none of these liberal arts people are going to be able to get jobs related to their degrees.

hehe just as planned. Their marxist tutors want their students to be unemployable and in debt so that they will be "alienated", blaming "capitalism" for their own retardedness and ready to fight cops (and get pasted). If the liberal arts tards were all were given cushy jobs then they wouldn't be interested in revolution. Viva la Revolution dude.

[Vlerchan]

It is well documented that college graduates earn significantly higher wages on average than those with only a high school diploma. The college wage premium has been a central focus for researchers because it is both large and growing. Current data indicate that college degree holders enjoy an 84 percent increase in earnings over their high-school-educated counterparts.

https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-a ... emium.aspx

It notes that psychology and social work majors have the lowest wage premium, earning just 45 percent more, on average, than persons without a college degree.

As of 2012, it was also continuing to grow*.

---

* But, hey, if American workers want to red-pill themselves out of competing for jobs with me, that's great, too. I love me some rents.

... none of these liberal arts people are going to be able to get jobs related to their degrees.

This is probably true. However, liberal arts majors still pick up a range of skills that can be applied in across a range of occupations which, on average, pay more than the occupations available to them had they not gone and received a college degree.

- Not a Liberal Arts degree holder.

[Igor Antunov]

*Hugs IT degree.*

Choices. Pick them correctly. Profit.

[Godstud]

People who claim education has no benefits, are simply not looking at the big picture, or reality.

[MistyTiger]

College degrees are useful and as Vlerchan said, college graduates can earn more than people with only high school diplomas, unless of course you go into professional sports, modelling or the entertainment industry (singers, actors, directors, music execs and other high profile top positions).

Liberal arts majors also have another benefit that is not that obvious at first. They are better communicators and better writers. I changed to Accounting 4 years ago and I have met many students who suck at writing, hate writing and they are awkward at public speaking. When I was in liberal arts, people were more confident at speaking in public and they had a better idea of how to write essays and formal papers.

I think people need to be well-rounded so while they need to know technical skills like math and computer literacy, they also need creative skills and social skills that the Liberal Arts majors can give them.

I am near completion with my second degree luckily and I feel more confident with myself. I enjoy writing and reading, but I also am starting to appreciate the organization and logic behind business transactions in Accounting. While I hate that I had to return to school a second time, I think it was a worthwhile experience and it has enriched my life...I met interesting people who were willing to share their experiences and knowledge with me.

Deep down I will always be an artsy type but that does not mean that I have to be doomed to be unemployed.

People who claim education has no benefits, are simply not looking at the big picture, or reality.

Agreed. *like*

[Igor Antunov]

Liberal arts majors also have another benefit that is not that obvious at first. They are better communicators and better writers. I changed to Accounting 4 years ago and I have met many students who suck at writing, hate writing and they are awkward at public speaking.

Ok but how does this translate to a better salary? I guarantee that 90% of those accounting graduates will earn significantly more money than 90% of liberal arts graduates, and by extension enjoy a richer life experience by virtue of having access to more goodies and places.

[Hong Wu]

I honestly believe I improved my writing more by trolling on the internet and getting into rhetorical death matches than I did in all of my years in college.

[The Immortal Goon]

Statistically, yes. You do get a better salary than someone without a degree. Even if it's theatre arts or some such horseshit, a manager is more likely to promote you than someone who stopped trying after high school.

A liberal arts degree, as has been pointed out, is supposed to help you do everything. You're supposed to be able to read a document, evaluate the source, add to it, and evaluate the work of yourself and others. You are supposed to be able to create, understand, process, and communicate complicated ideas. This is true for theatre, art, history, literature, etc, etc, etc.

College is explicitly for these things and STEM.

There are some qualifications about college in general, however.

The social value to college is bullshit. It's fun, but it should not be a vacation between a career and high school. People that show up just to hang around are usually filtered out in the first year; and this would be fine were it not for the financial burden in the US and the stigma virtually everywhere. There is nothing-Fucking wrong with wanting to learn to build, create, fix, and tinker. And if you want to do those things, college isn't necessarily a good fit, and there's nothing that should be wrong with that.

Which brings me to the big thing:

Business degrees are horseshit.

You'd be better off learning the business by doing business, in most cases, and treating it like a trade--which it usually literally is.

Somewhere along the way, in about the 90s where I am, the idea of business schools really took off. What was a niche market was pushed as a place for your boss's kids to go party for a few years before going back into the business.

The worst thing is that they've become huge money-makers in the US because of the stupid way universities are financed. They legitimize the stigma against people that go into trades, by making their trade somehow equivalent to splicing a gene or reading a lost tomb. The latter being skills one can only learn in universities; the business trade involving skills that literally teach that it is the default condition for the human condition and thus rendering the entire notion useless.

But trades with money want to feel superior to trades that don't use them, and the money helps support the actual reasons colleges exist, so academics have to put up with shit students that can't do liberal arts or STEM but are at a university to drag everyone else down anyway; and tradespeople get to be stigmatized because their trade doesn't involve a four year propaganda workshop.

I honestly believe I improved my writing more by trolling on the internet and getting into rhetorical death matches than I did in all of my years in college.

One hesitates to imagine the papers someone was grading.

This being said, people don't realize how much they learn in college. If I were to drop you in a high school class after your fourth year of college, you'd have difficulty understanding how everyone is so stupid.

[Hong Wu]

My point for anyone who missed it, was that if you can get better by following an indirect or tangential path, imagine how much better off you would be by going straight towards your goal.

The best argument for liberal studies that I've seen in this thread is that it can incidentally train you, this is not really a good argument since lots of things could incidentally train you, including arguing with people on a platform like PoFo.

[Vlerchan]

The best argument for liberal studies that I've seen in this thread is that it can incidentally train you, this is not really a good argument since lots of things could incidentally train you, including arguing with people on a platform like PoFo.

Of course, there is also the signal of a degree. In other words, a degree acts as independent verification that one possesses these skills. Far as undergraduate education is concerned for most subjects, I figure the attainment this signal to be the more important consequence. I don't believe your direct or tangential path exists outside of tight-knit communities where everyone knows each other, really.

So, in other words, it's verifiable incidental training which you won't get from PoFo.

Business degrees are horseshit.

Whilst I share your assessment as far as their merit as vehicles of education are concerned, going to party's with children of (other) upper-middle-management kids is a great networking opportunity. That's the reason top schools can charge 150,000 dollars in annual tuition for an MBA.

I agree on trade schools, anyways. We'd be in a much better place is the stigma surrounding picking of a trade was destroyed.

---

Edit: Broad point of this post is that things other than acquiring education in college can have large consequences for ones income and, as a result, investment in it can be justified even if you aren't sure you're learning a thing.

Though, I thing most people learn a significant amount.

[The Immortal Goon]

The best argument for liberal studies that I've seen in this thread is that it can incidentally train you, this is not really a good argument since lots of things could incidentally train you, including arguing with people on a platform like PoFo.

And giving yourself greater odds at making more money and being able to do a variety of skills to work with is probably a good idea. Or, instead, you can follow some guy on the internet's advice to use magic to divine what the rest of your life will be like so you can prepare accordingly with the skills you picked up in high school.

More to the point though, the use and understanding of facts and information seems to be a defining problem of the moment. People tend to like socialization and fall into groupthink, and the internet can facilitate that. But I have seen, in my decade plus in these forums, the use of information atrophy and become the earnest pleas of emotion. I have seen citations mocked, knowledge suppressed, and the very foundations of philosophy and thought torn down to be replaced by the totem of special feelings.

It is depressing. And it's partially a failure of higher education. The modernist logical conclusion is a totalitarian nightmare. The postmodernist logical conclusion is people crying about their feelings as if their own perspective of reality is in fact reality. The latter's circle needs to be completed where such postmodernist feelingmongers understand that their perspective is just as shit as everyone else's; or they need to abandon the postmodernist circle jerk they don't understand they've entered and accept the world is as it is, regardless of their perspective.

In any case, knowledge is the solution, not the problem.

[Hong Wu]

And giving yourself greater odds at making more money and being able to do a variety of skills to work with is probably a good idea. Or, instead, you can follow some guy on the internet's advice to use magic to divine what the rest of your life will be like so you can prepare accordingly with the skills you picked up in high school.

More to the point though, the use and understanding of facts and information seems to be a defining problem of the moment. People tend to like socialization and fall into groupthink, and the internet can facilitate that. But I have seen, in my decade plus in these forums, the use of information atrophy and become the earnest pleas of emotion. I have seen citations mocked, knowledge suppressed, and the very foundations of philosophy and thought torn down to be replaced by the totem of special feelings.

It is depressing. And it's partially a failure of higher education. The modernist logical conclusion is a totalitarian nightmare. The postmodernist logical conclusion is people crying about their feelings as if their own perspective of reality is in fact reality. The latter's circle needs to be completed where such postmodernist feelingmongers understand that their perspective is just as shit as everyone else's; or they need to abandon the postmodernist circle jerk they don't understand they've entered and accept the world is as it is, regardless of their perspective.

In any case, knowledge is the solution, not the problem.

The problem with this appeal of yours is that you seem to take communism (and perhaps liberal arts studies) as being the truth of the world and a rejection of them as an emotional plea, when many people (and the marketplace, which decrees what life will be like for most people) do not take those things as being the cold hard truth. They view what you are advocating for as being the same thing as what you're complaining about. You seem to be saying that liberal arts will prepare someone better for dealing with facts and reality.

[Hong Wu]

To wit, communism makes a good argument within a certain scope of things that people are willing to acknowledge. It rejects the animal nature of jealousy and treats the tendency to hero worship those who are better than us as if it were a delusion, the latter may be an impetus behind the formation or preservation of social classes and certainly plays a part in social hierarchies. If enough people legitimize their own jealousy and refuse to accept when someone is better than them, you can end up with the various forms of extreme communist failure, which can honestly be described as mass delusions and hysteria that cause a fundamental breakdown of society, including what is happening in Venezuela right now.

[Zionist Nationalist]

Studying things like art or literature is useless those days

The modern job market requires people with practical degrees like engineering. studying Humanist bullshit degrees wont help to find a job

[The Immortal Goon]

The problem with this appeal of yours is that you seem to take communism (and perhaps liberal arts studies) as being the truth of the world and a rejection of them as an emotional plea

I said nothing about communism.

Nor did I say that liberal arts was, "the truth of the world."

Instead, I acknowledged liberal arts as a discipline that allowed one to evaluate sources, use citations, conceptualize ideas, and communicate effectively. None of these things are "truth," but ways to find, evaluate, and understand facts.

the marketplace, which decrees what life will be like for most people

Indeed. But this has little to do with facts so much as an individual's orientation to the world. Your perverbial caveman may think that fire from lightning is magic from a god, it does not make this deduction fact. The acceptance of this caveman's personal experience instead of the actual fact is, essentially, a postmodernist narrative, and it applies to deductions individuals make today that seem logical based upon the individual instead of the objective reality. But I covered this.

They view what you are advocating for as being the same thing as what you're complaining about.

I am simply advocating they use the bulk of human knowledge and academic scrutiny to examine anything they come across. I realize that this, rather childlishly, results in them spitting, "I know you are, but what am I?" But this is an emotional appeal rather than a reasonable and objective narrative.

There was a time when objective realist was accepted by even the most rightwing members of the forum and it was a little embarrassing to have a Qatz or other post modernist come agree with you based upon a personal narrative instead of fact derived from cited sources and experts.

Now, while amusing, the divide seems to increasingly breakdown politically among those that use a postmodernist conception of experience being reality versus a more distant conception of objective modernism. The left seemed to have fought this postmodernist tendency in its midst and emerged on the other side. The right seems to have embraced it with a tenacity above all else--and I'd wager most don't even know the rhetorical framework in which they're operating is well worn ground.

My appeal is not for communism, or any brand of leftism here. Simply for objective facts, something liberal arts can help you find and understand with no guarantee that you will do so effectively at the end.

[Hong Wu]

I'm not sure if TIG appreciates that he is arguing as a communist for studying liberal arts as being superior to taking up a trade and being a member of the proletariat.

[The Immortal Goon]

I am not arguing, "as a communist," nor am I in anyway claiming that liberal arts are "superior" to trades.

Quite the contrary, actually. Were I to extend my argument out, I would go into the orientation of the proletariat and the academic are not at odds. However, you are either having difficulty understanding these posts, or are attempting to engage in an emotional exchange instead of a factual cross communication of ideas.

In either case, it more or less makes my case.

[Hong Wu]

I am not arguing, "as a communist," nor am I in anyway claiming that liberal arts are "superior" to trades.

Quite the contrary, actually. Were I to extend my argument out, I would go into the orientation of the proletariat and the academic are not at odds. However, you are either having difficulty understanding these posts, or are attempting to engage in an emotional exchange instead of a factual cross communication of ideas.

In either case, it more or less makes my case.

I think having a proletarian ideology made up of people who have gone to great lengths to avoid being a part of the proletariat is kind of silly. It's like the false consciousness thing that Marxists talk about sometimes but in reverse, I think I've pointed that out before. Ultimately, what we are seeing is that each year, more people fall off the liberal arts bus and ask themselves why they thought it was a good idea to blame other people instead of studying something that's technically useful.

People still post statistics sometimes, such as how prone to terrorism certain groups are and it isn't the right side of the aisle that has a problem with seeing data.

[jimjam]

it's not what it used to be. In 1971 I took my thin resume with no experience on it and a 4 year degree in "business administration" to an "employment agency".

On my first try I got an interview and subsequent job at an international drug company. within 2 months I was flying literally around the world visiting their manufacturing branches.

today? I hear horror stories like,"i sent out 97 resumes on the internet and got, maybe, one job related response." To make the horrer worse there are frequently tens of thousands of dollars of debt. I owed $218 upon graduation from a 4 year program.

If I were starting over I would be a plumber and purchase rental properties.