Wall Street Journal Compares College Majors, Mid-Career Salaries

Turns out that by mid-career, Philosophy majors will be earning more than Architects, Biologists, Chemists, Geologists, IT guys, Marketers, and Political Scientists. Take that business school!

Classics conspicuously absent from this list. : (

Slackers

Ever since Bluto Blutarski, college has been the privileged white American’s extended Rumspringa. Or at least where you went to avoid that Viet Nam draft thing. Now, with the democratization of education and the advent of the business school, by which device can be obtained an undergraduate degree without having to participate in protracted thought and analysis, the debauchery of the university is now available to all races, sexes, and creeds.

A report from sociologists at the Bowling Green University in Ohio now sticks some statistics onto the pimply, Natty-Ice-chugging face of that debauchery, seen every Friday through Sunday night at the frat house basement party or local college dive bar. And what have we learned? That full-time college students, relieved of the necessity of gainful employ so that they can study, use their time to socialize, use/abuse alcohol, and destroy property.

But even the kids getting good grades and degrees in actual subjects (no, food marketing does not count) are opting for low profiles in the towns they just graduated from. Said one ambitious UC Davis graduate,

I guess if I knew there was gold in the hills outside of Davis, I might be more willing to hop out and enter the work force. But I figure our economy is crumbling; I might as well just stay cool and not worry about it.

American ingenuity at its finest: no jobs? declining economy? No problem! Just chill out! This is the can-do attitude that built the railroads and defeated Nazism.

Has academia failed today’s students? Is my generation just generally prone to failure? Perhaps it is not necessarily us, for in almost any age mostly everything is mediocre or worse. The vast majority of poetry and scholarship is terrible, not to mention the moral bankruptcy of commercial, military, and political activity across time and space. So, too, the majority of students.

Still I shudder to think that the same California slacker who is thinking of becoming a teacher, writer, or politician may actually be elected to office one day. Or should I be more afraid that his lack of interest in the public sphere will allow less savory characters to gain power?

School Daze

Let’s be honest, education in America is in peril.  I’m volunteering in Chicago, and statistics tell me that more and more recent grads are doing the same… but this is a stopgap, not a permanent fix.  Help is needed across the board and creative solutions are called for.