Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
"All those classes that you think are useless teach you to be a well rounded free thinking person "
That's what the liberal arts professors want you to think. I reject that. I went to an awesome Catholic high school, I knew how to write, and think logically, long before I got to college. Maybe at the most prestigious schools do you get a lot out of those classes. At UCONN, I regurgitated their lectures back to them to get good grades. 99% of what I learned in those classes, was of no value whatsoever. I also took classes at Southern CT State University (not a great school) and Tufts in Mass (a terrific school). The liberal arts classes did absolutely nothing except eat up valuable time and tuition money.
If we want to cut costs significantly, these are the things we need to consider.
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Easy answer. Send your kids to RPI, WPI etc., they will be great engineers. OR to school in Taiwan.
But bash away on liberal arts. There are a number of studies (two are below) that show that broad based liberal arts students, are very desirable in the job market. They ability to think, brainstorm and problem solve (beyond engineering calculations) tend to do well training managers, not just drones. Not well articulated in these two, but others I have read, is that the benefit is higher for liberal arts students in a STEM field (which is what I happen to do).
http://www.usnews.com/news/college-o...-employers-say
https://www.aacu.org/press/press-rel...ates-long-term
And as a prof, your friend clearly does the bear minimum and is lucky to survive. Between teaching and research, I average over 50hr a week, including summers and breaks. Maybe it is different in the sciences where we right proposals, generate data and publish.