Closing J schools.

I have a friend who was a sociology major and a philosophy minor. he now works the backroom of a retail store. think he can get me a job?

 

It's no more worthless than general studies, music, dance, drama, physical education, communications, philosophy, english, sociology, a b.s. in psychology (what can you really do with that?), women's studies, peruvian flute, bible studies and thousands of language degrees (sanskrit!) ... Outside of engineering, accounting, law and some business degrees, most can be pretty worthless. Then again, you need a degree to get a good job, and some companies don't care what your degree is in if you have experience.

 

I've always thought having a background in something like Tagalog or some other non-mainstream language might be advantageous. Just look at the explosion of need for Arabic speakers in the past 10 years. If you have studied a language and know it well, there has to be some kind of governmental job waiting.

 

If you can speak pretty good Chinese or French, you can pretty much charge whatever you want for language lessons online, and work from home. It's a good gig.

 

Sociology actually opens the doors to a lot of different careers. It's all about reading people, so HR (Hi Boots!) is a big career for sociology majors. In most states, child and family social workers can also be sociology majors as well as investigators for most of the DA offices, depending on what schools you attended. My alma mater has Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology wrapped into one program and classes for each of the degrees count toward any of them. I took several criminology courses and have really considered applying for investigative positions.

And there's the obvious research positions, as well as going back to get a teaching credential in social sciences. Most of the sociology students at my alma mater minored in another social science so they had most of the requirements for a secondary teaching certificate out of the way.

Just a few suggestions. There are several others ... working for non-profits or state homes for troubled youth are also good options. I would even venture that police work or prison positions would be good for anyone who had a good eye to read people. It's not quite as useless as others seem to think.

 

Graduating from J school doesn't guarantee you anything. It's about what you get out of the situation, regardless of your major, and gaining experience as soon as possible for your career.

Writers/reporters don't need a journalism degree, but it sure as hell helped me learn the fundamentals and basis so I wasn't totally lost when I left school. (And I learned even more once I got into the "real world," stuff they never taught you in school.)

I'm still amazing at how much better prepared I was to do my job compared to many of my peers. Some went to J schools and struggled with basis parts of the job. It surely wasn't because I was smarter than them. Just got a little better training, in my mind, and practical and meaningful experience WHILE STILL IN SCHOOL. In many ways, I was ahead of my peers.

This writer failed to convince me that this is a logical move. (Maybe he should go to J school to develop a better argument.) Got to bring more than that to back up that idea.

 

It's interesting you mention that. There's nothing that I learned in school that I wouldn't have learned either working for the school paper or working at my first job after school. Now, that's not saying that it didn't help - I imagine somehow it did - but I know that everything I find useful today I would have eventually picked up on my own had I majored in aeronautical engineering or human development or something completely different.

Now, that's not saying that they're completely worthless. I know many people who attribute much of what they learned to their classes. But rather, in this changing environment, these schools should be teaching more and more, and all of it in different ways.

 

Journalism schools still have their place...there are plenty of areas to use those skills whether its web-based media or public relations work. Simply because newspaper staffs are shrinking doesn't mean there isn't opportunity.

Of course, students need to be smart about it. No sense going into major debt for a potential job that pays little...but students make that mistake all the time with other majors, as well. I'll never understand why you'd run up $50,000 in student loans for a professional field that pays $20-$30K a year. That's just stupid.

 

Zebracoy: I agree with your final comments about the need of more diversity in what's being taught. I was fortunate to go to a J school that was ahead of the curve about convergence.

 

But the point of that dumb column isn't that the problem is curriculum, it's the existence and popularity of journalism schools.

 

And <b>we</b> would kill to ship you and that stupid fucking cowbell to sociologists.com.

 

If you're lucky... ;D