'Don't waste your education years studying writing'

Business majors usually have to take a lot more economics and math that liberal arts majors and that usually serves them better when they're out of school.

If you major in business, you're also probably best served if you go to graduate school.

 

One of the things I love about the Journalism major (at least at most schools) is that it requires students to take a broad range of classes. It teaches you how to adapt and digest new and unfamiliar information.
But for my defense of the English major (I was also an English and Poly Sci major, ended up with a History degree - (yeah - i really know how to pick the high paying ones yes?) , I'll turn to Steven Spielberg, who said when accepting an Academy Award that if you want learn to write, read as much as you can, read unfamiliar things, learn about things you didn't realize you wanted to learn more about. It will open pathways you never knew existed. Which is why I think the English major is so valuable. It prepares for things you (and others) don't realize you should be prepared for.

Okay, now feel free to rip apart the dangling participles, grammar and punctuation from above.

On a completely different tack - I can only imagine how much "damage" texting and facebook have done to writing. While people are "writing" more than ever thanks to the Internet, kids are learning bad habits that must give teachers fits.

 

This was in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago, and I continue to point to it when I am in opposition to the viewpoint that writing is "someone else's" responsibility:

http://www.etsu.edu/cas/litlang/composition/documents/Writing_is_Not_a_Basic_Skill.pdf

 

Bob Knight would love this thread.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/arts/humanities-committee-sounds-an-alarm.html

 

The real "enemy" of the Humanities major are colleges and universities who have expanded their programs, much like the offerings on Cable TV. Programs are getting narrower and narrower and more focused on specific career fields, which invariable lead students to believe if they major in "sports marketing" they'll be set for life working for Nike or the NFL.
Marketing isn't going to solve the "decline." Marketing new majors to students who want "career certainty" for the small fortune they have to pay for a degree is what led to the decline in the first place.

 

Funny how a sports marketing degree leads to careers manning tables at a minor league sporting event, or escorting VIPs to their seats, yet you won't see those jobs mentioned in brochures marketing the program.

 

If the philosophy major is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it?

 

"Everybody learns to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to better things."

 

When I've gone back to my school to speak to students I always tell them to stay the heck away from sports marketing.

 

There are good jobs in sports marketing -- I had one of 'em -- but there are a lot more shitty jobs.

And, like everything else, to get a good job in the field now, you need to graduate from the right program (like UMass Amherst http://www.isenberg.umass.edu/sportmgt/Graduate/ ), and have the right internships.

A better bet would be to get an MBA in Marketing, and work for a company with a big advertising/marketing/sponsorship budget. Easier to move within a company/department than to work your way up from the marketing department of a Single A baseball team.

Avoid the sports marketing degree and that rout.

 

A tangent, but at least somewhat related: the 11 worst public universities by graduation rate.

http://money.msn.com/college-savings/11-worst-public-university-grad-rates

Some of these go below 10 percent, bottomed out by Southern University at New Orleans with 4 percent. I know many of these are HBCUs and in probably most cases we're talking about first in the family to attend college ... still, why do they stay open? They clearly aren't serving any purpose, and even for the folks who get the degree it's just about meaningless. Tens of thousands of dollars per student, down the drain.