Aside from core classes introducing students to college, there are few resources that give students a taste for all majors. It should be no wonder that students in certain disciplines know little about their polar opposite.
Case and point: Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences.
“It’s an argument that’s made by all kinds of people: which is the better flavor of ice cream?” Chemistry professor Simon Bott said.
The University of Houston contains a plethora of colleges and departments, giving students plenty of flavors to choose from. Excluding Business, Education, and Technology, there are two veins that branch out at UH: the College of Natural Science and Mathematics (NSM) and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS).
Without a doubt, there are several misconceptions students have for the two.
The first misconception is that NSM majors have better chances of getting a job.
“It is the case that the major you choose determines what type of job you get,” Economics professor Scott Imbermann said. “Employers want to hire people who have training in the business they’re doing.”
Imbermann points out that job prospects are better for students learning technical and math centered majors, but that grouping all CLASS and NSM majors blindly ignored the variations in the individual departments.
NSM majors, however, are not guaranteed work in a bad economy.
“It doesn’t really matter what your major is right now because there aren’t jobs, new ones aren’t being created, and no one is retiring,” Biology professor Donna Pattison said. “A lot of students come back to my office after graduating. They hadn’t planned to go on to medical school, clinical professions, or graduate school, they’re not finding positions and they’re saying ‘help, where do I even look?’”
The second misconception stems from the fact that more students are enrolled in CLASS than NSM. If math is difficult, then NSM classes are difficult. Therefore, less skilled students choose CLASS majors.
“That’s because there’s this societal thing that equates intelligence with the ability to solve math problems,” Bott said. “Give me a quick and dirty way on how to tell if someone is more intelligent than someone else, in a lot of cases it’s the obvious ‘solve a math problem’.”
But this does not mean CLASS doesn’t involve science and math. Economics majors still get their daily dose of numbers, and political science students chew through as many research journals as anyone else.
“(CLASS) has its own methods and standards for its research. The questions being asked are so different,” Pattison said. “It’s hard to have controls when what you are studying are human beings. They’re not mice.”
According to the UH website there are roughly 16 departments in CLASS and 6 departments in NSM. As a result, approximately 10,000 students are in CLASS, and almost 5,000 students are in NSM.
“Where is kinesiology housed? It’s not under NSM, but that major requires a lot of science background. Our biotech program is under the college of technology, it’s not under the NSM umbrella,” Pattison said. “The nutrition majors, the kinesiology majors, these students take a lot of science classes, but they’re not counting towards our NSM numbers.”
The third misconception: Critical thinking skills, the ability to analyze and evaluate both creatively and methodically, belongs only to CLASS majors.
“Liberal Arts and Social Sciences give you critical thinking skills, but it’s not like the other sciences don’t,” Imbermann said. “No one major has the monopoly on providing critical thinking.”
Still, there are opinions that critical thinking skills are exclusive to NSM and not CLASS.
“You tend to think of natural sciences as more critical thinking because you have problems that you have to solve your way through,” Bott said. “But the more ways you can approach a problem, the better educated you are.”
According to Pattison, the size of a class determines the instructors ability to teach critical thinking that exceeds the content of the class.
“It’s not a skill specific to either,” Pattison said. “If you have to give scantron exams because you have 500 people looking at you in the lecture hall, it’s hard to design an exam to cater to critical thinking skills.”
Majors exist in both CLASS and NSM that can give students money, prestige and gratification. Don’t choose an ice cream flavor based on the general opinion.
“Different types of people are attracted to different types of subjects. For me, chemistry and math were great,” Bott said. “I don’t think liberal arts needs to be perceived as better or worse, it’s different.”
David Haydon is a political science senior and may be reached at [email protected].
Thanks for the Econ shout-out! Lots of people leave the econ dept. because while they can do the math – they can't critically analyze theory and vice-versa. Oh, and nice faculty comments, Imbermann is a really great professor!
Agreed. Already a few people that are in the department with me (freshman) are thinking about changing majors because they can't handle the concepts.
Nice peice. This quote got me. "Still, there are opinions that critical thinking skills are exclusive to NSM and not CLASS." You must be joking. There's actually a pissing contest about who does the better analysis? I'm trying to imagine the T-shirt. "CLASS students kick ass at thinking —- without math." Really?
I have a liberal arts degree, and am attending UH to get a second degree – in the sciences.
I've got to say this piece is categorically misleading and false. Unquestionably, a science degree is far more valuable than a liberal arts degree. The suggestion that they are on the same footing in the job market is laughable. A person who graduates with a BS can apply for every job a person with a BA can apply for – as well as having access to higher-paying and more in demand science-based positions.
Similarly, the rigor of the programs are not comparable. There is a colossal difference between being asked to gain a comprehensive knowledge of a scientific field such as, for example, biological systems, as compared with having a comprehensive knowledge of a liberal arts field like history. History is subjective, and fact-based; biology is process based. The same is true for all liberal arts. Arguments could be made that analytical skills are taught in philosophy – but the relevant subdivision (formal logic) was split out of the discipline recently and added to – you guessed it – mathematics. I can't believe that anyone seriously considers the level of intellectual capacity brought to bear *by an undergraduate* in liberal arts to equate with Biology, or any other science. They're not the same, and that's a big reason why private industry doesn't value the degrees the same.
Society doesn't value "math" it values to solve problems in a rigorous, reproduceable, reliable and communicable manner. Mathematics is that system – not having a comprehensive knowledge and conversant capacity in it doesn't make the person "dumb" it makes them 'lazy' or 'uneducated.' For example, a person with a limited vocabulary isn't necessarily less intelligent than a person with an expansive vocabulary – but one of them is going to be far more effective at a given task (communication) than the other; that's indisputable. Thus it is with CLASS majors.
I find it troubling that the author reached out only to CLASS professors for support of his chosen cause (justifying wasting state funding on liberal arts degrees). While I have no doubt that these individuals are highly intelligent, well versed and capable of complex analysis largely beyond my capacity; they have an undeniable natural bias. To suggest that they are to be considered *exclusively* as a source is laughable.
Finally, the only true evidence that could be considered for 'degree value' is completely ignored by the piece: average salary for degree holders; and demand in the job market. I'm not surprised to see someone arguing in favor of liberal arts completely ignoring a quantitative analysis of the problem, but when you examine the actual results (as opposed to 'dreaming' about what could be if we all lobotomized ourselves with liberal arts degrees) you find that society and the market place a distinctly lower value on liberal arts degrees than they do on the sciences. Why? Because science degrees are more valuable – to everyone (even liberal arts majors. Want to read an interesting book – by all means, read one by a graduate of our fantastic creative writing program. Want to save the world from Malaria? I don't think that Art History degree is going to help you very much). They're also harder, which is why students don't flock to them.
I'll call BS on this (get it?) Ignoring the obvious issues with this comment (equating a BS to a science degree and a BA to a lib arts degree – as an example, CLASS offers a BS in poli sci, which isn't the sort of hard science Mike seems to be talking about) as well as the claim that the author "reached out only to CLASS professors" when 2/3 of the professors quoted are NSM (looks like that process-based education is failing you there!)
What should have been argued is that there are good and bad majors in both colleges if you want a job (in the field) right out of school. Yeah, it's tough for an art history major to parlay that into something outside of a museum, but it's just as difficult for a biology major to use their specific education outside of a lab. In fact, it's likely that (just as Mike has apparently found), you might need to go for an additional degree to find something in the field. As Mike states, if you "want to save the world from malaria" (no caps needed), a BS just won't do much for you – go get a doctorate.
Also, nice cites on your average salary assertions (once again, what's happened to that process-based thinking). Here's one for ya! http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp
TL;DR: A mathematics major basically makes the same amount as an econ major. Mike gotta be trolling.
First off there is a $5,000 dollar difference between applied math and econ. If you look at just math degree and econ then there is a $300 difference. But have you thought that this may be due to the fact that to be a highschool math teacher you have to have a degree in math and we know teachers don't get paid jack.
I think this whole issue boils down to the fact that many BA majors either are paid lower and complain or as an uncle put it to me they need at least a masters if not Ph.D in many of them to reach even comparable salaries seen by those from the tech and science.
If you didn't notice, Dr. Pattison is a Biology professor, and a very good one at that. That would dovetail neatly with your assertion that "There is a colossal difference between being asked to gain a comprehensive knowledge of a scientific field such as, for example, biological systems, as compared with having a comprehensive knowledge of a liberal arts field like history".
"A person who graduates with a BS can apply for every job a person with a BA can apply for"
Apply for, but not get hired.
"Want to save the world from Malaria?"
No, but elements of public health draw on CLASS skill sets? Never mind there are medical anthropologists in the CLASS faculty.
The highest earning degree in CLASS is economics…and guess what its heavily math intensive. That being said just because you are a nsm major does not mean you will have better job opportunities, biology is a good example of this. If you want to get a good job outside college you just need to pick a major that offers skills that are in demand. Ultimately these skills are going to be quantitative and in my opinion applied math is the best degree.