Are arts degrees a waste of time?

stovelid

pookie82 wrote: »

We're moving towards an economy where people will need to be highly adaptable to face the challenges ahead.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056100267

Donkey Oaty

pookie82 wrote: »

I have shown that I have dedication, an eagerness for knowledge, and an ability to diversify and pick things up quickly etc.

Please tell me you are a street cleaner.

pookie82

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

Please tell me you are a street cleaner.

I'm a street cleaner.

AckwelFoley

Forest Master wrote: »

Did you done one too?

Mr Funny balls.

odonopenmic

During my arts degree, I thought it was really interesting and that I'd never get a job.

7 years later, I thank my lucky stars that I studied it. It is not only directly relevant and useful to my job, but the skills I developed have stood to me time and time again. And I work in low-level admin!

MarkGrisham

I've taken the mick out of mates doing arts but in all seriousness they aren't worthless by default. There are areas of human knowledge outside of engineering and science. That said, I find it disturbing when students have to just agree with their lecturers to get any sort of mark in exams and essays. I know a few people who've been under gob****es like that.

Handsome Bob

odonopenmic wrote: »

During my arts degree, I thought it was really interesting and that I'd never get a job.

7 years later, I thank my lucky stars that I studied it. It is not only directly relevant and useful to my job, but the skills I developed have stood to me time and time again. And I work in low-level admin!

.......

Kold

I paint pretty pictures :]

jimthemental

They're all a waste of time. I've an undergrad in pharmaceutical chemistry and a postgrad in sales and I am still fcucked as regards getting good employment.
Give up OP just buy a big bag of weed and don't worry about any of it because it's just going to get worse. Oisin T is dead on though about needing a postgrad to be competitive. If I could have afforded I would've done a masters in science. I might have had some career prospect then.

PrincessLola

In the USA I'm pretty sure you can't go into a law or medicine degree straight from school you have to do four yeras of college first, I think thats a better way of doing things then here, unless your 100% certain you want to be engineer/lawyer/accountant.

I also think people need to differentiate between the people who sleepwalk thro their degrees with little effort or study and the people who are motivated, study hard, get good marks and have a postgrad planned. I know people who did arts and went on to do accounting/ law/ an MBA after.

FatherLen

nah finger painting is great

Jazzy

no

bodice ripper

I have a degree in fine art, and hope to get a masters in classics. I'll do it because I want to. I was under a fair bit of pressure in school to do engineering because i did well in aptitude tests for mechanical reasoning and spatial relations. Oh, and seemingly there ain't enough women in these fields. Had I done it, I would have washed out, been miserable and made life harder for the women who *were* in the field by my total lack of interest.

I am happy to have a trade, work with my hands and have the opportunity to have degrees instead of kids.

TimeToShine

pookie82 wrote: »

This is genuinely the most ignorant thread I've seen in a long time.

I did an arts degree, and went on to do a series of post graduate courses in classics. The entire time I was studying the classics, pretty much every uneducated person I know hounded me because I wasn't doing something that would lead me straight into a nice, neat, pigeon holed career which they could all immediately identify with.

Luckily my family were smart enough to realise the benefit of a long and intense education and supported me all the way.

I got a job within a week of leaving college. My last three jobs have all been granted to me on the basis that I have a well rounded education, with an ability to think logically and clearly and an aptitute for thinking outside of the box. I have shown that I have dedication, an eagerness for knowledge, and an ability to diversify and pick things up quickly etc.

I went into a career I had zero experience in and within 6 months was being promoted. That's because I engaged all of my skills from university and applied them to my career. It can be done.

Most people want to tell you that unless you do a computer/engineering/science course you're just being a fairy for a few years. As some other poster said, it's the person, not the degree which matters. If you work hard enough and apply yourself and carry your skillls into the work force you shouldn't have a problem excelling. It doesn't matter what kind of degree you get if you don't put your head down and get good grades.

We're moving towards an economy where people will need to be highly adaptable to face the challenges ahead. Don't believe for a second that an arts degree automatically means you'll get no where fast in that economy. To the contrary, I have a fantastic job which I love and most of my engineering/scientific/accountant friends are on the dole.

I sure love posts which describe in great detail just how great their maker is. Anyway, assuming you are as brilliant and talented as you are, you're the exception to the rule as most Arts students DO NOT have an aptitude for education, as proven by the Leaving Cert. Now, I'm not saying the LC is the ONLY way to measure intelligence, I'm sure a good few of them are intelligent free-thinking individuals who will do very well in life, but the vast majority p*ss away first year drinking and living up to the stereotype by not turning up to any lectures. I went into a Philosophy lecture 2 days ago with my friend who's doing Arts to see what it's like because I'm considering picking it as an elective. He told me that 180 people were registered for it and I'd say about 60 turned up. So in short, Arts degrees are not useless, but the vast majority of people doing them are just there for the 3 year holiday with a few exams thrown in, and because college is the big thing these days. That's the problem. Everyone wants a fúcking degree, interspersed with J1's/drink/drugs/sex and all the fun in between, but very few are willing to put in the hard work needed to come out with a good one. Sadly, although a 2.1 is a very good achievement, it's pretty much useless in Arts, and it's a shame seeing very capable people wasting their opportunity to get a first away all because of the notion that Arts is "easy"

Fouloleron

Depends on what you do and what you end up in.

A Business degree generally has some use as it gives the basics of Management, marketing and sales (even in there most basic form) which can be used in a daily working day.

Aside from that, a degree also increases your hiring chances.

Kold

bodice ripper wrote: »

I have a degree in fine art, and hope to get a masters in classics. I'll do it because I want to. I was under a fair bit of pressure in school to do engineering because i did well in aptitude tests for mechanical reasoning and spatial relations. Oh, and seemingly there ain't enough women in these fields. Had I done it, I would have washed out, been miserable and made life harder for the women who *were* in the field by my total lack of interest.

I am happy to have a trade, work with my hands and have the opportunity to have degrees instead of kids.

Fine Art > Arts

4k

I think it's a weird thing, an arts degree. when i tell people that im in arts, they generally just pfff at me and get uninterested. the ones that go as far as to ask what subjects i'm doing get surprised when i say maths and economics. 'oh jeez that must be hard'. what i dont get is why opinions go from 'pff' to 'oh jesus' depending on my subject choice.
My friend is studying geography and soc and pol. he doesnt seem to get past the 'pfff' stage in peoples minds which i think is sad because his workload is very similar to mine. We're both good students and do all that is asked of us in college and are on the 1.1 route.
I'd just love if the average joe realised that all subjects are infact equally weighted within arts. no subject is easier than another and at the end of the day, arts is worth the same amount of ECTS as all the others.
what i'm trying to say is that no education is a waste of time.

TimeToShine

No they're not. My friend's doing a Maths major and a sociology minor and he actually laughs at how p*ss easy it is to pass sociology if you just turn up.

Nolanger

What about science graduates who are awarded a BA instead of a BSc?

4k

yeah to pass, but to do well? all the readings and all essays and all the *slightly* original opinion? To do it well, there's a lot of work involved.

Lukker-

I'm studying Arts, doing the highly irrelavant subjects of IT and English.

4k

pfff

Diapason

Nolanger wrote: »

What about science graduates who are awarded a BA instead of a BSc?

I've never even understood why people draw attention to this. I did a degree in physics, the fact that the letters I end up with are B and A is irrelevant to me. If I'd been awarded a BSc at the end, I'd still have done the same work, so why does it matter?

Chuchoter

Diapason wrote: »

I've never even understood why people draw attention to this. I did a degree in physics, the fact that the letters I end up with are B and A is irrelevant to me. If I'd been awarded a BSc at the end, I'd still have done the same work, so why does it matter?

Its probably to do with that its a different thing. Like a BA in psychology means you can do absolutely nothing, but the real deal means you can do lots of things.

Diapason

crayolastereo wrote: »

Its probably to do with that its a different thing. Like a BA in psychology means you can do absolutely nothing, but the real deal means you can do lots of things.

What?

Look, I've no idea if that's the case in Psychology, it may indeed be, but at Trinity for example, all the (old) degrees are BAs, irrespective of their subject matter. So in much the same way that a Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) isn't always anything to do with Philosophy, a BA is a title that doesn't always have anything to do with "arts", at least in the way it's considered now.

Do you really think that any employer (for example) would even notice a BA in Physics rather than a BSc in Physics if they saw it on a CV? All I can say is that experience suggests otherwise.

uglyfish87

mprop wrote: »

I think college should be charged for by a low interest loan from the government. If that had been in place I think I would have joined the work force straight away, I'd be no better off!

I agree. I did a Arts degree for 3 loooonnnggg years. If I had to pay for it, I would have probably left the first week I started. Now I'm on the dole. If I did go out to work instead of doing the degree I would be alot better off.

keepkeyyellow

I study English and Film Studies. I get looks of pity when I tell people what I do.

However I don't regret any bit, I love my subjects and am involved with so many extracurriculars that I'm bound to get a job off that.

epgc3fyqirnbsx

Like anything in life it all depends on how you use it. If you ensure that you get good grades and have general cop on in the world around you it can definitely be used to your advantage to show that you don't have a blinkered education and can adapt from a broader perspective.

But that's all up to you being able to sell yourself and improving your C.V.

sxt

Do the same people that think an Arts degree is a waste of time , think that the subjects taught in school are a waste of time also

DeepSleeper

Arts student wrote: »

... Are courses such as English, Geography, History, Anthropology, Psychology, Languages, Politics etc a waste of time in comparison to let’s say Science, Business or Engineering courses?

Well OP, I think a mediocre Arts degree could well turn out to be a waste of time, but a good one (a 2.1 or a 1st) has certainly got value... If you're good enough to get in to Arts, you're good enough to get a 2.1 at least (if you put in the work of course..) and this can then open all sorts of doors.

It never ceases to amaze me how people with pass or 3rd class Arts degrees wonder why things don't happen for them when they start looking for jobs / postgraduate courses / funding for postgraduate research... If you're going to do a BA, do it well... Do realise the massive difference between a 2.1 and a 2.2 when it comes to appyling for stuff and then put the head down and get the very best degree you can.

fcussen

I am a former Arts student now doing Computing for Postgrad. The reason I chose to do Arts in college was that History, English, Languages were the better subjects on my Leaving Cert, and because I genuinely find the subjects interesting. I was aware from day 1 that my job opportunities from it would be limited.

I haven't read the entire thread so plenty of people have probably already said this but: Arts degrees are not a waste of time if you put in the time to study for them and if you are there for the right reasons.

Unfortunately, there are far too many people doing them these days who don't take it any way seriously and just use it as an excuse to get pissed for all of first year and repeat every summer.

One of my favourite writers - who I would never have heard of if I hadn't done Arts - is Antonio Gramsci . Reading his work, it's amazing to compare the encyclopaedic knowledge of philosophy, history and literature that he acquired on the back of two years of study in the early 20th century (before he was forced to drop out) to what many B.A. graduates know about their chosen subjects these days.

Also, FWIW, I am the only former Arts student on my postgrad and in no way am I the laziest person on the course.

FrostyJack

I know a couple of people with Arts Degrees, only one is successful (civil servant grrrr) to the rest it is just a piece of paper on the wall. It is about the lowest common denominator of degrees imho. With all due respect my dog (if I had one) would probably get a pass degree. Though the worse thing is it spreads you out too thin, you would find it hard to get a technical job (i.e. computers and history) nor would you become Indiana Jones. You would find you have to do a real degree to find the job you originally wanted before you went to college. So short answer, don't do it unless you are a rich kid

fcussen

DeepSleeper wrote: »

Well OP, I think a mediocre Arts degree could well turn out to be a waste of time, but a good one (a 2.1 or a 1st) has certainly got value... If you're good enough to get in to Arts, you're good enough to get a 2.1 at least (if you put in the work of course..) and this can then open all sorts of doors.

I have to comment: a 2.1 (which is what I got) is a mediocre degree these days. The majority of people who graduate get one.

The report from Trinity College, prepared by the univeristy’s academic secretary Patricia Callaghan, showed that the number of second class honour degrees awarded has also risen dramatically.

UCC rose to 51.3%, TCD to 50.2%, while DCU remained at a constant of 41% of graduating students receiving 2:1 degrees.

http://www.thecollegeview.com/2010/03/15/first-class-degrees-given-by-dcu-rise-167-in-14-years/

uglyfish87

I did a denominated arts degree. I was absout hell and at the end of the day I go nothing out of it. It was in economics, law and "soc pol" (thats uni speak for sociology and politics, they call it that 'cos they think it makes them sound cool and cleaver). In the end I only got a 3rd. I really wish I dropped out in first year, but then again high insight is a wonderful thing.

However I'm not going to let my crappy degree define me. Plan on doing Fetac and Fas courses in business, and try to get a job out of it. I really regret doing an Arts degree. It was a waste of time and money:mad:.

I guess if this is my only major regret in life so far, things could be alot worse considering what some people have to go through in life.

Just out of interest, has anybody out there with a 3rd Arts degree, made a sucess of their lives?

Donkey Oaty

uglyfish87 wrote: »

Just out of interest, has anybody out there with a 3rd Arts degree, made a sucess of their lives?

Carol Vorderman got a Third and went on to become a highly successful loan-shark shill.

Her degree was in engineering, though.

odonopenmic

uglyfish87 wrote: »

they call it that 'cos they think it makes them sound cool and cleaver...then again high insight is a wonderful thing.

No offence dude but I wouldn't hire someone who thought intelligence was an item for cutting meat or believed in 'high insight'.

Not sure if the Arts degree is the issue

Palimpsest

An open letter to George M Philip, President of the State University of New York At Albany

Dear President Philip,
Probably the last thing you need at this moment is someone else from outside your university complaining about your decision. If you want to argue that I can't really understand all aspects of the situation, never having been associated with SUNY Albany, I wouldn't disagree. But I cannot let something like this go by without weighing in. I hope, when I'm through, you will at least understand why.
Just 30 days ago, on October 1st, you announced that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts were being eliminated. You gave several reasons for your decision, including that 'there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs.' Of course, your decision was also, perhaps chiefly, a cost-cutting measure - in fact, you stated that this decision might not have been necessary had the state legislature passed a bill that would have allowed your university to set its own tuition rates. Finally, you asserted that the humanities were a drain on the institution financially, as opposed to the sciences, which bring in money in the form of grants and contracts.
Let's examine these and your other reasons in detail, because I think if one does, it becomes clear that the facts on which they are based have some important aspects that are not covered in your statement. First, the matter of enrollment. I'm sure that relatively few students take classes in these subjects nowadays, just as you say. There wouldn't have been many in my day, either, if universities hadn't required students to take a distribution of courses in many different parts of the academy: humanities, social sciences, the fine arts, the physical and natural sciences, and to attain minimal proficiency in at least one foreign language. You see, the reason that humanities classes have low enrollment is not because students these days are clamoring for more relevant courses; it's because administrators like you, and spineless faculty, have stopped setting distribution requirements and started allowing students to choose their own academic programs - something I feel is a complete abrogation of the duty of university faculty as teachers and mentors. You could fix the enrollment problem tomorrow by instituting a mandatory core curriculum that included a wide range of courses.
Young people haven't, for the most part, yet attained the wisdom to have that kind of freedom without making poor decisions. In fact, without wisdom, it's hard for most people. That idea is thrashed out better than anywhere else, I think, in Dostoyevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which is told in Chapter Five of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In the parable, Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He performs several miracles but is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burned at the stake. The Grand Inquisitor visits Him in his cell to tell Him that the Church no longer needs Him. The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining why. The Inquisitor says that Jesus rejected the three temptations of Satan in the desert in favor of freedom, but he believes that Jesus has misjudged human nature. The Inquisitor says that the vast majority of humanity cannot handle freedom. In giving humans the freedom to choose, Christ has doomed humanity to a life of suffering.
That single chapter in a much longer book is one of the great works of modern literature. You would find a lot in it to think about. I'm sure your Russian faculty would love to talk with you about it - if only you had a Russian department, which now, of course, you don't.
Then there's the question of whether the state legislature's inaction gave you no other choice. I'm sure the budgetary problems you have to deal with are serious. They certainly are at Brandeis University, where I work. And we, too, faced critical strategic decisions because our income was no longer enough to meet our expenses. But we eschewed your draconian - and authoritarian - solution, and a team of faculty, with input from all parts of the university, came up with a plan to do more with fewer resources. I'm not saying that all the specifics of our solution would fit your institution, but the process sure would have. You did call a town meeting, but it was to discuss your plan, not let the university craft its own. And you called that meeting for Friday afternoon on October 1st, when few of your students or faculty would be around to attend. In your defense, you called the timing 'unfortunate', but pleaded that there was a 'limited availability of appropriate large venue options.' I find that rather surprising. If the President of Brandeis needed a lecture hall on short notice, he would get one. I guess you don't have much clout at your university.
It seems to me that the way you went about it couldn't have been more likely to alienate just about everybody on campus. In your position, I would have done everything possible to avoid that. I wouldn't want to end up in the 9th Bolgia (ditch of stone) of the 8th Circle of the Inferno, where the great 14th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri put the sowers of discord. There, as they struggle in that pit for all eternity, a demon continually hacks their limbs apart, just as in life they divided others.
The Inferno is the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy, one of the great works of the human imagination. There's so much to learn from it about human weakness and folly. The faculty in your Italian department would be delighted to introduce you to its many wonders - if only you had an Italian department, which now, of course, you don't.
And do you really think even those faculty and administrators who may applaud your tough-minded stance (partly, I'm sure, in relief that they didn't get the axe themselves) are still going to be on your side in the future? I'm reminded of the fable by Aesop of the Travelers and the Bear: two men were walking together through the woods, when a bear rushed out at them. One of the travelers happened to be in front, and he grabbed the branch of a tree, climbed up, and hid himself in the leaves. The other, being too far behind, threw himself flat down on the ground, with his face in the dust. The bear came up to him, put his muzzle close to the man's ear, and sniffed and sniffed. But at last with a growl the bear slouched off, for bears will not touch dead meat. Then the fellow in the tree came down to his companion, and, laughing, said 'What was it that the bear whispered to you?' 'He told me,' said the other man, 'Never to trust a friend who deserts you in a pinch.'
I first learned that fable, and its valuable lesson for life, in a freshman classics course. Aesop is credited with literally hundreds of fables, most of which are equally enjoyable - and enlightening. Your classics faculty would gladly tell you about them, if only you had a Classics department, which now, of course, you don't.
As for the argument that the humanities don't pay their own way, well, I guess that's true, but it seems to me that there's a fallacy in assuming that a university should be run like a business. I'm not saying it shouldn't be managed prudently, but the notion that every part of it needs to be self-supporting is simply at variance with what a university is all about. You seem to value entrepreneurial programs and practical subjects that might generate intellectual property more than you do 'old-fashioned' courses of study. But universities aren't just about discovering and capitalizing on new knowledge; they are also about preserving knowledge from being lost over time, and that requires a financial investment. There is good reason for it: what seems to be archaic today can become vital in the future. I'll give you two examples of that. The first is the science of virology, which in the 1970s was dying out because people felt that infectious diseases were no longer a serious health problem in the developed world and other subjects, such as molecular biology, were much sexier. Then, in the early 1990s, a little problem called AIDS became the world's number 1 health concern. The virus that causes AIDS was first isolated and characterized at the National Institutes of Health in the USA and the Institute Pasteur in France, because these were among the few institutions that still had thriving virology programs. My second example you will probably be more familiar with. Middle Eastern Studies, including the study of foreign languages such as Arabic and Persian, was hardly a hot subject on most campuses in the 1990s. Then came September 11, 2001. Suddenly we realized that we needed a lot more people who understood something about that part of the world, especially its Muslim culture. Those universities that had preserved their Middle Eastern Studies departments, even in the face of declining enrollment, suddenly became very important places. Those that hadn't - well, I'm sure you get the picture.
I know one of your arguments is that not every place should try to do everything. Let other institutions have great programs in classics or theater arts, you say; we will focus on preparing students for jobs in the real world. Well, I hope I've just shown you that the real world is pretty fickle about what it wants. The best way for people to be prepared for the inevitable shock of change is to be as broadly educated as possible, because today's backwater is often tomorrow's hot field. And interdisciplinary research, which is all the rage these days, is only possible if people aren't too narrowly trained. If none of that convinces you, then I'm willing to let you turn your institution into a place that focuses on the practical, but only if you stop calling it a university and yourself the President of one. You see, the word 'university' derives from the Latin 'universitas', meaning 'the whole'. You can't be a university without having a thriving humanities program. You will need to call SUNY Albany a trade school, or perhaps a vocational college, but not a university. Not anymore.
I utterly refuse to believe that you had no alternative. It's your job as President to find ways of solving problems that do not require the amputation of healthy limbs. Voltaire said that no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. Voltaire, whose real name was François-Marie Arouet, had a lot of pithy, witty and brilliant things to say (my favorite is 'God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh'). Much of what he wrote would be very useful to you. I'm sure the faculty in your French department would be happy to introduce you to his writings, if only you had a French department, which now, of course, you don't.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you have trouble understanding the importance of maintaining programs in unglamorous or even seemingly 'dead' subjects. From your biography, you don't actually have a PhD or other high degree, and have never really taught or done research at a university. Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I'm now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and English literature. These courses didn't just give me a much better appreciation for my own culture; they taught me how to think, to analyze, and to write clearly. None of my sciences courses did any of that.
One of the things I do now is write a monthly column on science and society. I've done it for over 10 years, and I'm pleased to say some people seem to like it. If I've been fortunate enough to come up with a few insightful observations, I can assure you they are entirely due to my background in the humanities and my love of the arts.
One of the things I've written about is the way genomics is changing the world we live in. Our ability to manipulate the human genome is going to pose some very difficult questions for humanity in the next few decades, including the question of just what it means to be human. That isn't a question for science alone; it's a question that must be answered with input from every sphere of human thought, including - especially including - the humanities and arts. Science unleavened by the human heart and the human spirit is sterile, cold, and self-absorbed. It's also unimaginative: some of my best ideas as a scientist have come from thinking and reading about things that have, superficially, nothing to do with science. If I'm right that what it means to be human is going to be one of the central issues of our time, then universities that are best equipped to deal with it, in all its many facets, will be the most important institutions of higher learning in the future. You've just ensured that yours won't be one of them.
Some of your defenders have asserted that this is all a brilliant ploy on your part - a master political move designed to shock the legislature and force them to give SUNY Albany enough resources to keep these departments open. That would be Machiavellian (another notable Italian writer, but then, you don't have any Italian faculty to tell you about him), certainly, but I doubt that you're that clever. If you were, you would have held that town meeting when the whole university could have been present, at a place where the press would be all over it. That's how you force the hand of a bunch of politicians. You proclaim your action on the steps of the state capitol. You don't try to sneak it through in the dead of night, when your institution has its back turned.
No, I think you were simply trying to balance your budget at the expense of what you believe to be weak, outdated and powerless departments. I think you will find, in time, that you made a Faustian bargain. Faust is the title character in a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was written around 1800 but still attracts the largest audiences of any play in Germany whenever it's performed. Faust is the story of a scholar who makes a deal with the devil. The devil promises him anything he wants as long as he lives. In return, the devil will get - well, I'm sure you can guess how these sorts of deals usually go. If only you had a Theater department, which now, of course, you don't, you could ask them to perform the play so you could see what happens. It's awfully relevant to your situation. You see, Goethe believed that it profits a man nothing to give up his soul for the whole world. That's the whole world, President Philip, not just a balanced budget. Although, I guess, to be fair, you haven't given up your soul. Just the soul of your institution.
Disrespectfully yours,
Gregory A Petsko

ya-ba-da-ba-doo

jackiebaron wrote: »

And I know plenty of people who studied Engineering, or Science and turned out to be complete and utter losers, wasters or just basically mediocre in life.

HA

You seem like a nice person!

Arts student

This thread is scaring me lol, particularly Dudess' posts. Well i'm doing Politics, Anthropology and Computer Science. I think it might be a good idea at this stage to stick with CS. Another point there earlier about BA-vs-BsC, well its the same in Computer Science.

Thanks for the posts folks, some great advice here.

Killer Pigeon

ya-ba-da-ba-doo wrote: »

HA

You seem like a nice person!

It's just jealousy.

bnt

pookie82 wrote: »

This is genuinely the most ignorant thread I've seen in a long time.

You also appear to have fallen for the fallacy that only Arts students learn to think critically, or "logically and clearly" as you put it. Did your programme teach you that the plural of "anecdote" is "data"? Your positive experience does not negate the many negative experiences posted here and elsewhere.

The usefulness of a degree is not a binary yes/no proposition: it's a numbers game on both sides (graduates vs. employers). Here's an analogy: we're all out there swimming in a sea which is constantly changing, and when the sea is calm, everyone's happy. When it's rough, good swimmers will be OK, whatever stroke they use; but the line between "good swimmer" and "underwater" isn't static. Did you also learn how a bell curve works?

PS just in case you didn't see my post back on page 6: even though I did Engineering, I do support Arts education - even the most "impractical" Liberal Arts education - but it's all about the numbers. You can't all be psychologists, museum curators or archaeologists.

Sonnenblumen

Arts student wrote: »

I’m currently undergoing an arts degree and have a friend doing an engineering course who is always taking the mick out me for doing a “useless” or “mickey mouse” degree etc. Now don’t get me wrong the man is just having a bit of a laugh, but I’d like to know what some of you out there really think.

Are courses such as English, Geography, History, Anthropology, Psychology, Languages, Politics etc a waste of time in comparison to let’s say Science, Business or Engineering courses?

It's less what you do and more what you do with it! That said, some people just aren't suitable/cut out for studying!

have a laugh but get the work done!

Aldito

FrostyJack wrote: »

It is about the lowest common denominator of degrees imho. With all due respect my dog (if I had one) would probably get a pass degree.

And who are you to say that?

Mr Benevolent

To answer your question OP, yes. And no.

blogga

How can this even be considered a question? Arts degrees are sh**e.

ValJester

blogga wrote: »

How can this even be considered a question? Arts degrees are sh**e.

Good, well argued reasoning there.

Dionysus

Arts student wrote: »

This thread is scaring me lol, particularly Dudess' posts. Well i'm doing Politics, Anthropology and Computer Science. I think it might be a good idea at this stage to stick with CS. Another point there earlier about BA-vs-BsC, well its the same in Computer Science.

Thanks for the posts folks, some great advice here.

CS and Politics could be a very good combination for social science research. You may have to take an information technology module in 2nd year politics and part of that will probably entail passing an SPSS exam. SPSS is widely used in social science and is well worth getting to grips with. You could also use your CS skills to carve out a niche for yourself in political science; for instance, you could develop programs specific to political science research. As a general rule CS is definitely much more useful. If you still have a bit of grá for the humanities you could use your computer expertise to carve out a niche for yourself in the emerging area named Digital Humanities, which is basically facilitating the transfer of academic discourse, research results, scholarship etc from books to online websites.

Whatever you choose make sure it can travel beyond Ireland as jobs will be very tight here for years to come.

karaokeman

Musefan wrote: »

I am studying for a BA in Psychology,and I don't think it is a waste of time, when with some hard work and some experience, you can become an educational, clinical psychologist ect. It is what you do with your degree after that counts. Psychology should not be included in the list of arts subjects anyway, it is a human science, and you can study for a Bsc in it either. It can be part of an Arts Omnibus, but if you want a proper, degree you need to do a pure BA psychology, it is the only one accredited by the Psychological Society of Ireland. Psychology through an arts omnibus, or a joint major in it is not recognized by the PSI. Just in case, anybody is attempting to become a psychologist through arts, they have to go back again to do the BA direct entry, or a HDip, or just attempt to get 505+ points in the leaving to get into a course in an NUI or Trinity.

It depends on the college.

In Maynooth, Psychology through Arts is accredited by the PSI, hence why they only have a limited quota who may proceed to second year.

But in UCD it ain't accredited because Psychology can only be taken as a minor.

So in short, Arts degrees are only a waste of time if you don't know what you want to do but are useful if you know exactly what you want to do.

If you want to do Psychology do it because your interested and do it in NUIM.

parker kent

uglyfish87 wrote: »

I agree. I did a Arts degree for 3 loooonnnggg years. If I had to pay for it, I would have probably left the first week I started. Now I'm on the dole. If I did go out to work instead of doing the degree I would be alot better off.

I did an Arts degree for 3 short years. I didn't pay for it and loved it, getting a 1.1 and now I have a good job.

Spot the difference?