Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Obama on Art History

This is an interesting read: Obama mocking Art History degree. See here.

A lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career, but I promise you, folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art-history degree,”

He continues:

Nothing wrong with [an] art-history degree. I love art history. I don’t want to get a bunch of ­e-mails from everybody. I’m just saying, you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education, as long as you get the skills and training that you need.

It really is not so intelligent to mock art history degrees. You know there will be objections from those who study it. But the president has a point. If you only know art history and have 0 interest or ability in anything else you better be really really good so you are able to fight with thousands of other art majors to land on a professor position to teach another generation of art history majors. (substitute art history with any major of your choice). You MUST have skills that employers want to hire, or able to start a business.

Is the job statistics showing the however-many-percent unemployed art history majors college graduates? It is not. Art History majors are far more likely to find work than those only with a high school degree or less, though their work may not be art history related. I am not sure if you can major in manufacturing, don't remember seeing that in my college catalog. Even if you can, if the factories are not here what do you do with that manufacturing skill if anything real is learned?

Now it is important to realize you don't have to work with things you major in. A liberal art education... merely give you something to work study in that very limited few years of college.

Those who want to give up college because its too expensive and a degree gets you nowhere ought to think again... Was you high school education decent enough?

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