Many of my friends have a practical major.
This could be anything from one of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees that are lauded every time a politician talks about education, a finance and accounting double major, or a computer science major. Despite the prevalence of these degrees, IU should expand its breadth of inquiry class requirements for non-humanities majors.
As someone pursuing one of those practical degrees, I understand this mindset.
It’s nice knowing that my major has enough standing that I will likely have no trouble finding a job after college, and with tuition being so high, being practical never hurts.
However, in the age of the practical major, taking fun classes – classes that will likely have no effect on our future careers – is something that I think all of us should do.
Forbes lauds liberal arts educations for teaching the soft skills that a practical major would not.
Skills like writing and historical understanding are more emphasized by degree programs in the humanities, but they’re extremely important for being successful in the professional world.
According to an article in the Atlantic, liberal arts degrees produce more curious students with the critical thinking skills necessary for upper level positions.
However, this offers little comfort when many of us are just worried about getting an entry-level position or into a gradate program, so people like me shy away from the idea of majoring in liberal arts fields.
It often makes more sense for people to study something other than liberal arts. People have different motivations with college and they should be able to pursue the path that gets them what they want.
However, I support IU having required breadth of inquiry classes and general requirements.
These classes allow us to experience and study things that we normally would not be able to or even choose to, and these classes may end up having a greater effect on our abilities to connect with others, even in an interview setting.
When my friend interviewed with a large investment bank, she talked about her music minor.
Opera ended up being a shared interest between her and her interviewer, and she talked about all the different composers she studied for over half the interview.
My own last interview ended up with me talking about my class in Z201: History of Rock and Roll. We didn’t think either of these classes would have any application for us.
The job market is constantly changing. We don’t know what our next big boom in jobs will be, so many of us are preparing for it the best way we know how, with practical degrees, but we have a huge university with a huge course listing that contains anything and everything that we could ever be interested in.
Not taking advantage of something like that harms our education. So get the practical major, follow the path you want, but at least try to push the boundaries on what you want to learn.
npatwari@umail.iu.edu
