Why do people choose (semi) useless majors in college?

MountaineerWV wrote:... no matter your degree, you have to take classes from different disciplines. Engineers have to take some liberal arts classes and well...liberal arts kids don't take engineering, but they do have to meet math requirements.... The schools need to create a balanced and difficult curriculum that exposes kids to many different disciplines. Yes, that means Calculus, chemistry, theology, physics, in depth history/political science classes, literature, etc.

No, no, no. If you WANT that sort of education, then you choose that sort of degree. In Australia, if you do a Bachelor of Engineering, then all your subjects will be engineering, maths, physics type subjects (except I believe most degrees would require a communication/writing subject in the first year). What is the point in an engineering student doing liberal arts subjects? They're there to learn how to be an engineer. In most universities in Australia, Arts students do not need to take maths subjects unless they choose to, either.

I was an English Major in college (in 1962-66), and if I had it to do all over again, I'd do the same thing.

When I was at Dartmouth College in those Paleolithic years, I learned on my own how to use a computer on the world's first timesharing system. My math professor (John G. Kemeny, who headed up the Three-Mile Island Commission) had invented the BASIC language, and I learned that as well.

Little by little, after I came out to Southern California, I gravitated toward computers, doing programming, marketing, and other tasks. Now I am an MIS and network manager for an accounting firm. And I'm still indebted to the great books I read as an English major (and still read) for showing me that life was infinitely richer once one looked up from all those numbers.

Although I am a computer professional, I have never taken a course in computers, with the result that my approach to my profession is strictly pragmatic. Indeed, I find that college educated computer majors tend to be too theoretical.

So, no regrets here ...

I'm still on the fence about this one. I have a BA in Philosophy. Far more useless than many of the degrees listed before, but, like Annie and others said way back at the beginning of the thread oh so many years ago, there are many useful skills for life that come from lib. arts majors. For example, I'm not sure I've lost an argument since graduation. I learned to think critically, rationally, and communicate both orally and in writing clearly and effectively. Those skills have been exceptionally useful in my real life, and were not skills I had before university.

I chose my major because it was the only thing I could find where I didn't have to take math. I started out in natural resources and changed several times. I had NO idea what I wanted to do in life, and dabbled in all sorts of things instead. Which was good in some ways and not in others.

The good thing is that I am an exceptionally well-rounded person. I have a broad range of skills, interests, and understanding.

I definitely have regrets, though. I think that I would have been much better served to have studied a language at least. That's a noble thing to learn and a very useful skill as well. Some might even say marketable... which is definitely not something I hear about myself without a negative prefix very often these days (UN-marketable, NON-marketable, and HAHAHAHA! marketable?!?! seem more common now). Now, when I want to actually start a career in life, I find that I have to essentially start all over, and most professions of value are going to require at least a slight background in math. And so I find myself, at 33, looking at having to take several years of university again somehow and try to learn math that I haven't even looked at since high school, when I could have just put a little more effort in the first time around and saved myself years and thousands of dollars later in life.

But hindsight is always 20/20. My life has been exactly as I really wanted it, and I know that if I would have studied something like engineering, I would have been compelled to get a job after graduation and I wouldn't have let myself really get out into the world. Not that you can't, of course, but I know myself, and I wouldn't have. So, it is what it is.

LilaBear wrote:No, no, no. If you WANT that sort of education, then you choose that sort of degree. In Australia, if you do a Bachelor of Engineering, then all your subjects will be engineering, maths, physics type subjects (except I believe most degrees would require a communication/writing subject in the first year). What is the point in an engineering student doing liberal arts subjects? They're there to learn how to be an engineer. In most universities in Australia, Arts students do not need to take maths subjects unless they choose to, either.

If you want to study just one subject, go to a trade school.

The point of a university level of education is to teach someone how to think. Limiting yourself to things in your comfort zone does not allow one to grow or to see things from a different perspective.

Rogerio wrote:For ME, picking a major in college is about learning useful skills that will make me hireable. That's why I picked Business and Info Systems.

Does Fine Art Photography qualify as useless?

I'm now employed by a Fortune 500 bank as a Sr. Security Systems Engineer. Yes, it was a twisted path.

Fundamentally college worked out to be a type of inner travel. So your question about college majors is quite like asking "why do people waste their time traveling?"