3 ms·

This is very true. Most young male engineering grads like to gloat the fact that they make a lot more than their humanities counterparts (perhaps to make up for

This is very true. Most young male engineering grads like to gloat the fact that they make a lot more than their humanities counterparts (perhaps to make up for the misery and lack of female companionship during their undergrad?) But the reality is that if you graduated with a humanities/social science degree from a ivy league or sub-ivy school, you are bound to do pretty well. As opposed to their state school counterparts, English majors from Harvard have the academic clout to get into a top law/med school which will put them with far greater earning power over engineers in 10 years. But if you are a true-minded humanities major, you might even become a true humanitarian for a couple of years; maybe travel abroad to a Peace Corps or get a masters at a International Studies program. Then only later, you get on the fast-track to a management program at some Fortune 500 to manage some engineers.

anamax 16y ago
> But if you are a true-minded humanities major, you might even become a true humanitarian for a couple of years; maybe travel abroad to a Peace Corps or get a masters at a International Studies program. Then only later, you get on the fast-track to a management program at some Fortune 500 to manage some engineers. Keep telling yourself that. Only a small fraction of humanities grads make that transition. Oh, and the Peace Corps wants folks who can actually do things. Food, shelter, etc come from applied technology.
harry 16y ago
Ahhh this is one of the issues I've heard tossed around - what makes for a successful individual post graduation? How can we measure it? The feds are putting in place systems to track income as the best metric. But... I hesitate to call a 100k$ rockstar EE major ten times more successful than a rockstar chem e doing water purification work in Guatemala for 10k$ as a humanitarian.
- noname123 16y ago
  Pretty simple answer to that. You don't. Most college grads don't realize that how much you make at a job is a really poor indicator of your self-worth. But you don't realize this until after you've been on the job for awhile - kind of like high schoolers thinking where you go to college is the ultimate determination of your worth.
  - harry 16y ago
    so how can we defend the money lent and given by the people (from the federal government) is going to a good cause?

anamax 16y ago

> But if you are a true-minded humanities major, you might even become a true humanitarian for a couple of years; maybe travel abroad to a Peace Corps or get a masters at a International Studies program. Then only later, you get on the fast-track to a management program at some Fortune 500 to manage some engineers. Keep telling yourself that. Only a small fraction of humanities grads make that transition. Oh, and the Peace Corps wants folks who can actually do things. Food, shelter, etc come from applied technology.

harry 16y ago

Ahhh this is one of the issues I've heard tossed around - what makes for a successful individual post graduation? How can we measure it? The feds are putting in place systems to track income as the best metric. But... I hesitate to call a 100k$ rockstar EE major ten times more successful than a rockstar chem e doing water purification work in Guatemala for 10k$ as a humanitarian.

noname123 16y ago
Pretty simple answer to that. You don't. Most college grads don't realize that how much you make at a job is a really poor indicator of your self-worth. But you don't realize this until after you've been on the job for awhile - kind of like high schoolers thinking where you go to college is the ultimate determination of your worth.
- harry 16y ago
  so how can we defend the money lent and given by the people (from the federal government) is going to a good cause?