>Over the years, my interactions with students (in addition to teaching
>psychology, I am also an academic advisor at our school's advisement center)
>had led me to believe that many of them feel that the general-studies classes
>they take during their first two years of college are not useful to them in
>terms of their future occupations.
A lot of what I (think I) know comes from the Raleigh (NC) newspaper...which
coincidentally has run a couple of articles relevant to the comment above. One
such article pointed out that employers are now preferring students with a
general liberal arts education over those with more narrowly focused technical
specialization.
A second article commented on the majority-female college population these days
and wondered why male students are not opting for college. One speculation,
perhaps with some substance, is that the guys jump into technical fields (e.g.,
computer programming) where college training is seen as simply a delay, keeping
them from earning big bucks. The counterpoint came from an employer of such
"young guns," who pointed out that they tend to "top out" in the corporate
world because they don't have the breadth of knowledge needed to understand the
complexities of the larger organizational/business world.
Finally, as my wife points out, who can predict what they'll be doing five or
ten years from now? (Hey, if I could predict what was going to happen
five years from now, I wouldn't need any other occupation!) Surveys of our own
graduates indicate that a relatively small percentage actually end up working
in the field they studied as a college student. The best bet, therefore, is to
gain as broad a base as one can manage during those college years.
Locally, there is a degree of irony in all that, as our Faculty Senate has just
approved a new major in "applied physics," in which there are no (as in zero)
free electives, at all, in a 122 hour degree program. Voices cried in the
wilderness that it might not be a good idea....
Pat Cabe
**************************************************
Patrick Cabe, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
One University Drive
Pembroke, NC 28372-1510
(910) 521-6630
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
