Every time I find myself waiting for the MAX trains at Southwest Sixth Avenue and Montgomery Street, I look across at the fancy School of Business Administration building and wonder what it must be like inside. To an English major, it kind of seems like a whole different world.
I was surprised to learn how impressive Portland State’s School of Business is, and indeed, how large. According to the College Board’s Big Future website, business and marketing majors make up the largest chunk of PSU by far, with around 17 percent. The entire School of Liberal Arts and Sciences is around half that size.
Not only that, the School of Business proudly announces on its website that U.S. News and World Report has ranked it among the best in the country, and that it is the largest and only urban business school in Oregon.
In January 2015, a $60 million expansion of PSU’s School of Business Administration building will begin. The 42,000 square feet added will make it possible for all business classes of various specialties to be housed under one roof. They’ll be getting an auditorium, 25 industry-specific spaces and some more cool stuff that sounds great for them. If you’re wondering, $40 million of this project comes from state funding. Interestingly enough, the project will push the Graduate School of Education out of the same building to be relocated elsewhere.
I am in no way bashing business majors. In fact, I am mostly jealous of them and think they’re awesome. If you have a real passion for innovation or industry, and you’re good at it, then that’s amazing. I think marketing is fascinating and sometimes wish I had gotten into it. I am also impressed with people who are great at math and sciences and who enjoy them. I have no resentment for students who were born with their heads and hearts on the side of more economically-friendly interests than mine.
But it is hard to deny that the widespread transformation of higher education in the U.S. from actual, you know, education into a multi-million dollar business is reflected in what students choose to study. It’s an age-old cliché that the smartest way to pursue a college degree is to go into business, and that English, art, philosophy, film, theatre and other such majors will leave you suckling at your parents’ retirement fund at best and homeless at worst. Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than this, but every cliché is rooted in truth.
The trend for the past few years has been to push STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—because these types of jobs are in demand. The Governor of Florida, Republican Rick Scott, famously bashed students who major in areas that are not deemed employable, and in January of this year he announced a $30 million STEM Workforce Training Program in his state. According to his official website, the program will grant scholarships to students majoring in STEM fields and “individuals seeking training in STEM and other high-skill/high-wage occupations.”
The push toward STEM is logical when you consider that technological innovation has been responsible for most of our economic growth in the past few decades, and that the fastest-growing employment fields in this country require STEM education. And I’m all for opening the doors for women and minorities who have historically been shut out of these types of careers. But it’s hard to get high school students to succeed in math and science. Part of it is our extremely flawed educational system, but part of it is that little boys and girls don’t necessarily get inspired when you tell them they’re going to make six figures as petroleum engineers.
Of course, it is possible to feel passionate about lucrative majors, and also to just be really good at them. But the official endorsement of anointed money-making passions over the passion for literature and the arts may be one of the most depressing results of the Great Recession and the unsustainable nightmare that is college tuition in this country.
It’s too bad that looking at college as a means to live your dreams or pursue what you love is now considered incredibly naive. If you are going to incur a mountain of debt, you better do it for something that will ensure you can keep the lights on.
Even President Obama endorsed this way of thinking when he said in January that he was afraid that many young people don’t see trades and manufacturing as viable career options. “I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.”
In an email to online publication Inside Higher Ed, Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, responded, “In recent years, we’ve sunk into a ‘what’s in it for me’ approach to learning, making career earnings the litmus test both for college and for different majors. The president speaks well in principle about our responsibilities to one another in a democratic society. But he seems to have forgotten that college can build our desire and capacity to make a better world, not just better technologies.”
It’s worth noting that Obama later penned a hand-written apology to an upset art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He told her he was making a point about the job market, not the value of
art history.
I think the president was probably sincere and well-meaning in his intentions, but he perpetuates another myth about studying liberal arts that I consider a bizarre form of classism: Liberal arts are for the rich, because poor people are too worried about surviving. It ties into the dangerous economic times we live in, where following your dreams is a luxury reserved for children whose parents have
enough money.
Well, there is some truth to it. Most of us probably know people whose parents mortgaged houses to send them to fancy institutions so they could get that degree in screenwriting or classical music, and maybe success in those fields feels a lot easier to someone who started with a leg up financially. As an extremely poor English major, I can attest to that.
But—and I don’t know if I can speak for all liberal arts and arts majors—I never abandoned that childlike philosophy that college was a space where you chose to do what you love. I never thought about the age-old question, “What are you going to do with an English degree?” I just enjoy and excel at writing, literature, film and theatre, and trying to pour my life’s ambition into other areas would be inauthentic and full of unhappiness. Even if I had a yacht.
Moreover, the idea that your college major will have anything to do with your career is another myth. Linda Downs of the College Art Association posted on the group’s website: “It is worth remembering that many of the nation’s most important innovators, in fields including high technology, business, and even military service, have degrees in the humanities.”
Associate Professor Susan Kirtley of the PSU English Department said something similar in an email. “I broke my finger many years ago, and the doctor who set the break was an English major. My father works on Navy vessels, and the latest captain he worked with was an English major. A friend of mine holds a highly lucrative position with Intel, and he was an English major. What matters, more than a major, is learning to learn and being passionate and excited about what you do. This may well sound Pollyana-ish, but I truly believe that enthusiasm and dedication is the most important thing in regards to a career.”
The expansion of the School of Business Administration building that goes ahead next year will be one of the next major projects following the $30 million renovation of Lincoln Hall. While that project cost about half of what this one will, it did coincide with the transition of the School of Fine and Performing Arts into becoming the official College of the Arts. The Oregonian reports that PSU has seen a 40 percent increase in arts majors in the last four years. It’s good news for us that while these programs may be phased out or neglected at universities around the country, PSU is fair about supporting them.
So while it’s easy to get cynical about college majors, and while headlines may announce the death of liberal arts or give you a list of artistic majors that offer the least financial value as college degrees, don’t give up your dream. You probably can’t point to anyone who became homeless and destitute because they liked photography more
than accounting.
Or as a wise creative writing professor once told me, “There probably aren’t going to be any jobs for anyone soon. Might as well do what you love.”
