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Spare me the well rounded liberal arts balance makes me a better person garbage.
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If you don't use what you learned in college in your career then you didn't need to go to college.
Both of these statements are (and forgive me, there's only one apt word) ignorant.
And before I get labeled, I earned a B.S. and M.Eng. in Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University.
An old Brit M.E. prof, Dr. Kettleborough told us something I've never forgotten:
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If you interview engineering graduates and ask them to evaluate their university education they will answer: 1) Five years out of school - "My education was inadequate, I really needed more mathmatics, physics and engineering, they didn't prepare me for my job". 2) After 20 years out - "Incomplete. I should have had more management, accounting and economics. They didn't prepare me for my career". 3) After 30 years out - Shortsighted - I should have had more philosophy, art and music. They didn't prepare me for my life.
The notion that a college degree at a tier 1 institution must be tied to a vocation, is misguided, shortsighted, and ultimately a detriment to society.
So many Aggies are scared of competing to be an elite institution that it saddens me. And yes, a well rounded education including Liberal Arts is a necessary component of that. I have a daughter at Dartmouth College, and the difference in attitudes about education, (true education, not vocational training) is astounding. I bring it up because A&M and Dartmouth have an astounding number of parallels in culture, attitude and tradition (likely stemming from both originating as obscure, rural, land-grant institutions). Aggies, we can do better than this. One post in this thread touts "embracing the future" when supporting this move to become a gigantic Devry. No, "embracing the future" is realizing that we are not (and haven't been for 40+ years) a school for enhanced job training.
When I got to campus in the fall of 1973, the old shops were still there. Lathes, welding machines, etc. At one point long ago every Aggie had to know how to use them. We don't need to drift back in that direction.