But next time I read the 5000th article on the NYT about poor Johnny that can't find a job because he only has a degree in art history, yet has $200k in student loans, I'm going to lose it.
I remember also having read that while liberal arts are bad paid at the beginning of their career and strugle to find a first job that jumpstart their career, they mostly level (and in many cases overachieve) the difference with engineers after 20 years.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/college-degree-pay-careers-...
Studies and articles focus on just-out-of-college salary, but that's not the whole story...
Does that actually happen much (the lack of jobs, not the NYT articles)? Unemployment is low among people with college degrees of any kind--- the big rises in unemployment we've seen lately are mainly among non-degree-holding former blue-collar workers who've been unable to find new work as factories have closed. The people I know with art and art-history degrees seem to have no problem finding work with design and advertising firms, among other things.
Now, they aren't all doing their first choice or what their degree exactly is about, but that's also true of many technical people. Probably the worst group for that is people with only a B.S. in a basic science--- nobody I know with just a B.S. in physics, bio, or chemistry has been able to get a job they're particularly happy with in science. Some have gone back to grad school, and others have treated it as just an "I'm smart" piece of paper to get them in the door to other, not-very-related careers. So I don't actually see a huge difference between an art-history and a biology degree from the practicality perspective (the average starting salaries are comparable, too).
Then here's something different for you from the LAT: a guy with an MBA, a law degree, has Wall St experience, six figures in debt and hasn't found a job in years.
Oh, come on! Not everything has to be pragmaticized (is that even a word?) to the n'th degree.
It's one thing to get an Art History degree if that truly is what you're interested in. It's quite another to assume that it has to be expensive.
Sure, someone spending $200k like the poster below mentions for an Art degree is probably not showing good judgement. OTOH, someone else who lives with parents during college, works part time in a printshop and gets the same degree owing minimal student loans is in an arguably better position both financially and in terms of real-world experience.
I'd much rather hire someone with an Art History degree and a passion for the subject than someone else who cruised through CS coursework while having no interest in it beyond its moneymaking potential.
