By Rebekah Rast — A study of late revealed that recent college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture experienced significantly higher rates of joblessness than other college degrees.
More specifically those with an undergraduate degree in architecture suffered from a 13.9 percent unemployment rate; the arts, 11.1 percent; and the humanities, 9.4 percent, according to research done by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
Knowing that this is an economy where many people are still struggling to find jobs, especially those with less experience coming right out of college, one should wonder how students taking a new class offered by Columbia University will fare when they face the real world.
From the Washington Post:
“Columbia University will offer a new course for upperclassmen and grad students next semester. An Occupy Wall Street class will send students into the field and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, a veteran of the Occupy movement.
The course begins next semester and will be divided between class work at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork that will require students to become involved with the Occupy movement outside of the classroom.
The course will be called ‘Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement’ it will be run by the anthropology department.”
Of course students participating in this class would have many left-wing, labor union allies to possibly help with the job search once they graduate—maybe even more opportunities than those who graduate with an arts or humanities degree. But how does a course like this help someone’s future employment?
Jeff Carter from Points and Figures sums it up well:
“Given that the Occupy Wall Street class is a three credit hour class, it costs an undergrad $5001.09 to learn how to camp out in a park and beat a drum while articulating a far left manifesto. I suppose if you are going to work for a far left non-government organization it would look favorable. But, I don’t think it will look particularly sharp if you are trying to get a job in a field like consulting.”
Obviously some degrees are more valuable than others and with rising tuition costs you would think colleges would offer classes to help students get along in the real world and not just those set to cater to the latest social movement.
