Saucycarpdog said:
Again, I'm not talking about the liberal arts here. I'm talking stuff like writing, music, acting, fashion, culinary, ect. A lot of talk has been about the liberal arts, but that ecompases so many courses so I wanted to focus on something a little more specific. You know, to spice it up.
So, what do you guys think of these courses? I know a lot of people go into them but are they useful in the real world?
My opinions are mixed like they are on most things. To be honest mostly these kinds of courses tend to appeal to young, stupid, kids who don't have any clue what they want to do, or plans, and exist to rope them in with something realtively easy so they can get a degree based on something they like, without any real context for how it might be used. A school that made two hundred thousand dollars teaching some girl about Fashion, doesn't really give a crap about whether she's likely to be able to put that knowlege to use given how closed that whole industry tends to be, it got paid, so as far as the school is concerned she can starve on a street corner.
At the end of the day when it comes to most art degrees it's all about who you know, rather than what you know. If you don't have the contacts, odds are a degree in most "artistic" fields aren't going to amount to a hill of beans. I've oftentimes felt that some areas of study are basically traps run by schools hoping to attract enrollment and get people to waste generally allocated grant money. I personally think that in many cases a college, especially one that receives any kind of public aid or allowances at all, should be requires to evaluate the likelyhood of a person entering these areas of study ever finding empoloyment based on them before accepting money.
To be honest I'm paticularly wary of "acting", "modeling", and "fashion" degrees and training which can come from either general colleges as a program or from their own specialty schools. You teach some kid that they can be designing their own clothes, acting in movies, getting paid big bucks for looking pretty and carrying themselves the right way, working for magazines, etc... knowing that the odds of this are nearly non-existant, I consider that to be tantamount
to a scam. While it's a stereotype, those are exactly the kind of degrees you expect a hooker to have, the reality is not usually "hooking your way through college" so much as "hooking while waiting for the oppertunities to do something with what I learned in college".
When it comes to other kinds of "artistic" pursuits like cooking, that borders on being a trade, and honestly I have no real problems with that. A trained cook can find employment rather easily, granted they probably can't expect to have their own resteraunts, or run their own kitchens, but it is something one can find steady employment with. I mean even at the low end a good short order cook can make a pretty decent living.
Overall, I don't think anyone should be able to "major" in an art, or even *ahem* "liberal arts" unless they are referred there by an employer that already has them on payroll. That sounds odd, but to be honest most "came out of nowhere" success stories when it comes to the "art" fields tend to be situations where someone who isn't involved in that kind of thing winds up being scouted for having a specific look or whatever. Basically if someone comes up to you and says "I like your look, I'm willing to take a chance on you" and then pay you to go to school which they pay for (which happens rarely, but it does happen) then it might be okay for a school to accept someone as say an acting major in my opinion, but for your average kid who wants to be a movie star... that borders on a scam.
