Arts , not crafts

[sapna]

Both science and art are about investigation - testing out new ideas and ways of doing things. They are very closely related.

[Earthtracer]

There never used to be this divison. Leonardo, for one, would not have recognised it. I suspect that the vast amount of knowledge we now have, where more and more is known often about smaller and smaller fields, must have led to it. Indeed there are many divisions within broad specialities - e.g. in medicine but in many others, too.

I agree entirely with Kelly1:

I don't mind what my children do career wise, as long as it makes them happy and satisfied

[llondel]

I was, and still am, useless at drawing things. This played a significant part in my decision not to do biology, because we were expected to be able to look through a microscope and draw a picture of what we saw. Physics and Chemistry were much easier in comparison.

[s836apg]

ET

I started this thread with this quote:

'

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.
I can't imagine the figures are much different in the UK.

Are you saying that the number of meeja students is appropriate?

"Media studies graduates are facing the second highest level of unemployment amongst university leavers in the UK, according to new figures released this week."

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/med...ts/s2/a541326/

2) "Sneering"?
How do you figure that?
I know "media" students who call their courses "meeja" !

R

[Earthtracer]

First, if you were not sneering, my humble apologies. Referring to media studies as meeja studies still sounds belittling to me though - even if you do know a student (or even two) who does so!

If arts graduates cannot find work - tough. They know, or should have known - before they started what the jobs markets are like. Short of dragooning people into subjects they dislike, or simply closing the entry after a certain quota has been admitted, both rather draconian measures in what are supposed to be democracies, there is no easy solution to this, is there? Or do you have one?

[llondel]

The problem is that one has to ask whether going to university benefits society, or whether it's just for the individual student.

I think Blair managed to convince a load of children that they needed to go to university, get a degree and all would be good. Don't worry about the debt, you'll get good jobs and pay it off with no problem.

The reality is that all the new universities, and some of the old established ones, started offering courses that people wanted to do rather than courses that would benefit society, which comes back to my first paragraph. Pre-Blair, most people would have gotten themselves established earning income and then studied some of those subjects in their spare time and at their own expense. Those who went to university tended to do degrees that helped, such as science, engineering or medicine, and so the country gained benefit from graduates via their future work in their fields of study generating products and income and providing an excuse for all the necessary support jobs. In those days the state paid the bills, knowing that it was getting a return on the investment. Now the state can't afford to foot the bill because there is no noticeable return on investment for many degree courses apart from personal satisfaction for the graduate.

As for dragooning people into subjects, I have to admit I was shocked when I got to university and found people doing electronic engineering because that's what the careers advisor suggested, having never done any electronics up to that point. I guess I'm lucky that I got to make a career out of something I enjoy and have enjoyed for nearly forty years now, after starting at junior school.

It's difficult to recruit good electronics engineers round here at the moment.