I had to take 12 hours of language when I was in college. I tried to take Spanish (cause I figured it'd be the most useful to me), but couldn't do that rolling R sound and kept getting failing grades in pronunciation cause of it. I mean, my freakin mouth doesn't work that way!

So, I took French instead. I can make all those sounds.

Now, seven years later, I know how to say about three things in French. Kinda wasted that money, didn't I?

But they can't receive their graduate degree unless they take the language classes, can they? So in essence they are being forced to take them.

I'm not sure when the foreign language requirements were removed, the page I was looking at didn't have a date for the change.

But Shiri is right, why should we continue to conform to such a traditional viewpoint when the things we learn and how we learn them are anything but traditional? I submit all of my homework assignments and projects in zip files through a web site owned by the professor. My math class homeworks are done through a 'math homework' software on the web.

I'm not sure what people may be missing out on if they don't take foreign language, but I think people who go through college and never learn a programming language are also missing out. Even if you are a translator, you are going to be using a computer for your work. Knowing how one works and how to get it to do the things you want makes life easier, more efficient, and more productive.

You can recognize prefixes and suffixes because you took Latin. Because I have taken computer science classes, there isn't a day that I don't look at a machine or a new device, and ponder how it's programmed to actually work, and usually I can figure it out, or at least make an educated guess. Sometimes its trivial things like traffic lights or how an elevator knows when to turn off which buttons are lit up, and other times it's more complex things like how a new search engine's algorithm works to find accurate results in a quick manor, or how netflix or amazon's software decides which new product is "right for you".

Maybe they should make programming languages count as a foreign language.

LOL! There's no way I could pass a programming class. I try to write my scripts here, and more often than not, they always break somewhere in the line. Thank god for the Nexus client.

Things like this made me glad I already graduated from college. (I graduated from Hampshire College in May of 2005, with a Bachelor of Arts.) Although I didn't have to take a language course at Hampshire...maybe I should have. If only to make the Spanish I learned in high school actually stick.

And if it makes anyone feel any better, I didn't get a decent job upon graduation either, and that was 2005. In fact, I'm going to take some online courses from the Rochester Institute of Technology so I can get some skills that might actually make me employable. (Beyond the data entry job I have now, at any rate. ) Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my Hampshire College education for anything in the world. I just wish it was a more practical, employable degree.

I sure hope no one is forcing people to take language to the degree where they can't choose a better school! But that somehow doesn't seem relevant. If we're talking about degree and school quality, clearly something is missing in their justification regardless of whether they force you to go to another school or just...dock your grade or something.

Likewise I am equally terrible at foreign languages. I have trouble grasping that there isn't a 1:1 ratio between words in one language and words in another. It seems like speaking another language is more like being in another state of mind more so than knowing the meaning of words. o_O

You can probably do beginner-level foreign language courses even with that trouble though. But you're right, that is what it's like in my experience.

I hate to rain on parades and seem like a jerk, but to be honest, if your college degree is in any way related to Art, you don't get to add yourself to the "graduating without a job" statistic. You knew that when you selected the major. Much like political science.

Or you just have a silly school who mixes in Science based classes in Arts.

hmm, my college degree was greatly related to art, and I had a job when I left college.

This one time, I heard there were exceptions to generalizations. Crazy huh? Guess you proved every art student out there without a job wrong, you big strong man you.

The only reason to expect to not have a job is a: you don't work to get one, b: its a crappy economy when you graduate. The jobless art student is a myth or a stereotype not a generalization.

Before this really crappy economy got going, the #1 reason that art students wouldn't be able to get a job out of college is if they were holding out for an art related job.

My silly little Associates degree is art related. The job I got out of college had absolutely nothing to do with art. And none of the ones I've had since have either. The one I currently have has a tiny bit to do with art, sometimes, on good days.

Of course, these days, it's prolly a lot tougher, cause it is for everyone.

I think people put too much emphasis in majoring in something they "love". Honestly, you're going to college for the paper. You can learn anything taught in college, except maybe advanced physics/chemistry that requires a lab, on your own. I think people should major in something that they like that is also easy to find a nice paying job with.

If you are an Art student, chances are you won't have a job related to your major. And isn't that a shame? You spent 4 years majoring in art because it "fit you perfectly", then you spend the rest of your life working in something you may or may not loathe, just because it was available. On the other hand you could major in something applicable that you also enjoy (maybe not as much as art), and then do art in your spare time.

Well, the thing about that is that in college, you have resources available that you might not have in the real world that help you. Art is a fairly time and resource intensive 'hobby.' And yes, anyone can be self taught with art, but you're giving up studeo time, free access to kilns, structured technique learning, access to models, portfolio building experience and usually free exhibitions in and around your school. Not to mention just the experience of being inspired and creatively challenged by professors and fellow students.

If you're going to wind up with a job you're settling for anyway, you might as well take advantage of your college years to get in the focused learning that will make things easier for you later on with your artistic pursuits.

But then I think that going to school just to learn is great! (so long as you're not forced to take things you don't want/need)

Over here, over 40% of graduate jobs are not in any way degree specific. We have a slightly different emphasis in Britain because we do our one subject for our three years, and so there's less scope for an employer to distinguish candidates for a job on the basis of university decisions. This fact probably affects my view on the matter, which is that the point of university is primarily to broaden the mind and develop your tastes and sensibilities, and getting a job is a secondary consideration.



I entirely agree.

I avoided languages like the plague at school and at university. Other than basic French, I have barely competent Latin, Ancient Greek and Anglo Saxon - I dodged ever having to speak languages by always learning the dead ones. I find that really inconvenient now, and I've just paid my deposit to start night classes in German. There are few things more embarrassing than visiting someone else's country and having to rely on other people to speak your language rather than you speaking theirs. You never know when a more catholic choice of options may prove beneficial in the future. It's one of the real downsides of the university system over here.

As Noola and Fain said, it's not wise to say go to school for a degree you can get a job in. It's narrow minded to do that.

Other degrees besides those that are part of today's "industry" teach other valuable skills, or even similar skills to those degrees.

Not majoring (or as my school loves to call it, concentrating) in those main degrees you mentioned Deschain doesn't mean you can't ever take those classes. I've taken business, computers, administrative courses alongside history, science, arts, etc.

And I agree again with Fain about the languages, never ever thought I'd need French yet life likes throwing little fast balls at us.

You live in Canada. How'd you ever get away thinking that? It's like an American not learning Spanish. I don't speak it well, I only have a couple semesters of formal training in it, but I understand it well enough because people speak it!

It wasn't required, nor encouraged in Burlington unless you planned in working in certain sectors (I didn't at the time). Sault Ste Marie is a place that rather dislikes anything French, a few years ago apparently the mayor tried to lesson the French influence on the city and the mindset has stuck.