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You can call me elitist; you can call me privileged; you can call me detached. But this article troubles me. The New York Times reports that in the midst of a shrunken job market, students and their families are calling for more education that prepares graduates for jobs and internships. In response, some universities are eliminating programs such as American studies, classics, and philosophy and replacing them with more preprofessional majors such as “The English Major in the Workplace” and “just about anything prefixed with ‘bio,’” reports the Times.

As a recent graduate myself, I can sympathize with the real anxieties and actual challenges to securing a first job. But at the same time I feel strongly about the importance of developing one’s intellectual capacity outside of what the Times calls "careerism." Learning how to read critically and write clearly, for instance, enables us to be more responsible global citizens. Understanding philosophy and history deepens our sense of universal human fragility and limits hubris. Literature puts us in other people’s shoes and builds compassion (in fact, some medical schools have incorporated literature to nurture empathy and train better doctors). Focusing on education’s function as a mere means to a specific job could limit school's place in refining such essential human sensibilities—not to mention put us on the wrong track too early. How many students know what they want to do for the next 40 years at age 18 anyway?

My suggestion? Keep the core programs and pump up career services.

Read the full report from NYT.

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