Agreed… we do lose something when we discount the value of a well rounded education.
But college is sooooo expensive these days. If a kid is attending out of state, or a private school, they really have to ask the question as to what sort of job that well rounded, liberal arts degree, will result in. If they aren’t taking on debt to get the degree, then maybe it’s not a concern. But so many kids ARE taking on debt. It’s tough.
The fine arts are a pyramid structure (I won’t go so far as to say pyramid schemes :)) . A wide base of beginners, amateurs, people who will work for free because there is zero barrier to entry, anyone can noodle on a guitar or sketch or post dance videos on TikTok. A much more narrow band of consistent competency, an even much more narrow band of those who can make some kind of professional income, and a very tiny tip of those who can learn a good living or even get wealthy as a musician author painter etc.
An MFA program can be a very valuable step with room, community, mentor support, studio space etc. for the person who is already on a strong track to being a professional in their field. It is also considered a terminal degree for hiring arts professors. However, there aren’t enough of these potential students to float the number of MFAs on offer so logistically most MFA students are destined to become talented amateurs, to go into adjacent professions, or become disillusioned. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence from my friends, former fellow students, and students I’ve taught.
I did a mixed arts and academic MA that was similar to an MFA and then into a fully funded PhD and then working as a tenured professor. I was the very small percentage that the route paid off, but I also never went into debt.
So I would modify that advice to say if you are really in the smaller fraction that “shows promise” you will likely be attracting support and mentors and scholarship funding, and to follow the money because it’s attached to people who believe in you and will make a commitment to you.
As opposed to say plunking down an insane amount of money for an MFA to “follow your dream” no matter how delusional.
Yeah - I mean, I ultimately majored in something mostly related to the field I planned to work in (would’ve had a journalism degree but college decided to redo several programs including that one and not mention it when I literally enrolled as a journalism major so…) which might make me a bit different than, say, the people who change their major 10 million times (I studied ag at community college thinking I wanted to work w/animals and changed paths, ultimately) and I’m one of the lucky ones who managed to graduate w/o debt and recognize that I’m fortunate in that regard.
I wonder, too, if the pandemic isn’t ultimately going to force some shifts in how education works?
I graduated relatively recently and I’m pretty sure pre-pandemic there were still some employers who might’ve looked askance at someone who attended college online (at least, I was an online student for my BA, associates I did go to a campus), for example (flip side of that though, or how I spin it on the rare times it came up (after a while I had the sense to not mention it but it’d sometimes awkwardly come up as the college I attended online is apparently known for a beautiful campus and sometimes to make conversation someone would go “Oh I’ve heard the campus there is beautiful” and w/o really thinking I’d be like “uh…I’ve not actually seen it, hahaha”) is that, as an online student, I was more of a motivated self-starter because you’re not right there on campus sitting in a classroom, you’re doing it all on your own time). I imagine that’s going to change as we see more people who had no choice but to attend school online.
Colleges themselves I think can be woefully stuck in the past - or at least the school I went to for my bachelor’s seemed about 50 years behind the times 
(smaller private Catholic college - not actually Catholic myself attended because they were the least skeezy online program I could find that would also accept my community college credits - also if anyone reading this thread is going to college in the near future or knows anyone who is and you’re looking at community colleges, be mindful. Even the ones that are great with transferring credits do not always take as many as the schools lead you to believe and getting some credits to transfer can be a PAIN.) moreso culturally than anything else (like, again, the whooool social justice thing? Yeah yeah, guys we’re well into the 21st century, your students are not ALL the privileged well-to-do young women of yesteryear. We don’t need social justice rammed down our throats at every turn. We know the world is an imperfect place.)
Like - I wonder too, and this may be more down to individual personality or generational differences, how much more we’re going to see learning as a lifelong thing.
Personal anecdotal example here: I started learning Spanish last year. Why? Because: 1. I wanted to and felt it might be useful and frankly kinda fun, 2. I remember my days working at a TB racetrack and there were definitely times knowing some basic Spanish would’ve been handy there, I’m sure, and 3. I see SO MANY job ads citing some ability to speak Spanish as a plus. So, I signed up for some free online classes offered via my local library’s collaboration with a reputable program called Gale. Took two (may eventually go back when I feel I’ve practiced enough and take the third). Supplemented the classes with Duolingo which is a free phone app. Spanish classes aren’t the only thing you can take for free, online, via the library and yes you do get actual certificates to print off (though that kind of opens up the whole can of worms which I swear I saw an article on the other day: how do we know what certificates actually correlate to “this person knows anything”). I’m by no means fluent and my reading/written Spanish is likely better than my spoken but I could probably at least limp through a very basic conversation in the language (and the not being fluent is more a remark on my lack of practice than the course quality)
But - point being, there are definitely more and more free or online resources.
I never studied journalism in college. But I’ve picked up new skills through online courses offered by places like Poynter which are trusted within the industry (those ain’t always free but they’re still somewhat affordable depending on the course).
It kind of grinds my gears in the horse world (and this is considering I’ve never in my life been a WS) when I see people looking for WS who emphasize they don’t want someone who’s doing college online while being a WS b/c it might make them less focused on the horse side or b/c being a WS is apparently THAT demanding. Like, you don’t own these people, you’re often as not not even PAYING them, if they think they can find time to attend college courses online or whatever around their WS duties, who the frig are you to not let them have that option? One of those things where I think that if I hypothetically were a high-level rider etc. in a position to take on a WS, I would DEFINITELY not have a stipulation like that. (But I’m never gonna be that caliber of trainer so it doesn’t really matter what I think)
Not just the pandemic, but the demographic shift and overall decline in the college-aged population. Community colleges are already hemorrhaging enrollment: -30% or more over a decade in many cases. Things will get very interesting in about 10 years.
Things will get interesting in the next two years if interest rates rise, and inflation continues on the current track, but salaries in many fields don’t keep pace with inflation. That combination of factors will make the whole idea of taking out student loans for lower paying degree programs even less attractive to many young people.
I predict falling enrollment at many middle tier private colleges and universities, unless something changes.
My 27 y.o. gelding arrived in Maine in 2001 at the only sale barn in the state. He is a registered Paint and his papers came with him. He stepped off the trailer from Iowa into the pen and I said I’ll take that one. Two brothers in Iowa purchased horses at sales and when they had full load they drove to Maine. What I found peculiar was that the papers were the originals in the breeder’s name. I got in touch with him. He had a large breeding operation, usually 50-60 horses. He said he sold him to “some guy.”
I asked him about training. Not much. He said his buddy’s granddaughter rode him sometimes. He went to the Denver Stock Show when he was 2. And
He went to college for three months!!! The breeder is in Eldora and couldn’t remember which college. He has no idea what they did with him. I can’t find any indications of credit hours earned. It had to be a horse college. Why else would he send him there?
In Canada at least, we now have more people over age 65 than under age 14, even with robust immigration. That’s going to impact the college system. On the other hand more young people want some form of post secondary education.
I’ve been doing online college teaching the past year with my first in person class in Fall 2021. The students were so happy to be back in class. There are a lot of soft skills that don’t get taught online.
On the other hand as @anon15718925 says there has been a strong demand for continuing education throughout my lifetime. Non-credit continuing ed courses in tech, languages, and business skills, as well arts and crafts were big components for both community colleges and school boards before the Internet.
I agree, 1,000%! I’m a liberal arts school graduate and have an MA in a very impractical (ha) subject. The MA at least was supported by a scholarship, although I did lose “earning potential” going to school while getting it, I guess.
Re the MFA @Scribbler : I disagree that platforms like YouTube and Amazon are just for people who lack talent to make it more traditional ways. Obviously, I’m a writer without an MFA who just took lots of creative writing classes, so I will disagree with that–in fact, one of the great things about the Internet is that it takes away many of the layers of gatekeeping of “knowing the right people” to sell your art. To teach fine arts, yes, you need an MFA but to practice art is very different. Some artistic disciplines like dance and music do require formal training, of course, but even then, it’s not necessarily gotten via a college.
But going back to the original topic, I do find it frustrating that many employers insist on a specific background in something that limits their talent pool, and which essentially says to graduates “throw yourself into this narrow thing like medical writing/technical writing/specific computer language and hope it pans out in the long-term.” Part of this is also that employers are less and less willing to train candidates. They assume workers will come and go, so they hire people who they can profit from on day one, use them up, and fire them just as quickly.
I got so much as a person from my courses in literature. Yet most of the kids I worked with via my work with an admissions consultant wanted to major in business or engineering. In 21 years I never met a kid who wanted to major in English, which makes me sad. Although I will add, I do think that many humanities majors could just a bit of a refresher in terms of how they teach. So much of the focus is on specialized academic writing in those classes, and only a tiny handful of people will go on to need that in their work lives.
But debt can be crippling, and college costs are getting out of control. If you want to pursue the arts, horses, anything without a quick ROI–even if you are extremely talented–I do think ideally it’s best to do the math. But if you’re like me, when I was in my teens and 20s, I was just getting through the day, not focusing on that type of stuff.
Yup. Higher education was in crisis mode pre-pandemic.
The trend over the past decades is that a select few top schools have been thriving while everyone else is in a death spiral.
Which is kind of how these equine science programs came into existence 20, 30 years ago— as a way to recruit students who may not otherwise attend college. Unfortunately it has somewhat backfired for the reasons discussed in this thread.
One of my friends from high school didn’t go to college (actually of the like, 4 people I’ve stayed connected with or reconnected with since, I think only one even finished college and she went to community college.) but was always super into art and pretty talented at it (well, talented relative to a lot of the rest of us in a small-town high school w/approx 600 total students). Really goth-y/alternative sense of fashion, I think she briefly tried to break into doing tattoos, discovered that wasn’t the art medium for her (she apprenticed at a tattoo place I think) even though she’s had a couple tats herself about since she was old enough.
At some point she discovered woodburning and that’s primarily what she does - she also started doing leatherwork a little bit though, as her fiance had a family member pass away who did a lot of leatherwork and his family still had the tools. She made him a leather quiver or something to keep arrows in as I guess he’s into that stuff and it was the first time she’d done anything with leather but it looked really good.
She sells her wood art on Etsy, though, and she definitely doesn’t lack talent. I don’t think she’s necessarily raking in money (not 100% sure but I think she’s a stay-at-home mom for now - she has a kid who’s maybe 6 or 7 from when she was still w/her HS boyfriend after graduation) but she makes all sorts of cool stuff and she takes commissions so she definitely sells some stuff.
I love reading. Got stuck taking a few literature courses because elective options were thin as an online student.
Hated them. Again do NOT get me wrong, I LOOOOVE reading I was one of those rare kids who taught herself to read at like, age 2, reading street signs and the like out loud in the car (probably made me SO FUN on long trips ) Probably didn’t help that I didn’t get along with the professors (how do I put this - I didn’t get along with many of my professors when studying for my BA. Just. I think it was partly because I was pretty vocal about how the school handled the whole phasing out of the journalism program and a lot didn’t like that and then the rest didn’t like my general distaste for having social justice crammed down my throat at every turn. Like - ironically I didn’t even necessarily disagree with the whole “making the world a better place” thing but this school just crammed it into everything and kind of acted like it thought all the students had lived uber-sheltered existences and yeah. Then throw in the fact that, again, on-campus students got all the attention half the time anyway and yeah. There were like, two professors ultimately who I actually LIKED.) but even if I had gotten along w/all my professors swimmingly well, I just don’t like all the navel gaze-y literary analysis stuff. I can read for deeper meaning, I can pick up on it, but I’ve never felt the need to beat it to death and feel like analyzing anything THAT MUCH just sucks the enjoyment out of the reading. So I can completely see why some people wouldn’t want to study English if it’s heavy on literature and dissecting it and navel gaze-y “what does this DEEP SYMBOLISM MEAN” stuff.
As for the degree thing - I notice this less and less now that I’m a few years out of college and have work experience most prospective employers know what to make of, but when I was about, say, two to three years out of college w/most of my writing experience relating to horses and trying to pivot to “real” journalism, hooo boy did most editors I interviewed with not have any clue what to make of my combined lack of journalism/communications degree (which ironically seems to be completely not necessary according to a lot of advice on social media from journalists who aren’t old, crusty and have worked at the same small-town paper for 25 years) paired with very unconventional work experience.
That’s so incredibly cool re: your friend! And yes, I know many people who were Goth-y, gifted artsy type people who didn’t go the MFA route, but now sell stuff online and are making more money than those who did and never found a way to truly monetize their art. Even if they aren’t making a killing, it’s a profitable side hustle they love.
Ha, I love literary analysis. But as someone with a horse book series and who has had many unconventional jobs, I completely understand with finding a roadblock when I apply for a position. Employers devalue any resume that doesn’t have some sort of standardized “check certain boxes” trajectory. It’s almost as if the best thing to do is to make yourself look like you ARE a stereotype on paper that an employer would “feel comfortable” working with.
I feel like some of it in my case was that I had such unconventional work experience and I feel like the last couple times I applied to a job with more typical journalism experience it had begun shifting. I also think some of it is because a lot of the places I was applying to earlier on were in smaller towns and yeah.
I can take away the deeper meaning of a book I just don’t feel the need to dissect it and pick it apart. But then again I might be odd anyway - I’m reading To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time since 9th grade English class and I’m reading it still picking up, obviously, on the whole basic point of the story but I’m also going, “how did I not notice all the dry/sarcastic humor here especially from Atticus?” (It wouldn’t have flown over my head at the time either, best I can guess is I just didn’t notice it at the time b/c we were probably all too busy doing the usual assignments and stuff related to the book. Just. I’m still laughing at the “put some of the county back where it belongs, the soil erosion is bad enough” line from the book.)
@anon15718925 @Impractical_Horsewoman
Ah, my dig at Tiktok wasn’t meant to diss the entire online world as a platform for people doing arts and crafts!
Obviously online is now how music and crafts in particular are marketed. Also there are folks on YouTube doing idiosyncratic special interest video series that are essentially small scale independent documentaries. The most successful manage to monetize their channels and even get Patreon subscribers. Obviously there’s a whole range of stuff from entertainment to journalism to how-to. I’m going to guess that a lot of these channels are going to boom and then fade away on an inherent timeline but so does “real” TV.
About English lit as a discipline: there’s an analytical frame of mind for the field that is as specific and different as the lens for any specialized field. Within that, there are multiple approaches and fashions come and go. Same as all disciplines.
The difference may be is that we all can read novels for fun, and likely enjoy them more, without the lens of English lit. Whereas we are more likely to accept the analytical framework of math or history or psychology as pertaining to new unfamiliar concepts and materials. So we may be resistant to applying English Lit analyses because we feel we can already read, or because our particular minds aren’t wired that way, and we prefer a different discipline.
Just like every discipline, some people have a natural affinity for the analytical framework of English Lit and others do not. That’s fine. You can still read and understand and enjoy literature outside that framework. English Lit is it’s own analytical game and is not part of ordinary reading.
I’m good at the English Lit analytical game, but when I read contemporary novels I relate to them differently and leave that lens behind. My preferred scholarly subjects are older books that present interpretive difficulties.
Alas, if only that’s where the big money was! I can deconstruct with the best of 'em, I swear!
Some of my very favorite documentaries come from YouTube, speaking of criticism, like Be Kind Rewind, which does some fabulous stuff on old films with a focus on the role of women and POC. Another nice thing about YouTube in particular is that while film has so historically been male-dominated behind the camera, it’s given women and marginalized people the ability to have much more of a voice, direct to the audience. Unfortunately, there’s also a very nasty, disinformative side to it as well.
I think the ability to educate yourself and reach an audience will also likely result in a drain from expensive programs that are getting a deservedly bad rep for high student loans and poor job placement.
Another thing to remember when reviewing job placement stats for any college is to ask yourself if the student would have gotten the job they did without going to the expensive school, btw. For example, if Mr. Richie Rich goes to Expensive Private U and gets a great job with his family connections, that might look like a “win” for the school and that the degree paid off, but the student likely would have flourished, no matter what his or her connections. This is also true for the children of already-connected industry insiders in film, publishing, and so forth!
Absolutely. The more selective a college can afford to be, the better the student retention and outcomes. I went to a top ranked grad school. One summer I taught a first year intro class that included students at a 6 week academic summer camp, who were entering grade 11 in September. Many of them were already reading and writing at a higher level than the graduates of the 4 year colleges where I went on to teach.
Unfortunately in general, the fewer social and economic advantages you grow up with, the more you need timely advice about navigating the maze, and the less adept you may be about accessing or even recognizing opportunities.
Also - anyone who looks at college outcomes should know that most of the job placement data is reported via survey, and many students simply do not fill out that part of the survey. We have some federal data on wages (for anyone who received federal student aid only, and it’s a few years behind in terms of cohort) and some schools have access to aggregate data from state labor and workers compensation filings. No school has a full picture of how well their graduates are doing. And it’s not for lack of trying. It is hard to find good placement and salary data. Source - myself as an institutional researcher at a top 10 public university.
Yes. A selective college that really mentors their students will likely know where most of them go next, which is often grad school or professional programs. Those programs will in turn have placement rates for their own grads, at least for their first jobs.
But no school is able to accurately track the fortunes of most of its grads beyond that initial first move. And for the highly selective schools and the higher paid professions most students need grad or professional school beyond the 4 year BA. Law, Medicine, academia, science, even fine arts. So a school can say 90 per cent of its BA grads go on to further education but it’s going to be harder to be accurate about where they go after that. Unless they really track their alumni.
The National Student Clearinghouse can provide enrollment and completion for any student in the system. Not all schools participate, though. Students can also request that their records be withheld. So if a participating school submits a request, they can get a good idea of what students enroll in what programs and whether they graduate or just wash out.
But jobs? It’s only slightly better than a guessing game for most schools.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
