pointless worthless useless majors! part 1
If you look up worthless majors on the Internet, you will most likely come up with a top 10 list that will suggest to you a few things. First of all, it will let you know that if you are in the humanities, you are wasting your time and money, and if you are in say business, you are on the right track! I think that it was devised over at Fox News, but regardless.
I think that the list is the result of shoddy reporting and bad research (much like the rest of Fox News). So, I figured I'd update it to suggest today's changing economy. I, however, am not putting these things in order. It's hard to say which of them is worse.
All of this is based on experience. I teach general education and have been in college (as a student and as a teacher) for quite some time. I know, first hand, of which I speak. I know what really works and what doesn't...and I know what these people do when they are in their classes and when they are in mine.
So, my first pointless useless major is Psychology
Unless you go to grad school, psychology is totally without value. You cannot work in the mental health profession with a psychology degree, or at least, you are in competition with people who haven't studied psychology for the lowest echelon of jobs. When you realize that you are in competition with people who have degrees in sociology and that they have equal standing as you in the mental health care job market, it begs the question: what worth do people in the working world place on the psychology degree.
The problem is this at the undergraduate level, psychology is basically the major for people who have serious mental problems and who want to learn to self diagnose. Colleges is now so easy to get into that total psychotic breakdown isn't really reason for you not to graduate on the dean's list. A psychology classroom houses at least two vocal students who are basically looking for twice a week therapy from their teacher and who preface their every comment with: "as an anorexic bi-polar who cuts, I'm wondering what this lesson means for me." If you are not psychotic in a psych classroom, then what you are really learning is tolerance for the mentally disturbed, but you and they will get the same grade.
My basic feeling is that this major could be worth something if their were a litmus test attached to the entrance exam. If the major could weed out the psychos, someone might see the value of the discipline, but as it stands now, hiring a psych major is a crap shoot. Will you get the guy who was really interested in helping the mentally disabled, or will you get the guy who can't stop washing his hands.
Lastly, the real question is: what do people in psychology learn? At this point, the medical profession of psychology is totally pharmaceutical. What does it matter then to learn what skitzophrenia looks like if you don't also learn what to do about it? After all, I know how to handle the mentally ill and I don't have a degree. The thing that seems to be missing is essentially the ability to treat the illness, something that a psych student doesn't get either until grad school. The discipline is scientific enough that you can't trust a psych major to be a good writer, but it's not scientific enough that you can count on their being good at math. A psych major in a classroom generally acts as though they are studying something far more authentic than English, but as to the warrant for their arrogance, I've yet to see it, and when they study literature, they generally get as far as diagnosing the characters (Humbert Humbert is a pedophile, Benji is autistic, the New England Nun is obsessive compulsive, etc.) but don't seem to have the where-with-all to go much further. And they get mad that their diagnosis isn't enough, because it is in psychology where the bar is too damned low.
I think that the list is the result of shoddy reporting and bad research (much like the rest of Fox News). So, I figured I'd update it to suggest today's changing economy. I, however, am not putting these things in order. It's hard to say which of them is worse.
All of this is based on experience. I teach general education and have been in college (as a student and as a teacher) for quite some time. I know, first hand, of which I speak. I know what really works and what doesn't...and I know what these people do when they are in their classes and when they are in mine.
So, my first pointless useless major is Psychology
Unless you go to grad school, psychology is totally without value. You cannot work in the mental health profession with a psychology degree, or at least, you are in competition with people who haven't studied psychology for the lowest echelon of jobs. When you realize that you are in competition with people who have degrees in sociology and that they have equal standing as you in the mental health care job market, it begs the question: what worth do people in the working world place on the psychology degree.
The problem is this at the undergraduate level, psychology is basically the major for people who have serious mental problems and who want to learn to self diagnose. Colleges is now so easy to get into that total psychotic breakdown isn't really reason for you not to graduate on the dean's list. A psychology classroom houses at least two vocal students who are basically looking for twice a week therapy from their teacher and who preface their every comment with: "as an anorexic bi-polar who cuts, I'm wondering what this lesson means for me." If you are not psychotic in a psych classroom, then what you are really learning is tolerance for the mentally disturbed, but you and they will get the same grade.
My basic feeling is that this major could be worth something if their were a litmus test attached to the entrance exam. If the major could weed out the psychos, someone might see the value of the discipline, but as it stands now, hiring a psych major is a crap shoot. Will you get the guy who was really interested in helping the mentally disabled, or will you get the guy who can't stop washing his hands.
Lastly, the real question is: what do people in psychology learn? At this point, the medical profession of psychology is totally pharmaceutical. What does it matter then to learn what skitzophrenia looks like if you don't also learn what to do about it? After all, I know how to handle the mentally ill and I don't have a degree. The thing that seems to be missing is essentially the ability to treat the illness, something that a psych student doesn't get either until grad school. The discipline is scientific enough that you can't trust a psych major to be a good writer, but it's not scientific enough that you can count on their being good at math. A psych major in a classroom generally acts as though they are studying something far more authentic than English, but as to the warrant for their arrogance, I've yet to see it, and when they study literature, they generally get as far as diagnosing the characters (Humbert Humbert is a pedophile, Benji is autistic, the New England Nun is obsessive compulsive, etc.) but don't seem to have the where-with-all to go much further. And they get mad that their diagnosis isn't enough, because it is in psychology where the bar is too damned low.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
10:24 AM
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