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E-PrinceIn her commencement address to the graduating seniors, University President Shirley Tilghman spoke of the value of a liberal arts education. She defended the fact that Princeton maintains a wide array of courses when other universities are eliminating their less ...(back to the article)
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So, so true. Well said.
I agree about needing to provide more information about possible careers, but it seems like what you're proposing would be more suitable for out-of-classroom info sessions rather than actual full-blown courses.
Career Services should do a mandatory seminar on career choices, Meyers-Briggs profiling, job search, networking, & resume writing.
It seems like this writer (who is what, a graduated senior himself? The usual author bio is mysteriously absent) rather missed the point of Tilghman's address. It explained, in I thought fairly clear terms, why Princeton is not and has never been the kind of institution dedicated to funneling students directly into the workforce and providing specific kinds of vocational training. Yes, it takes bravery to go off the beaten path and seek a job and a life in a field outside business, banking, law, medicine, etc. But that bravery--and lifelong curiosity about the world and its different possibilities--is precisely what a liberal-arts education like Princeton's is there to instill. Vocational education wouldn't and shouldn't have a place in the University's curriculum.
It seems to me that the point of President Tilghman's commencement address was entirely lost on this writer, who seems to think that all fields of study within the liberal arts lead naturally to some set of career options--precisely the idea in opposition to which Tilghman was trying to situate the liberal-arts education Princeton provides. Of course finance and consulting are popular because they provide a sense of security. But rather than offering Princeton graduates more security, more handholding, it seems to me that we should be encouraging them to take risks, and not only to pursue the safest and easiest options. That's what so many commencement addresses, including Tilghman's and including Michael Lewis's Baccalaureate speech, advise. There's a reason that Princeton doesn't have a medical school or a bevy of other professional schools (with engineering, architecture, and Woody Woo of course being borderline cases). It's a different kind of university. And with that comes the fact that its vocation is to teach (through a wide variety of disciplines) critical thinking, sound reasoning, clear, beautiful, and careful reading and writing, and a sense that there is more to life than the economic bottom line. As Tilghman's address powerfully attested, this country needs universities like this (UVA trustees, take note!). If you want a trade school, you shouldn't be going to this kind of university.
Um, not sure why you felt the need to plagiarize from my Facebook, but thanks for copying and pasting my exact words without quotation marks and trying to pass them off as yours, whoever you are.
- Emily Rutherford '12
Emily, easy for you to say because you are training for academia. And by the way, don't understand what makes you think academia is inherently "braver" than so-called conventional paths. OK you make less money. You also live on perpetual vacation doing work that is always self-chosen and, once you get tenure, can be reduced to a bare minimum. Again not sure why you think reading and writing and following the beat of your own drum is some kind of self-sacrifice. Seems pretty cushy and at least as self-serving as any other career path.
skeptical, you'll notice I didn't include the academic profession in my thoughts about what a liberal-arts education does and doesn't teach you to do. I think it's a special case because it is so closely tied to the mission of the university in a way other career paths aren't. But at the same time, a B.A. is not a vocational academic degree in the way that a Ph.D. often is. As courses of study, they set out to do very different things, and I don't think this columnist was right to conflate undergraduate education with pre-professional training for academia.
As to whether academia is self-sacrificial: I never said that it was, but don't take my word for it. Ask anyone who has spent any time in the profession, particularly in the less lucrative/popular disciplines and particularly outside Princeton. None of the ways in which you characterize academia as "cushy" holds true for any but the most elite HYP named chairs, and even they work much, much harder than equivalently elite people in other sectors.
Of course people should be able to choose the paths in life--and thus the jobs--that most excite them and give them pleasure. All I ask is that they couple asking "What job would I find most enjoyable?" with "What job will allow me to use my talents to do something socially beneficial?" and try to achieve a compromise between the two. The academic life, with its balance between research and teaching, is in my view a morally conscionable way to do this.
But this isn't about me. Apologies for having dragged the thread off-course--I just felt the need to deal with the plagiarism issue.
There is nothing so "conscionable" as making a fortune on Wall Street and giving a zillion dollars of it to Princeton so people like yourself can attend. Thank god for the money-grubbing bourgeoisie who make it all possible. When I read you, I think: never has so much good will and energy been spent in cutting off the branch upon which one is perched.
"None of the ways in which you characterize academia as "cushy" holds true for any but the most elite HYP named chairs, and even they work much, much harder than equivalently elite people in other sectors."
That's crap. Ever talk to a partner at a biglaw firm? Or an MD at an investment bank? Professors don't work 80+ hours a week 50 weeks a year.