TO THE EDITOR:
Today’s headline, “Will your major get you a job?” leaves the impression that one of the main purposes of your major is to get you a job.
Is that really true? Are other parts of college life — such as extracurricular activities, study abroad, athletics and friendship — also aimed at enhancing job prospects, or are they valuable mainly for other reasons or even for their own sake?
College graduates, as you note, have a much lower unemployment rate than people with only a high school diploma. But it does not follow that a chief purpose of college is to get you a job. Rather than vocational training, one of college’s main goals is to help you to develop your ability to think. That ability would make you sensitive to the undefended assumptions behind a headline like “Will your major get you a job?”
Marc Lange
Distinguished Professor and Department Chairman
Department of Philosophy
