All Posts Tagged With: "degrees"
In defence of the barista with the B.A.
What’s wrong with well-educated coffee servers?
illustir/Flickr
The easiest punchline for media commentators on higher education these days is that we have university graduates working as baristas in coffee houses. Sometimes the assumption is that it’s mainly the arts grads consigned to this humiliating fate, and even this piece by Leo Charboneau, which does a generally good job of pointing out the hysteria over youth underemployment, still concedes the bachelor’s-barista link.
It’s time to drop this trope. And not just because it’s too easy.
For one thing, it makes the same old mistake of thinking that the only reason to have a degree is to get a “good” job. We all know that there is more to life than earning a living, and just about every bit of research we have suggests that wealth does not correlate in a meaningful way with happiness—and yet writers go on pretending that the only thing a sane person would want in this world is a hefty pay packet.
As for a good job, why do we so blithely accept that good means high-paying. I’m not at all convinced that barista is a worse job than being, say, an accountant. Is preparing coffee is necessarily a worse job than preparing lay-off notices? Is it really “blind” as one particularly harsh commentator has said, to pursue your dreams even amid economic uncertainty?
The fastest growing (and shrinking) degrees
Who’s winning the competition for students?
Photo courtesy of m2ec on Flickr
Far more Ontario high school graduates are choosing to study science or engineering in 2011 than in 2010, while arts, music and fine arts enrollments declined, according to new data from the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre. Education registrations declined dramatically too — unsurprising considering that Two-Thirds of New Teachers Can’t Find Full-Time Work.
But arts programs can take comfort in the fact that they still take in more students than any other programs. Arts (25,845), Science (14,212) and Business Administration (9,300) accounted for 71 per cent (49,357) of the 69,546 first-year registrations made by July 7, 2011.
Here are the major program areas, from the fastest growing to the fastest shrinking.
OTHER ADMINISTRATION +21.6 per cent
OTHER DEGREES +6.2 per cent
ENGINEERING +5.8 per cent
SCIENCE +5.6 per cent
JOURNALISM +4.6 per cent
FAMILY & CONSUMER STUDIES +4.2 per cent
PHYSICAL & HEALTH EDUCATION +3.1 per cent
SOCIAL WORK +2.9 per cent
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION +2.7 per cent
OVERALL REGISTRATIONS +1.9 per cent
ARCHITECTURE +1.5 per cent
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES +1.4 per cent
ARTS -0.4 per cent
MATHEMATICS -1.2 per cent
NURSING -2.8 per cent
FINE AND APPLIED ARTS -4.4 per cent
EDUCATION -6.7 per cent
MUSIC -9.4 per cent
Note: These figures include students who applied directly from secondary school to undergraduate degree programs. Only subjects with at least 100 registrations are included in this list.
Yukon College may get degree-granting powers
Legislation would allow the school to award bachelor degrees
From the CBC News:
A bill currently before the Yukon legislature could finally enable the territory’s college to award bachelor degrees, a major step that the college’s president says will need some time to implement. Terry Weniger said it would likely be at least five years before Yukon College can issue its first degrees, should the bill pass.
“There’s a few years of preparation so that the college will be able to get the academic credibility and get some internal … organizational things in place, but it’s, I think, very significant,” Weniger told CBC News on Monday.
The college started out as a vocational school in the 1960s. It is currently in a partnership with the University of Regina to offer Yukoners bachelor degree programs in education and social work.
