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It contrasts this with universities’ shift toward vocational and technical tracks during economic uncertainty, including evidence on youth unemployment and enrollment trends.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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employers question the value of business degrees?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"Employers and corporate recruiters increasingly argue that business programs focus too heavily on finance and accounting while providing insufficient training in critical thinking and problem-solving skills through liberal-arts style work.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does economic recession influence students’ choices of majors?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"During the Great Recession and the weak recovery that followed, students and parents sought clearer links between majors and stable employment, increasing scrutiny of how well curricula prepare graduates for work.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What concerns do educators raise about the liberal arts and English major?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"Educators worry that humanities departments are being reduced or eliminated and that disciplines like literature may lose institutional support, while education shifts 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Street Journal article titled “Wealth or Waste? Rethinking the Value of a Business Major,” national reporter Melissa Korn explores an intriguing fact: the business major, the most popular major on college campuses for over 30 years and the discipline believed to be most economically viable by prospective college students and their parents, is in crisis. Employers and corporate recruiters, Korn reports, increasingly believe that business degrees“focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates, and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses.” This perceived lack of critical thinking and communication skills among business majors is causing many recruiters to seek “candidates with a broader academic background” who exhibit “flexible think[ing]” and “exposure to multiple disciplines”(Korn) . Ironically, however, while business employers and corporate recruiters are seeking broadly-educated graduates trained in critical thinking, analysis, and communication, universities are rapidly expunging many humanities majors from their curricula and are shifting their course offerings towards more vocational and technical tracks. In a New York Times article titled“Making College ‘Relevant’,” Kate Zernicke reports that during the recent “Great Recession,”  \ncolleges and universities have struggled to make their liberal arts and humanities majors seem relevant, viable, and attractive to prospective students and to parents who want to see evidence of a clear correspondence between a chosen major and future gainful employment. Some universities have cut their philosophy and classics departments altogether, and most colleges and universities have had to scrutinize intensely their curricula to determine whether they match perceived trends in enrollment and job placement (Zernicke) .  \nIn addition, the slowly improving but feeble, mostly “jobless,” recovery over the last few years has only heightened college students’ concerns over choosing the right major and finding full-time employment upon graduation. An April 2012 Philadelphia Inquirer article notes that recent college grads and young workers “lost their jobs at about three times the rate ofall workers from the recession’s start in 2007”(Von Bergen), and the U.S. Department of Labor’s April 2012 Jobs Report revealed that the unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 was 16.4%, double the national unemployment rate of 8.2%(Von Bergen) . Such dire employment statistics have resulted in even greater national scrutiny of the aims and outcomes of higher education in the United States and have left college students more focused than ever on gaining a measurable benefit from what will be an enormous financial investment in higher education. Since Thomas Friedman famously pronounced that “the world is flat”(7), thousands of customer service and technology jobs have migrated overseas, and the business degree has solidified its standing as the most sought-after degree on American college campuses. New and emerging technologies have transformed the workplace, requiring higher levels of technological competence and skill, and the corporate environment has transformed from a fixed and stable place where one worked for  \nthirty or forty years to a fluid, transferable, and short-term place to drop one’s laptop for a few months or years until one is replaced by someone or something faster, cheaper, and newer.  \nCollege students and their parents are understandably apprehensive about these unsettling changes, but they are not alone in their concern. Those who teach in the liberal arts and humanities have also grown increasingly alarmed, pessimistic, and anxious about the fate of the liberal arts in a seemingly “quick-fix” economy that values instant economic gratification ove","cbCaiprxdQOusFUe","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiprxdQOusFUe","pdf",381985,33,"English","# The Crisis of Major Choice and Economic Relevance\n## Employer Expectations vs. University Offerings\n## Economic Uncertainty and Youth Unemployment\n## Shifting Curricula and the Liberal Arts Debate\n## Enrollment Trends for the English Major","[{\"question\":\"Why do some employers question the value of business degrees?\",\"answer\":\"Employers and corporate recruiters increasingly argue that business programs focus too heavily on finance and accounting while providing insufficient training in critical thinking and problem-solving skills through liberal-arts style work.\"},{\"question\":\"How does economic recession influence students’ choices of majors?\",\"answer\":\"During the Great Recession and the weak recovery that followed, students and parents sought clearer links between majors and stable employment, increasing scrutiny of how well curricula prepare graduates for work.\"},{\"question\":\"What concerns do educators raise about the liberal arts and English major?\",\"answer\":\"Educators worry that humanities departments are being reduced or eliminated and that disciplines like literature may lose institutional support, while education shifts toward practical and applied sciences.\"}]","The Viability of the English Major in the Current Economy - read online free | PDF",1792087153,83]