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A Historical Fantasy
An Archaeological Mystery
A Historical Fantasy
An Archaeological Mystery
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2023
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April
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- The Buddha of Berenike
- David Grann, "Killers of the Flower Moon"
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- What's Happening in Higher Education
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- Casas de Turuñuelo and Tartessos Spain
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- Only I Suffer, Adoptee Edition
- Medieval Lincoln
- Links 14 April 2023
- A New Kind of Security Threat
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- Caral and the Origins of Andean Civilization
- Against "Medical Gaslighting"
- Trying to Do too Much?
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About Me
- John
- John Bedell is an archaeologist, historian, and father of five living in Maryland. He has self-published two novels and is writing a third.
11 comments:
A very interesting chart. The big change is clearly 1965-85, when philosophy drops 45%, and wealth rises, let's say 35%. Three immediate avenues for investigation I can imagine are: 1) the possibility that this represents a reaction against hippie/antiwar/leftist values--they're telling themselves, their inner parents, and anyone who will listen, "I'm not one of those hippie losers!" 2) the possibility that shift gets confirmed, and becomes precipitate, with the economic problems of the 1970s, and possibly an increasing cultural horror at blue-collar work. 3) I wonder if there was a shift in that time in the social background of college students. More may have been first-in-the-family college-goers, or in any case from less privileged backgrounds, variously conscious of a family or personal drive to "make it."
Also, I'm actually quite pleased that the philosophical percentage remains as high as it does.
I might add that I would hesitate to claim my purpose in anything to be to "develop a meaningful life philosophy." At sixty, I'm pretty skeptical of the possibility of that. I might say, "enjoy learning things about people and the world", "read books," or even "beats working."
In any case, maybe the somewhat grandiose wording of that option has itself become a problem. Grandiosity, vaunting of any sort, is something a lot of my students shied away from.
I would love to see this chart starting in 50s - to whether really before kids also valued mroe meaningful life than moeny.
This is only reflecting changing demographics. If you're from a well off family and ending up in the gutter is not a possibility you've ever had to envision, it's relatively easy to think about philosophy as a priority, as basic needs are so well covered you don't even think of them as needs, and it's likely something you've seen people in polite society talk about.
If you're trying to raise away from poverty and/grudgery, it is not impossible - there are books lying around if you look, but probably hasn't ever crossed your mind, and nobody in your environment talks about such things. Your philosophy is putting food on the table.
Source: I'm working class.
I must say, I find myself unable to get this graph out of my head. At the moment, I'm very curious what that high philosophy percentage in the early 60s really means. It occurs to me that American was a much more Christian country then than it is now, and so some of the answer may reflect that. And some of that churchiness was, of course, not without its materialistic, or at least conformist side: "develop a meaningful philosophy of life" may reflect a Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham vision of social status more than Camus.
I'm also curious about what colleges offered in the early sixties. Were there many majors that were particularly pre-professional outside the sciences? Did many colleges even offer, say, accounting majors or non-pre-med training? Or did one go to specialized schools for that? Are those included in the sample? Indeed, what was the sample back in 1965?
It struck me that this number doesn't track closely with majoring in the humanities. That stayed strong through the 70s, and while the philosophy question has stabilized over the past 20 years the number of humanities majors has fallen a lot.
I meant to say, "non-pre-med training in health fields." About a decade ago, the school I used to teach at started a huge program in health sciences, with, in addition to nursing, programs in OT, PT, admin, etc., etc. It was quite popular with students (at least until they learned they still couldn't avoid chemistry, unless they were in admin). I think this sort of thing is now common, but I'd be surprised if there were many setups remotely like that in 1965. (My mother always referred to the institution she got her RN at back in the 1940s as "nursing school"; my memory is that the diploma was headed with the name of a "college of nursing"; whether that was a specialized, separate institution, or part of a larger college/university, I know not.)
David, I dated accounting majors when I attended Temple University in the early 1960s. Many major universities had and still have schools of business, education, fine arts, etc etc etc. The core courses were university-wide (e.g. freshman comp) but the specialized courses were in the "school" of your major. Back then, at least at Temple, and probably at a lot of other state-related universities, there were not separate campuses for the "school of XYZ" though nowadays there often are. (Temple actually moved its fine arts school back to the main campus from Ambler some years ago!)
There were two totally separate institutions of pharmacy in Philadelphia in those days, btw, and other specialized colleges. And then there was UPenn... where accounting majors were in the Wharton School along with those majoring in economics, like TFG.
You dated accounting majors? What was that like?
Just kidding!
Really!
@pootrsox
Very interesting! Of course, I do know that most universities now have programs in business, accounting, non-MD health professions, etc., etc. My question was only about whether such programs existed back in the early sixties.
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