Rs 1-crore pay not music to IIM-B graduate's ears
Jump to Page:
< Previous [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Next >
Posted on: 22-02-07 21:05:22
Economics - yes. Political science,hmm...ok.
Lingiustics for communication? I do not see any quality of life altering contributions made by this field. I don't have a degree in linguistics and I think I can communicate just fine.
Women's studies?
The point is...if the study of finance is stopped today, we cannot imagine our life as it is. If linguistics or women's studies are not offered, I don't see one iota of difference to my lifestyle.
Pardon my bluntness. 
Quote:
Originally posted by alexm
Economics - yes. Political science,hmm...ok.
Lingiustics for communication? I do not see any quality of life altering contributions made by this field. I don't have a degree in linguistics and I think I can communicate just fine.
there are other applications, so much so that MIT offers this:
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/index.html
Quote:
[
If linguistics or women's studies are not offered, I don't see one iota of difference to my lifestyle.
Speech teraphy for the disabled OR helping immigrant women adapt to new cultures, link between gender and depression(adult women are more likely to be dpressed than men) etc.
Any specialization results in research and studies into their core areas. The findings often make their way into law, technology, health etc
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended Services- Servicedomino.com
http://www.servicedomino.com
I did over-simplify my reply. The point I was trying to make is that fields like technology, medicine, finance have a much larger impact on our everyday lives than say, linguistics.
Even the MIT example provided again is enabled by technology.
But what you say is very true....findings in other fields do make it into technologies that are then used to enable ourlifestyle.
Quote:
Originally posted by jake3d
Quote:
Originally posted by alexm
[but really I wonder - what useful purpose do social sciences/humanities serve IN GENERAL?
For those that do not have a tech or other specialised aptitudes but are ambitious...these degrees maybe a good way to go. In my opinion its the soft skills that these grads have that coupled along with the univ degree that make them marketable.
I read something about this before and so googled.
http://info.wlu.ca/~wwwarts/careers/researchongrads.shtml
excerpts:
Major Findings
* Graduates in humanities and social sciences readily find jobs and generally earn high incomes, according to data obtained from Statistics Canada.
* The unemployment rate among university graduates aged 25-29 is significantly lower (5.8%) than the unemployment rate among graduates of technical, vocational or career programs aged 25-29 (9.3%), according to an analysis based on 1991 census data.
* Most graduates in humanities and social sciences are employed in a professional or managerial capacity (50-81%). That's compared to 60% of counterparts with university degrees in commerce and 24-35% of individuals with technical or vocational diplomas.
* All university programs analyzed in this report in terms of their cost-benefits yield a social rate of return that exceeds the real interest rate in Canada today.
* Cost-benefit analysis shows the rate of return to society on investment in the social sciences (9%) and education (10.2%) outstrips the rate of return for engineering (7.9%) as well as the rate of return for math and the physical sciences (7.4%).
* Cost-benefit analysis shows the rate of return to society on investment in the humanities (7.8%) is on a par with that of engineering and slightly higher than the rate of return for math and the physical sciences.
* The demand for university graduates in the Canadian economy appears to be growing as rapidly as the supply of graduates is growing.
* A background in social sciences and humanities appears to have a major impact on earning power. From their twenties to their fifties, men who graduate in humanities see their income rise, on average, by 78%. Graduates in social sciences see their income rise 106% over the same period. That compares favorably to a 47% increase in income for community college graduates and an average 76% increase for university graduates across all fields.
* A university education in social sciences and humanities plays a major role in the success of women.
* More than 50% of social science and humanities graduates are women and more than 50% of women in management jobs began their careers with a social science or humanities degree.
You make some interesting points.
I do agree that soft skills are very important in any job. I also wonder why people in technology lack in soft skills, at least relative to people in other fields. On the flip side, it's great for those techies who actually have the magical ability to string a bunch of words together and form a coherent sentence.
The earnings rise percentage may not represent the true picture. A social worker may invest $20K to get a degree and then be earning $60K after x years of experience....ie a 300% increase from the amt invested. An MBA grad may invest $100K in a degree and earn $200K after the same x years. Although the MBA grad's percentage is less, I know where I'd like to be.
I do find the percentage of people in managerial posts interesting, although I think including vocational training along with true tech degrees is 'cheating'. Vocational schools are not exactly executive level education programs.
I'm curious to understand what exactly is meant by rate of return to society. In no country that I know of is teaching counted as a hot field to be from a pay packet perspective, so obviously these researchers must be using another definition.
Your statement about being ambitious but not technically inclined....true. But what I have seen in India is that the majority of people going for degrees in social science/arts fields, especially the men, are there because the other areas were just too tough for them. The cutoffs (marks) for technical colleges are higher than those for arts colleges. I don't see the average sociology grad as being too ambitious; the average engineering grad is.
Most people getting into IIMs are engineers. Some people argue that these tests are biased towards technical backgrounds. I'm not sure if I agree, but perhaps they are. But, surely the GMAT is better designed. Here also, I've had my engineering friends get 700+and get into the top 5 schools. I don't see the smarter sociology grads doing that.
They are the top notch companies from USA and U.K, go to IITs, IIMs, hire graduates thru campus interview, offer hefty pay.
Do Canadian companies go and hire in similar way? Do the Canadian companies really aware of the standard of Indian Premier Institutes-IIT, IIM etc.?
Exceptions apart , its a well known and experienced fact all over the world that the job market controls the careers and the technical fields are far ahead in demand and returns than nice sounding humanities .....
Check the cut offs in any University and you will find that the top scorers choose technical courses and the low scorers go for the left over streams .
The same is reflected when these ppl graduate and go to the job market . Soft skills are independent of your academic discipline
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fido.
Quote:
Originally posted by alexm
But what I have seen in India is that the majority of people going for degrees in social science/arts fields, especially the men, are there because the other areas were just too tough for them.
We could also say that civil engineers opt for the same due to the fact that their marks do not allow them to go for comp eng etc. It would be true in some cases but not all.
If you read my post...you will notice that what I meant was that social sciences degrees are an alternative for those ambitious but do not have an aptitude for eng and other technical/specialized areas.
NOT
That the ambitious are the ones going for social sciences.
Theres a big difference in those two sentences and I guess your reply was tailored to the second instance. I guess its easy to make that jump when brevity is of the essence for both of us.
Your reference to teaching not being a paying field, is very narrow by its inferrence of its reduced importance. Teaching is VERY important to the future of society. If we go by payscales...stay at home moms would probably rank below janitors. Are their contributions to society not meaningful then?
Moving on...As for why people go for these streams...maybe they have lower marks, maybe they have a different calling. Many are probably not interested in eng or medicine. Likewise many may not know what they want to do and just use the social sciences as a stop gap measure. There are also others who know exactly what they are doing by opting for social sciences.
This is also true for eng grad who move on to unrelated occupations later in life OR are in eng etc due to parental pressure etc. I'm sure we all know these kind of people.
There are many variables. However, I think we were talking about the relevance of these fields to society. I think we also concluded that they are indeed directly relevant to our standard of living and have 'spin-off' applications that enhance our standard of living.
e.g: A talented comp eng grad who decides to write a piece of software that translates one language to another would not get very far without a strong partnership with a professional from the linguistic field.
Technology, Law, Medicine, Entertainment etc will only go so far without involvement from social sciences etc. I cannot dream of any director who makes a movie about the mughal period without help from a historian. Nor can a speech teraphist in a hospital be effective without knowledge of phoenetics. Womens issues like post partum depression are similarly considered valid issues in the court of law. In my field 3d animation...the best programmer would need active involvement from the artist to make an effective software that caters to the artists. etc.
So which comes first...the chicken or the egg?
. -----------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended Services- Servicedomino.com
http://www.servicedomino.com
