WATCHING my friend aimlessly scroll through the course offering directory's hundreds of intriguing courses and interdisciplinary departments, I realized that students are becoming less interested in undergraduate humanities courses. Students who enroll in pre-professional programs adhere to a fixed curriculum. When given the opportunity to take an elective, they search for "guts" or courses that meet other requirements. The notion of enrolling in interesting courses that challenge the mind, inspire the quest for knowledge or enlighten a passion for academics is obsolete in undergraduate education. Students nationwide continue to enroll in pre-professional programs so that they can land a job or make a hefty salary once they graduate, while liberal arts majors are left convincing their parents that studying humanities is worth the thousands of dollars spent on college. With a society focused on get-rich plans, we cannot let these greedy desires creep into the higher education system.
The National Center for Education Statistics calculates the mean salaries of graduating students based on their bachelor's degree. For graduates of the 1990s, the study demonstrates that students of engineering, business and management and health professions make significantly higher salaries than students of humanities or social sciences. When parents and students pay for the increasing costs of higher education, these statistics are constantly forcing students into these pre-professional areas of study.
Another force driving the emphasis on pre-professional programs is the burgeoning consumer culture of our generation. No longer does our generation want to be successful capitalists, we want to be multi-millionaires. With shows like VH1's "Fabulous Life of
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