I talked to the desk clerk a little bit when I got back to my hotel tonight. She seems like a very nice girl. I asked her if she was in school.
She said “Yes, in college.”
I said, “At Prescott College?” Prescott College is a very liberal, liberal arts college here in the middle of conservative Prescott.
She said, “No, only rich kids can go there. I go to the community college because I am paying my own way.”
“That’s great! What are you studying?”
“Anthropology. I plan to go to NAU when I finish at the community college.”
I asked, “Where do you want to work when finish?”
“I am not sure. My professors tell me that I doesn’t matter so much which degree I get. It is just important that I get a degree because the people who do the hiring will know you have been able to stick to something for four years.”
What she is doing is really admirable. She is working her way through the community college, then plans to go to a pretty good regional university. She will save lots of money that way. She will be in much better shape than others who take out big loans to go to an expensive liberal arts school to get a soft degree like Anthropology. Jobs are hard to come by these days for Anthropology majors. Still, she will have four years experience in the hotel business, definitely not a bad thing. I think in her case the education and experience she gets in her job will be more valuable than anything she gets from the college course she has chosen. It is a shame though, that her teachers are representing that a soft degree is something that is somehow viewed as valuable to the vast bulk of employers.