Huh? Why would someone go to a polytechnic university to get a degree in English?

I'm sure that there's something in the state or federal regulations that requires Liberal Arts degrees for accreditation, even at a polytechnic school.

Or, perhaps someone wanted to go there and applied for an English degree for the same reason a person with a Y chromosome would apply to work at a restaurant such as Hooters -- to make a point. And when they found they couldn't get one, they whined to someone to get it added.

And yes, I know it was a rhetorical question.

Not sure, but if I had to guess why they offer this curriculum, it's probably because some of the students in highly technical majors may also want to have a minor or second major in a non-technical field. Someone who wants to have a career in technical writing, or someone who wishes to write articles for a technical journal or magazine might want such a second major.

Also, many foreign students may want to learn English as well as possible to have an edge in the technical job market within the United States (ie they want to work here after they graduate). An engineering degree may open doors for such U.S. jobs, but being able to communicate well will open more doors.

I can see your point, kayawanee, but as devil's advocate, I can say that I haven't seen too many English degrees that actually accomplish the goals that you list above. Most of the classes I ever took focused on trying to determine what an author was thinking or feeling when they wrote a piece, rather than teaching someone how to actually write and communicate clearly and concisely.

Kinda like a lot of Journalism classes in that respect, actually...

I was trying to get a 2nd degree in history at MIT, but came up a couple classes short. We also had english majors there, but they tended to be guys who'd decided they didn't like engineering when it was too late to transfer to another school.

Why do they have an English major at a polytech? Easy answer - they need a major for the athletes...

Disclaimer: I have an English degree. I am a tech writer in the software/statistics field (and formerly in the defense arena). Through the years, I have taken calculus, statistics, physics, and programming classes on the side; mainly for fun I'll admit, but the knowledge has proven useful.

Literaure classes are certainly as you describe, but there are also writing classes that can be very useful no matter what field you're going into. As I deal on a daily basis with extremely intelligent people who can't put a single meaningful sentence together, I wish more engineering/math/science people wouldn't sneer so much about how easy writing is and that anyone who's functionally literate is a perfectly capable writer. Take it from me; they are not.

The quality of any class depends mostly on the professor. If you have a good one, a literaure class can teach a lot of things. How to read critically, how to place what you're reading in a larger context, how to research. Then how to put your findings into a well-written paper. All that is what I do on a daily basis, although I don't apply it to reading literature.

At their worst, literature classes are perfectly awful. You read to deconstruct so that nothing has any meaning or connection to the outer world. Interesting philosophical discussion, perhaps, but not much use otherwise.

If you're not an English major at all but want to take classes to teach you how to write, then it's up to you to pick your classes and professors with care. The same as you would pick your engineering classes and professors with care.

> Most of the classes I ever took focused on trying to determine what an
> author was thinking or feeling when they wrote a piece

Several years ago, a student was asked to answer an essay question, "Why did the author write this book?" She wrote, "The author wrote this book to pay for my braces" and received an F. The next day, Poul Anderson sent his daughter to school with a note that said, "I wrote this book to pay for Astrid's braces."

Most students are not so lucky.

Virginia Tech's full name is Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As such, it offers a full slate of degree programs. My youngest son begins at VT, as an English major, in Fall 2007. My oldest son is a sophomore in Engineering Science and Mechanics, the department that had the ill fortune to lose two faculty members yesterday.

Virginia Tech is probably most closely compared (in terms of offerings) with universities like Auburn, Purdue, Penn State, Illinois, NC State, and so forth.

I have taught many aerospace engineering majors who were athletes, though only two were in varsity teams: one baseball pitcher (gave his senior design presentation by video wearing his uniform, standing on the pitcher's mound), and one swimmer (now works for Northrup-Grumman). Others were involved in club sports.

I started out as an aeronautical engineering student at Penn State, and wound up as an English Major, headed for a career as a technical writer.

And I have to say, as much as people like to rank on English majors, the English Department was far more organized than the Engineering department in both curriculum and operations, it treated its students infinitely better, and its instructors were more competant as teachers.

Indeed, Jon, it's pretty easy for most engineering types to rag on Lib. Arts degrees of any sort. I'm sure it cuts the other way, too, as a lot of Lib. Arts majors probably think of engineers as cold and unfeeling pocket-protector-wearing geeks.

So, now, I revise my statement to say that an English major from a Polytechnic institute is likely superior to one from a liberal arts school.

Until, of course, I find out that Jon Goff, Jay Manifold, etc. got an English degree from a small lib. arts school... :-)

The reason they have an English major is simple. In order to attract top Ph.D.'s in English to teach at a technical school you have to offer them something more then trying to teach English to engineers being forced to take their required liberal arts courses. You have to offer them the prospective of finding some quality students who actually value English. Otherwise your English department might just as well be some vo-tech instructors, local adjuncts or English professors unemployable elsewhere.

The reason they have an English major is simple. In order to attract top Ph.D.'s in English to teach at a technical school you have to...

I don't know about this. My impression from my time at the 'Tute (graduates know which 'Tute I mean, and probably the decade in which I graduated) is that salaries at an engineering school are set in relation to private engineering salaries, which are pretty high. Consequently I think teaching English at a tech school pays a whole lot better than at a liberal arts school. As I recall the Institute could afford to hire the very best history and music professors, strangely enough, because they got paid what the Course 2 professors did.

John - Nope. I was a tech writer for a while, though. ;^)

In the early days of Computer Science most of the
Programmers were English majors.

Carl,

That would be the exception if it was the case.

Because of supply and demand business and engineering professors get paid about 50-60% more then liberal arts and English professors according to most salary surveys. Here is a recent example.

http://www.cupahr.org/surveys/files/salary05/NFSS05_exec_summary.pdf

Having served on faculty budget committees at various schools I know it is a sore point with liberal art departments that the labor market values business and engineering faculty more then liberal arts faculty. (BTW the free market value of lawyers is 30% more then engineers...)

As a result the best way to attract good English faculty is by non-monetary incentives, like offering a English or Literature program so they are able to teach in the areas of their research interest to counter be required to teach English and tech writing to business and engineering students.

Tom, I'm aware liberal arts professors on average are paid lots less than engineering professors. That's part of my point. The question is whether liberal arts professors at the same school as engineering professors are. If not, then the engineering school brings up the salaries of their colleagues in liberal arts departments, and that gives a big engineering school a built-in advantage in recruiting English professors.

I realize practises may differ widely. Where I was on the faculty, a state school, salaries were pretty strictly equal across the campus, depending only on your rank. There were only two ways departments could boost salaries of people they liked, or needed to retain: one was an "accelerated" promotion, and the other was going "off scale". Both had restrictions. At a private university, on the other hand, I'm sure it would be easier to construct disparities.

But even so, elemental considerations of appearance and fairness are very likely, I think, to mean high salaries in the EE department are going to pull up salaries in the English department at least a little.

Carl,

It does depend on the school, which is why you look at averages. Also if the school is union or not. But also remember that most folks, especially some of the best teachers, go into teaching for reasons other then economic. They have a passion for their subject and for students interested in it.

Put yourself in their place. Would you be happy at a school even with a higher salary if all you did was mostly teach freshmen physics to liberal arts majors forced to take it and with little respect for the subject?

Well...the older I get, the more I value plain filthy lucre over artistic freedom. Maybe it's just early Alzheimer's making me crotchety, though.

Anyway, I didn't say a salary advantage would be determinative. Only that it would help.

Really, my impression is that universities have English departments and majors pretty much just because it's unthinkable not to. Nobody is brave enough to wholly discard the ancient trivium and quadrivium. The same way no one can bear to discard teaching geometry in high school, which is utterly pointless, because they'd betray the memory of Euclid and Aristotle and prove themselves little better than drooling barbarians.