Multiple choice

What are the views of the author on the career prospects for graduates in humanities?

Directions: Read the given passage carefully and answer the question that follows.

It has become oddly fashionable to look down on the humanities over the last few decades. Today’s students are being told that studying the classics of English literature, the history of the twentieth century, or the ethics of privacy are a fun but useless luxury. To best prioritize our scarce education resources, we ought instead to focus on technical subjects such as math and engineering. This short-term market logic doesn’t work across the thirty-or-so-year horizon of a full career. A generation ago, lawyers made more money than investment bankers. Today, we have too many law graduates (though there appears to be data to support it’s still worth the money) and the investment banks complain about a lack of talent. It is basically impossible to project that sort of thing into the far future. We are also told that a degree in the humanities is unlikely to make you successful. But quite a few people with humanities degrees have had successful careers and, in the process, created numerous jobs.
One might think that most people starting out or running tech companies in the heart Silicon Valley would be from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Not so, studies found that 47 percent of the 652 technology and engineering company founders surveyed held terminal degrees in the STEM fields, with 37 percent of those degrees being in either engineering or computer technology and 2 percent in mathematics. The rest graduated with a healthy combination of liberal arts, health-care and business degrees.

 

  1. The author looks down upon graduates in humanities.

  2. The author thinks that the graduates in humanities do not have bright career prospects.

  3. The author thinks that in thirty years time humanities or liberal arts graduates will not find a job.

  4. The author thinks that graduates in humanities have as much a chance at a successful career as any other stream.

  5. We cannot determine the views of the author.

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

The author thinks that graduates in humanities have as much a chance at a successful career as any other stream. This view is backed up by the study that proves that the entrepreneurs in silicon valley are a healthy combination of liberal arts, health-care and business degrees as well as science, mathematics, technology or engineering.