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maxsilver

Well, where "liberal art degree" often means "high-skilled labor". People struggling to pay off college debt includes:

- teachers and childcare workers

- special education and/or disability workers

- librarians

- social workers, therapists, mental health workers

- cnas, medical billing, and other heathcare admin

- and many more not listed above

People often seem to assume "liberal arts" translates to a fake profession, like "underwater basketweaving" or "economist" or something "silly". And while that's occasionally true, most folks with a Liberal Arts degree are hard-working career-oriented people, who society just pays terribly, arbitrarily, because they can. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education#Modern_...

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Many places are facing a teacher shortage too. I think one would assume in a rational economy, since the labor is in short supply, they would pay more for it. However, the pay gap between teachers and the average worker is widening...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/03/19/teacher-s...

This is 100% true. I have a chemistry degree that's technically from a liberal arts college and it was super confusing to my immigrant parents how that could happen. Now with the advent of the term "STEM" it's even more confusing because a huge portion of Science degrees are actually in liberal arts programs, not technically "Science" programs.

> I have a chemistry degree that's technically from a liberal arts college and it was super confusing to my immigrant parents how that could happen.

I kind of get it. The english words "liberal" and "arts" used to mean entirely different things for hundreds of years, and have been redefined into something else only recently (past ~30 years) via common usage.

My degree program was in "Liberal Studies", and my parents consistently assumed it meant "studying how to become a Democrat voter", when in actuality, what it meant was "if you can justify it well, we give you permission to merge two-or-more different degree paths into one"

The university eventually had to rename the program to "Integrative Studies", because too many people simply don't know what "Liberal" means in an traditional academic context, and couldn't shake the modern-political framing of the word.

Teachers who are struggling to pay off college debt are mostly those who chose to attend private colleges without scholarships, or chose to work in high-cost areas after graduation. In most states it's possible to get a bachelor's degree plus teaching credential for under $40K total tuition. And starting salaries for teachers are at or above the average for college graduates in most places — especially for special education teachers who are in the highest demand. I totally support higher pay for teachers to attract more qualified candidates to the field, but when teachers struggle to pay off college debts that's usually the result of making some bad decisions or lack of financial discipline.

As for a CNAS or medical biller, those jobs don't even require a bachelor's degree. They can get trained more cheaply in community college.

Low pay in many of those fields you listed is only arbitrary in the sense that much of the funding ultimately comes from governments. Voters are already struggling themselves and seldom vote for tax increases.

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