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Opinion: Degrees to everywhere—USU students refute lawmaker’s gibe

October 26th, 2011 Posted in Opinion

By Edward C. Pease and D. Whitney Smith

NOTE: This op-ed column appeared Oct. 25, 2011, in the Deseret News and is reprinted here with permission.

LOGAN—When Sen. Howard Stephenson complained last winter about Utah college students wasting time and tuition on “degrees to nowhere,” he hit a nerve on campuses statewide.

Specifically, the Draper Republican’s gibe rattled cages in liberal arts colleges and in departments like English, history and the arts, where the joke has long been that graduates need to prepare certain phrases such as, “Do you want fries with that?” to go along with their Chaucer and appreciation for Renaissance painters.

But when Stephenson threw down his gauntlet and dissed the value of what has long been the core of any educated person — humanities, arts and social sciences — the faculty and students of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHaSS) at Utah State University pushed back.

• Read the rest of the column at the Deseret News,Providing degrees to everywhere.”

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