From: Slate
Jeb Bush Says Psych Majors End Up “Working at Chick-fil-A”
Slate:
Only a few months into primary season and the GOP has already identified plenty of scapegoats. Immigrants. Planned Parenthood. Psychology majors.
As Jeb Bush said at a recent town hall, “Universities ought to have skin in the game. … When a student shows up, they ought to say, ‘Hey, that psych major deal … that’s great … but realize you’re going to be working at Chick-fil-A.”
…
As a psychology professor, I’m biased, but I think psychology majors have more to offer than fast food prep skills. We live in a complex society with challenging problems. The social sciences offer tools to solve these problems.
Take the rising cost of health care. We can debate how it’s funded, but one fact is indisputable: Americans today die from different diseases than our great-grandparents did. Every semester, I show my undergraduates a chart juxtaposing the leading causes of death in 1900 and in 2010. A century ago, we were struck down by infectious illnesses like pneumonia and the flu. Today, our top killers are chronic diseases. Cancer. Heart disease. Diabetes. What these diseases have in common is that they’re lifestyle-related, which means that behavior matters.
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