Bill Gates faces Steve Jobs in an education stand-off

Are you a "math person"? A tortured artist, a Dostoevsky aficionado? According to recent trends in how college degrees correlate with the job market, it doesn't matter. Go study those numbers anyway.

A recent debate in The New York Times sparked controversy by juxtaposing the value of liberal arts college degrees to those in math and science. Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has spoken out in favor of individuality, creativity, and the humanities, while Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, argues in favor of pragmatics - a degree in engineering, math, or science will get college grads much further than recent liberal arts concoctions such as Peace Studies or a major such as Gender, Politics, and the Environment. It appears that some schools actually let students out into the world with majors entitled simply "Humanities."

Gates's argument hinges on the fact that students should attain specific skills that prepare them for specific careers. Jobs, on the other hand, insists that, without innovation and creativity, society simply can't move forward, no matter how many Wall Street-bound young adults receive diplomas each year. And while innovation can happen in business school or on the computer science track, there are crucial skills in communication and self-expression that develop when students follow a more liberal arts-centered course of study. With all due respect, Bill Gates, we need engineers and poets in this world. If humans were number-crunching machines at best - well, then they wouldn't be human. Now, if only English and accounting majors could get jobs out of college with equal ease, we'd truly have a progressive world. As of now, there is definite room for improvement.