Major discontent

I had lunch yesterday with an old friend and fellow Dartmouth alum who graduated this year and is now working for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It may surprise some of you that he didn't major in Economics or Engineering or even Political Science, but Russian and Linguistics. Instead of writing a thesis, he spent his entire senior year attempting to reconstruct the Khitan language and didn't have to take any classes in the process.

Russian and Linguistics!

For whatever reason, the MAS is unique (I think) among nearly all GLCs, statutory boards, and government agencies in allowing its US-bound scholars to freely choose their major(s) and not forcing them to make up their minds beforehand. As I've mentioned on several occasions to the powers-that-be, this is a great policy. With perhaps a few exceptions, you do not need to possess specialised knowledge in a particular academic discipline in order to do well in the civil service or in a GLC. What you do need are good work habits, a reasonable amount of intelligence, and the ability to write well; a decent American liberal education ought to help cultivate all three. At the same time, I don't think you can deny that an organisation benefits when its members are able to bring diverse intellectual viewpoints to bear on its work.
Posted by kungfuzi at 2:01 pm |