Comment Re:It's a cultural thing (Score 1) 736
I will add to this as a grad student in Arabic linguistics and culture:
In Arab/Middle Eastern and generally third world culture, there is a lot more value placed on getting a degree in something that will be lucrative. Becoming a doctor or engineer is extremely important in these societies (lawyers don't make much, so it's not as important), and a system of testing reinforces this: only students who get the highest scores on the tests can enroll in the medical and engineering faculty of most Middle Eastern universities, while the lower the test score is the more liberal artsy the degree will be. I knew a couple of girls who really wanted to study biomedical engineering, but ended up in the English language and literature department due to their test scores.
There is also an immense amount of pressure to get a degree in a prestigious, money making field, which pushes a lot of students to pursue these degrees.
The results of this study, however, aren't necessarily applicable to the situation in the Middle East, I feel. First, liberal arts educations in the Middle East do NOT emphasize critical thinking. Like almost all fields, they focus on memorization - all tests in almost all departments are multiple choice. Some of my friends who study liberal arts subjects there have never had to write an essay - when one of them did, it was terrible, and failed to advance a critical thesis in any way shape or form. It's not like the US, where students are trained to deconstruct everything in liberal arts, while in engineering its more mathmatical. In the Middle East, both science and liberal arts are taught in substantially similar ways, with a strong emphasis on memorization.
Second, many students who do become engineers do so for economic reasons, not because of their personal interests. Almost all major literary figures in the Middle East had day jobs, and engineering is not necessarily a bad choice. A friend in Damascus is a struggling actor, but he's enrolled in a engineering program since his parents wouldn't support him otherwise. Thus, the kind of self selection that is important to the authors' argument really isn't at play to the same degree in the Middle East as it would be in the US.