Are liberal arts degrees worthless unless you go to HYPS or another top school?

Applying to College
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<p>Here's what I mean. A Harvard graduate with a degree in History can still find plenty of jobs on Wall Street and in consulting just because he or she has a Harvard degree. However, a graduate from some no-name school with a degree in History will not have such doors open to him or her. </p>

<p>Liberal arts degrees are lauded because they "teach you how to think". Well the way I see it, that's only valuable if you go to a top school whose prestige will take you far in employment. </p>

<p>Compare this to engineering, medicine, etc. where you can come from a no-name school and still find great jobs. </p>

<p>Do you agree?</p>

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<p>Yea because the only jobs out there are in finance, engineering, and medicine…</p>

3

<p>To get a decent job with a liberal arts degree you need to go to a HYPS level college and/or have rich parents who can set you up with a good job. Proponents of liberal arts degrees on CC mention someone they know who did get a decent job but those are merely just anecdotes.</p>

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<p>My kid got a great job from a liberal arts college that was ranked around #50 on USNWR. She was a political science and public policy major. She took full advantage of all her school had to offer, had a couple of great internships, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She found a very good job by networking with alumni from her school, and just got promoted to a manager position after less than one year on the job. Her boyfriend from the same college, an econ major and also PBK, got a job with one of the bigger consulting firms and is doing well also. Most of their friends have jobs, with the exception of one who is trying to break into publishing (pretty much impossible) and one who has honestly not worked that hard on his job search. And these kids graduated into a tough job market.</p>

<p>To be fair, my kid knew how to think before she got to college, and leveraged hard work and good people skills into a good position after college. If you have those skills going into college you can do very, very well for yourself even if you don’t go to HYPS. You have to remember that hundreds of thousands of people earn a great living in this country, and only a small fraction of them went to those colleges. It is a complete fallacy to think that you need to go to one of them to be successful.</p>

<p>The school your degree is from is pretty much irrelevant within a month of graduating into the work world. Then they want to know what skills you have, what can you do for their company, and can you work with a team. The further college is in your rear view mirror the less the college name matters in the real world.</p>

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<p>Unless you’re planning to be a lawyer or teacher, it’s about as useful as writing diploma on a sheet of paper.</p>

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<p>jon and teendream have no earthly understanding of the enormity of the US economy. Not that it’s peaches and cream for everybody but to blatantly declare all Lib Arts degrees as null and void is akin to a USA Today headline – and just as equally informed.</p>

<p>Pfft…</p>

<p>Jon: "Well the way I see it, that’s only valuable if you go to a top school whose prestige will take you far in employment. " </p>

<p>You’ve obviously never had to hire or promote anyone. The college people attend who apply for jobs I post and people I promote = nothing.</p>

7

<p>To get a decent job with a liberal arts degree you need to go to a HYPS level college and/or have rich parents who can set you up with a good job</p>

<p>If this were true, the employment rate would be through the roof. But it’s not.</p>

<p>First of all, a “liberal arts major” is pretty broad. Mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and computer science are all liberal arts degrees too.</p>

<p>I suspect, however, that we are talking about humanities and social science majors. For new grads in the humanities and liberal arts, the unemployment rate is 9.4% - which is lower than architecture (at 13.9%) and about on par with computers and mathematics (8.2%) and communications and journalism (7.3%). In fact, it’s not much higher than the unemploymenr rate for engineering (7.5%) or business (7.4%)</p>

<p>Once you look at the major breakdowns…the unemployment rate for recent engineering grands is around 7-8%. It’s around the same for French and German majors, psychology majors, criminal justice majors, sociology majors, and biology majors; lower for chemistry majors; and only a bit higher for economics majors (9.4%), English majors (9.2%) and philosophy majors (10.8%).</p>

<p>And as a total group, psychology and social work majors have about the same unemployment rate as engineering majors, and actually a lower unemployment rate than computers & mathematics majors. Check it out:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf[/url]”>http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A quick glance yields that the fields with the lowest unemployment are family & consumer sciences, elementary education, and nursing.</p>

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<p>In the end cream rises, no matter your major or college. People who aren’t afraid to work, have skills and intelligence appropriate to the job, and are not jerks will do fine in the job market. A person with passion for an arts or humanities major will be better off in the long run doing that rather than trying to be an engineer. It’s not just about the money, do what you love and do it well. Having said that, be flexible and sensible,you need options when you don’t end up on Broadway or in the NFL.</p>