<p>Wow, this evolved into a more heated debate than I expected…</p>
<p>@plscatamacchia (and maybe others)</p>
<p>I think the heart of your rebuttals stems from the fact that you believe humanities majors will be poor, transient workers who live bohemian lifestyles until they die. I do agree that initial job prospects for humanities majors would be lower than more vocationally oriented majors. However, your major is a non-issue after your first job and your individual capability becomes more important. Yes, that’s another ‘cliche’, but I’ve talked to many people (including my parents, who work for the city government and the phone company) and I’ve interned myself. Even the supervisors at the IT company where I used to work have degrees ranging from sociology, poly sci, psychology, and Information Decision Sciences (the last one was more of an exception to the rule than you would think). In IT (and in other places as well), I have good reason to believe that given the same credentials, an arts candidate will be favored for promotions than someone with a more ‘suited’ major. Odd and unfair? Maybe. But an unrelated major does hint that an applicant has more creativity and curiosity (different priorities than your average business major) to bring to the job.</p>
<p>Look - unless you’re going to graduate school, your humanities studies will probably not be related to the work you do. You assume there isn’t a large market to support people who can only write explications of Dante’s Inferno or New Historicist papers, and you’re right. However, the critical reading and analytical writing that these majors do is valuable for businesses (at least at the good companies that don’t automatically screen out resumes because they lack a certain amount of business jargon).</p>
<p>I don’t want to pick on accountants/engineers as non-intellectual automatons. My best friend is an accounting major, I have many friends who are studying engineering with whom I have geeky interests; heck, my father was an electrical engineer for At&t. Of course there are those who enjoy studying these topics. It’s a narrow road but you’ll get a decent salary (even if it involves a lot of overtime with Lumbergh-like bosses) and the work can be interesting. But most engineers move into managerial/consulting positions after a while for better pay and respect. That’s an option available to all majors.</p>
<p>I’m sorry if my glib statement on a ‘boring suburban life’ was offensive; I’m just a scrappy city kid even if I like my college town. But do you really have any proof that humanities majors are less employable in later years, have less job stability in their 30s, or they’re less capable of maintaining families? (hell, we should be better at attracting mates 
) Talk to your neighbors. Please spit some anecdotes at me - I have tons of stories about newly graduated engineers who can’t find jobs or later leave the field into an unrelated career. Call it a midlife crisis, whatever.</p>
<p>And given the other post-grad opportunities to go on to law, med, or biz school, how predictive is a humanities major for ‘non-success’ anyways? Philosophy majors at least tend to do very well on the GMAT and LSAT. There are a plethora of opportunities even if the road isn’t clearly defined - a humanities major hasn’t written himself out of anything, except that aforementioned engineering job.</p>
<p>I do agree once again that going into a lot of debt is foolish, but even more so for liberal arts majors. I also dislike the slackers that naturally tend to be clustered in the liberal arts and take little initiative, but I think your blithe comments were directed more at them. Also, great comment by NearL.</p>