First off, I’m going to admit I don’t know where to put this post so I’m going to put it here. If it could go to a more active or better place please have a moderator move it (I’m not sure if mods exist on this site).
My question is, are liberal arts colleges worth a students money. Most of the more common liberal arts majors (if not almost all of them) seem to have average mid, if not substandard salary’s. Some of the most common are history, political science, English, and philosophy. You can’t do a lot with history unless you teach it or go into business or law. History professors do make a good chunk of money and the job outlook is decent but it is still limited it seems. Lawyers who manage to even get a job (unemployment rate for new lawyers in 2014 was 11.2%) risk getting an average salary with a tremendous amount of debt. With a philosophy degree about the only thing you can do is teach philosophy, so your options are quite limited unless you pursue a different degree. English majors are also limited to average paying jobs such as journalism, teaching, and publishing. Business has a collection of options that pay above average and provide good benefits.
Their are also less classical majors offered at liberal art schools such as, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, and neuroscience. These all pay well above average and offer good opportunities. The problem is the majority of students don’t major in these but the ones mentioned above.
It seems for the majority of students who would attend one of these schools in the first place, that the cost just isn’t worth it. The vast majority chose majors that have to do with English. To be fair to the schools I am considering average salary to be around the $50,000 mark in Ohio and 50,000 is fairly far above average. This is just the very bottom of the salary I think you need to live somewhat comfortably. I also realize other schools are quite expensive but liberal arts colleges seem to expensive for what hey are.
What are your thoughts on all this?
Also, sorry for any grammar mistakes this was quite late at night.
Job and pay prospects specific to these latter majors are not particularly good, probably due to the flood of graduates that these majors produce each year.
Also, how do people afford these schools. In Ohio, a school like Kenyon with grants and scholarships money still costs in the $25,000 to $36,000 range.
Private universities can also cost a lot. Most liberal arts colleges offer majors in STEM fields like math, physics, computer science, etc. Many people at universities major in subjects that are also available at liberal arts colleges. The only difference is that liberal arts colleges don’t usually offer business or engineering degrees.
If money is a concern Ill be happy to inform you that liberal arts colleges are very generous in terms of grants/scholarships. Many (elite) have excellent networking opportunities post graduation and prepare you well for every graduate school. Employers are valuing these small college more and more because they provide them with balanced workers who have soft skills (from the humanities) and quantitative reasoning. An English degree may seem useless to one but when coupled with lets say an economics minor and an internship the once hungry applicant is now recieving numerous job offers. (Perspective of a Computer Science Major)
Is this thread meant for just airing your own views and chewing the fat in general? I don’t usually participate in those. Or are you deciding to go to a LAC or not? FYI this comes up a lot and you might try searching for similar threads
I think you are mixing up undergrad degrees with grad degrees and that isn’t logical. Law is a grad degree. Sure some history majors choose law but so do some engineers and CS majors who want to be patent attorneys. A lot of humanities might end up the same places as other majors --two kids who were in my daughters high school class work at Google and they were sociology and art history majors. The chem major is teaching. Another lac kid studying geology is getting a Ph.D. From USC in paleontology and has been first author and published in Nature. An kid from Kenyon works at the Getty museum. A studio art major is the PR head at a museum. An engineer is just graduating med school.
Lots of students major in the liberal arts at research universities, too. Look at the majors available at Michigan, UVA, Berkeley, and the Ivies. Every major you are criticizing is offered there, too.
And at the core a lot of Ivy and other top schools are liberal arts at the undergrad college. Look at Columbia college of Columbia university, and Univ of Chicago, the are liberal arts colleges. I guess this was just a post to sir your misinformed views but be sure to say if you end up interested in a lac.
Not to mention that chemistry, biology, physics, and biochemistry are liberal arts majors. Everyone leaves off the “and sciences” part of “liberal arts and sciences.”
There’s nothing “less classical” about a biology, physics, biochemistry or chemistry major; people have been studying those subjects far longer than we’ve formally studied literature or political science, and before the English language actually existed. The natural sciences are some of the original topics included in the classical liberal arts education - the education necessary for a free citizen to participate in a democratic society.
Also, thinking only of positions that are directly related to majors (history → teaching, English → journalism) is unimaginative. Bachelor’s degrees aren’t vocational degrees; the idea is not to train you for one set of jobs but to train a student to be adaptable and ready to take on a variety of jobs. There are humanities and social science majors (and natural and physical sciences majors for that matter) in all kinds of jobs, both directly related and completely unrelated to the original field of study.
Lastly, money isn’t the most important thing to everyone. Some people are quite content with average-paying careers. I can assure you that $50,000 is not the smallest salary upon which you can live comfortably, especially not in lower-cost areas of living. (I lived rather comfortably on $32,000 in Manhattan.) However, most college graduates - regardless of their major - will make at least $50,000 a year within a few years (5+) of graduating college ([Source 1](Box), [Source 2](WSJ.com).)