It’s been always my dream since childhood to be an Archaeologist, and won’t hide, be a minister of culture in Egypt. I can read history and culture books for days tirelessly. But the worst thing is that, despite Egypt being a rich soil of civilizations and layering of cultures, careers in Anthropology are worst in terms of salary and employment.
Generally, bachelors of Arts are looked as ‘lower’ faculties left for students with screwed grades. No one chooses this major in my country by his free will. It’s a sad thing I know.
I can choose one program of Anthropology in Canada, but my parents said choose the lowest price as it may not pay you back in future.
The dilemma here is either following my dreams or being rational and following the society conventions.
If Egyptian archaeology is your primary interest, then you should consider majoring in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations. Then, within this major, do a track in either Egyptology (not widely available— possibly only at U Toronto) or the Ancient Near East (more widely available, but still limited). Depending on whether particular later historical periods interest you, you also could consider a major (or double major) in Classics and do a track in Ancient History and/or Classical Archaeology. You will probably need to take your studies up to the doctoral level for your stated career goals.
I don’t know anything about the market conditions in Egypt.
In the U.S., though, anthropology majors can get jobs. They just don’t usually work as archaeologists or anthropologists. To be an archaeologist in the U.S., you’d have to get a PhD in archaeology (which takes 8-10 years on average, although you can do it in a few less) and then find a position as a professor of classics, archaeology or anthropology at a university. Then you’d have to write grants to find enough funding to pursue your research. It’s a very challenging career, and there aren’t a lot of openings - there are far more people who want to do it than there are actually positions to fill. Basically, you have to be okay with the idea of training for 10-15 years of your life with the very large probability that you won’t actually get to do the thing you are training for, and will have to do something else.
However, you could major in anthropology (or history, or classics) and do something completely unrelated to that as your career. You could go into politics and eventually become the Minister of Culture in Egypt, if you want. Or have other roles in government agencies and public service. Will you make as much as an engineer or a software developer early in your career? Most likely not, but that’s not the point. The point is - do you even want do to that anyway? You don’t want to go to work miserable every day.
“You don’t want to go to work miserable every day.” True but on a more realistic view, my parents won’t pay thousands and thousands of dollars abroad to see their son living in their basement and asking for money for 15 years to finance a PhD in Archaeology X_X True when they said “Not all college degrees are created equal”
Well, first of all PhD programs are funded - so they wouldn’t be financing the PhD in archaeology, and you wouldn’t be living in their basement. Second of all, unemployment for PhDs is quite low - around 2%. So even if you did get a PhD in archaeology and ended up not being an actual archaeologist, you could still get a good professional job using your research skills to do something else (and frankly, perhaps getting paid more than you would as a professor of classics or anthropology somewhere).
And thirdly, anthropology majors don’t have to go into archaeology. You could go into business or nonprofit or anything else (in the U.S., at least. Don’t know about the Egyptian market).
I know you’re considering some environmental/earth sciences majors, and if you are concerned about job prospects and want something that has a little bit more of a “surer” route into specific positions then those majors may appeal to you more (especially if you lean on the harder side and go meteorology, atmospheric science, etc.) I do know that a lot of those jobs want their candidates to have an MS, though, so you should poke around a bit.
Yeah, these days I think the average time to degree in a social sciences PhD is around 9-10 years according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates. Personally, I think at an excellent program with enough support and no mishaps through the PhD program, one can finish in far less time - 6 or 7 is standard and completely doable. But people take longer because life intervenes. For example, I could’ve finished my PhD in 5 years - or even 4-4.5 if I had come in knowing exactly what I wanted to do - but it took me 6 because I got sick and eased up one year. The good and bad thing about PhDs is that they are flexible enough to allow those things - but in fields like anthropology where you have lots of theoretical coursework, methodological coursework, language requirements and you typically have to do fieldwork for a year before you write your dissertation…time can get away from you.
BTW what PhD have you earned? what was your major to?