<p>I'm currently an English major in her third year at a college in the United States. When I first declared my major as English, a lot of people acted like the only thing that you can do with an English degree is be a teacher. However, the more internships and job descriptions I've been looking at, the more I realize that companies want people who can write and communicate.</p>
<p>Obviously, there is a lot of technology jobs out there, but there is also a lot of companies who are looking for who can write! </p>
<p>If you are a humanities major, have you dealt with people being harsh or belittling you because of your major? </p>
<p>I think the Humanities vs. STEM issue is two-fold.</p>
<p>Firstly is the cost. College tuition has increased faster than household wages. No one wants to be the guppy who payed for a degree that doesn’t have much “profit.” It’s partially a result of the recession; everyone wants, as Obama put it, “the most bang for their educational buck.” Humanities majors tend to have a lower starting salary than those of STEM majors. There is also this public outcry about how the U.S. desperately needs more STEM majors. People want to be part of the supply for the national “demand” because financially it looks like a stable prospect. In addition, many of the humanities require a Master’s degree as a stepping stone to a job. Grad school can financially set one back further and make people question, “Should I spend 7 years for psychology, or only 4 years for engineering?”</p>
<p>Secondly is the issue of relevancy. About half of college graduates are currently in jobs that don’t require a Bachelor’s. There’s a mass mentality that if you major in English, Philosophy, Classics, etc. you’ll just end up at some McJob. People look down on these types of jobs and holding a BA while working one of them is seen as degrading. (Never mind the fact that a job is better than no job.) And people, for some reason, assume that STEM majors are immune to working at Starbucks or the like. Outside of teaching, the careers of a humanities major are broad but vague, which makes people wary. It’s not like the (hypothetical) nursing major who ideally ends up becoming a nurse.</p>
<p>Please note that this is not my individual perspective. Rather, it’s what I analyzed after talking to my classmates, parents, siblings, and some teachers. I haven’t even started college yet, so what do I know? I declared “engineering” on my apps, but I’ll probably end up switching to something else.</p>
<p>Samandro: We’re in the McEducation mindset. Students want an education, job and career tied up in one big combo meal. As long as its not debt laden, I think humanities is a teriffic education. Also, I agree that there will be a proliferation of of writing jobs, due to internet content. GL</p>
<p>Your major is a signaling function. I have actually found my (former) humanities major to be significantly more academically demanding than my current “more employable” major, but I don’t want to go out there and have people think that I a) am a spoiled rich kid or, barring that, impractical, and that b) I can’t add 2+2. Plus, some grad schools are closed to majors that don’t demonstrate a significant math component. Since I’m not actually quantitatively disabled - I just enjoy essays more - I don’t want to effectively close down that aspect of my professional development. Really, I respect any major, it just frustrates me that Business Management types look at me like I’m mentally disabled when I say I’m majoring in literature.</p>
<p>As a corollary, there is of course a significant perceived difference between the Yale humanities major and the Schmuckville State humanities major. I read a wonderful article once that posited that, when speaking about humanities majors, people forget to differentiate between rigorous programmes at elite colleges and the easy majors at non-selective institutions, which provide, I think, the bulk of McJob applicants in whatever major.</p>
<p>I think people just have a preconceived notion that more creative, artsy and non-math majors constitute as easier and less-rigorous. Perhaps it’s because the most competition amongst majors occurs in the more practical, straightforward STEM majors. Same with foreign languages, I’d say. As with English and literature, people tend to think teaching is the only thing you can do with a foreign language BA and inevitable MA. </p>
<p>Also, from my experiences, my humanities classes are actually harder than my STEM classes. In Calc class, I had to get a 90 to get a 4.0. In philosophy, I had to get a 98 to get a 4.0. Guess which class I got the 3.9 in? Not the" harder" STEM class. </p>
<p>Fun thought: I wonder what a STEM major would do if they borrowed my philosophy book and read about Socrates and Hobbes’ Leviathan? :)</p>
<p>The reason is that there are more students majoring in the liberal arts. When I went to my son’s graduation, there were more Philosophy, Psychology, Political Science majors than the rest combined. Also many more kids move out of the STEM,and sciences into the social sciences and humanities than the other way around, so there is that perception that it’s what one does when one cannot cut the mustard in those majors that get a mass exodus. </p>
<p>Because there are so many humanities majors out, finding a job is more difficult. My math major son who has is as green as they come, was easily employable. He can do modeling, statistical analysis, knows some programing languages and is facile with those things, that a lot of jobs and companies want, and the humanities major doesn’t have those specific skills most of the time. It’s where the jobs are. When one has certain scarce skills, training and knowledge needed for specific jobs , one can get a job more readily that pays better. It’s not that there aren’t many jobs for English majors out there, there are more English majors or those who took enough English courses to do those jobs out there than there are jobs. </p>
<p>A young lady we know has a masters from an Ivy league school after a BA in English from a well known LAC, and has been trying to break into the writing, journalism field for some years now. She has been published in some prestigious venues, but getting a regular paycheck for her work has not been obtainable She is doing technical writing now for an investment firm, but even then has found that those with science, math, statistical backgrounds are getting some of the more lucrative positions as an understanding of some of these things is desired and if you don’t have some of the courses, you don’t have that base. My son was an English major with a technical writing overlay which involved taking those science courses and specifically learning terminologies so needed, and that has been very valuable in his job opportunities, not to mention having a certificate in computer programming. Finding writing type jobs is akin to being in the performing arts these days.</p>
<p>I agree that as a humanities major you have to balance it out with something to set you apart from the crowd. I am interning on campus and learning about HTML, CSS, and web design, and I have built a pretty solid background in webdesign/visual design. Then again, my English degree is not literary analysis based, because my classes are all communications and tech driven style writing. I think that confuses people because they think all I am doing is analyzing plays, but I the only literary analysis class I’ve taken was a requirement to expose us communications kids to “literature”. It was the most boring class of my life.</p>