Depends on the specific humanities degree. I majored in journalism. And while yes, I have worked as a journalist, I’ve also held a wide variety of positions within the field of communications. I currently hold a senior-level editorial position for a large, well known financial services company. We hire English majors.
Having a command of the language, being able to write well, and knowing how to communicate effectively are skills that are helpful in many different fields. So you find English majors doing different types of jobs that might not appear to degree-relevant.
I wish teachers could get paid as much as corporate communication specialists, and the best humanities majors fought for high school teaching positions…
“a theater major can do a lot of jobs related to theater, even teaching theater at high school sounds more fulfilling for a theater lover than pharmaceutical sales.”
I guess I could have been a psych tech, but that’s a particularly unfulfilling job.
I like learning new stuff, working with people, working with numbers, assimilating a bunch of complex mathy ideas and explaining them in a way that has some potential to improve people’s lives. In college, the way I did those things was through a statistics and research heavy psych major. I could just as easily have done economics, or history of science, or women’s studies. Out of college, I did exactly those same things working in an HR department, scheduling production for a small manufacturer, and then doing taxes. Nothing got abandoned!
I would say most people going to a small LAC are there because they love learning and want to immerse themselves in their studies. The life of the mind and all that.
LACs are not preprofessional schools. The students are not training for a specific profession. That said, majoring in a humanities discipline opens up a much wider range of possible careers than most preprofessional degrees. Why not keep the possibilities open?
By the way, investment banks recruit Art History and English and Philosophy majors from elite colleges such as Amherst.
“I get that but totally abandoning the field that you loved and studied for random vocations doesn’t sound like much fun.”
People often have several careers over their lifetime. To many, the thought of doing the same thing, same field for 50+ years doesn’t sound like much fun.
How many know at 18, 19, 20 what they want to do with the rest of their lives? What their true interests are? Life is a process of discovery and growth. One doesn’t need to lock that in as a young adult.
“but the least financially successful (10th percentile mid-career) humanities majors tend to cluster at the bottom”
Also, “success” can’t be measured in financial terms, at least not solely. Not everybody glorifies maximizing their paycheck above other benefits of working.
Nevertheless, many students studying liberal arts (at LACs or otherwise) do so for pre-professional reasons. For example, English seems to be the second place go-to major for pre-law students (behind political science).
Why do you assume that students choose undergraduate majors based on an exclusive “love” of a single field of study?
Why assume that post-college jobs are “random” rather than a natural progression of evolving interests and opportunities?
Why assume that the person has “totally abandoned” a field of interest if they don’t happen to have a job or career centered around that?
And why assume that taking on a career in a field the student “loves” but isn’t really strongly related to an income-producing function would be in any way “fun”? (For some people, having a career in what they “love” is a pretty sure way to ruin the fun.)
I don’t think they abandon their majors at all. My daughter started in theater. I never expected her to act on stage for a living, but knew that by studying theater she’d learn a lot about presentation, how to carry herself, hand and body movements. Alas, she changed majors to art history, where I knew she’d learn a lot of about history and religion and museums and…art. Alas, she’s changed majors again, although is keeping art history as a minor, and majoring in history. She’ll be able to run a lot of Jeopardy! categories.
She will not be a teacher or historian, but she’s learned how to research a paper and write one, learned how to decide what is important and what isn’t.
What will she be? Well, she still wants to be a Disney Princess, and she can expound on the difference in architecture of Belle’s castle and Aurora’s, she can give a little history of Mulan and Jasmine, she can act a little, she can even go into the political situations Disney was in with unions and films for WWII.
Many people switch careers multiple times in their lives…and for many, their actual careers don’t necessarily align with their college majors. So what? It doesn’t mean that they have abandoned their prior interests…it’s just that they have cultivated new ones. Nothing wrong with that.
^^Not the same as engineering or nursing. Indeed, it is likely an overlap in interested. Those interested in the law are also interested in English and political science.
There may be very little difference between a degree in theater and one in History or English, or even bio or chem. My daughter has to take a certain number of classes in the college of Arts and Sciences, and the difference between a humanities degree or an art degree may be a few classes. My D has a lot of classes that can be a history class or a theater class or a religion class, just depends on how she registers for it (History 4350 or Religion 4350 or Eng 4350 or Thea 4350).
I chose my major just for courses that I would enjoy exploring intellectually for four years. I viewed college as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immerse myself in the life of the mind.
I viewed my career selection as an entirely separate process and venture. It never even occurred to me that one should look for a career related to a specific major.
The skills of reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking that I learned through my liberal arts education actually have helped me to succeed in my chosen field more than did any of my graduate courses specific to my field.
I loved college, and I am completely fulfilled and happy in my career, where I can make a difference in people’s lives.
I have an undergrad in chemistry, was hired out of college to do chemistry at an engineering firm and figured out I loved engineering and got a masters in engineering. I think that first job often drives your interests. I could easily have ended up with a masters in chemistry, math or physics.
Maybe the distinction these days should be between STEM and non-STEM majors, although now that I’m thinking about it, would anthropology and psychology be scientific enough be considered STEM fields?
My DD mostly takes classes in literature/poetry, religion, history and philosophy (no required curriculum). I fully expect she will figure out a way to make a living but I doubt she will ever leave these intellectual interests even if their study does not lead to employment.
Whichever way psychology and anthropology (and economics) fall into such categories, “STEM” may not be a particularly useful description for generalizing about jobs and careers. The major-specific job and career paths for biology majors are quite different from those of computer science majors, for example.
