<p>Sorry, mini. I do have a liberal arts degree, just more on the quant jock side of things.</p>
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Odds are the au pair is just financing a stint abroad. The nanny and any of the others may have taken short-term jobs in the area of the country they want to concentrate their job search (easier to find a job in Chicago if you’re in Chicago). Then again, I had a friend who spent a year down in the Keys teaching scuba lessons to “decompress” from the rigors of earning an English degree. I guess Shakespeare can be brutal. 
I know his dad 'bout had a stroke at the time, but he went on to fame and fortune as a screen writer, and his dad got over it. Right now, things are tough all over, though, and the Class of 2009 was hit hard. Grads from a lot of disciplines are waiting tables, etc., as they look for other jobs. Be proud of those with the work ethic to do so. The economy will improve eventually, and they’ll land on their feet, better for the experience. Dine out and tip well. :-)</p>
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When the ba cost $200K and loans are due.</p>
<p>" I happen to have a degree in economics and mathematics, but many, many in this field have liberal arts degrees, esp in psychology and sociology "</p>
<p>Of course you can take a quantitative approach to sociology and many do - my impression has always been that a sociology major going in to market research is the sort who studied cluster analysis more than, say, a Marxist analysis of medieval class structures. But I confess I do not know a huge amount about market research.</p>
<p>“Even people in Des Moines, Iowa need sophisticated people to do their advertising, manage their finances, help them think strategically.”</p>
<p>Finances, I was thinking IBanks, commercial bank HQ functions, stuff like that. Of course if we are talking about Cert Financial Planners, branch bank managers and local loan officers, and stuff like that, finance is much more widely distributed. At some point though, as someone hinted, those jobs shade off into 4 yr degree barely needed. At any rate, the State flagship LA grads may not like competing with the directional U grads to be small town CFPs and mortgage loan officers. And, I suspect, a good deal of the excessive growth of the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector happened precisely at the local level. </p>
<p>Advertising - Yes, again you are right, there are local ad agencies. I do not know the extent to which medium sized company in Des Moines will use a local agency, versus say using a Chicago agency. Or to take it down a step, will a Quad Cities firm use a quad cities agency, or use a Des Moines agency? I imagine it has a lot to do with the shape of media markets, etc</p>
<p>Coming late to the party here. To the title of this thread, a big “duh.” Yes, old news. Our society values technical skills and rewards them financially.</p>
<p>But I would assert, “up to a point.”</p>
<p>I live a stone’s throw, okay, about 15 miles, from Brookhaven National Lab. It’s stocked with folks with enormous quantitative and technical ability from all over the world. There is certainly a ceiling on the earnings of these physicists. In fact, their lifestyle does not markedly differ from my H’s and mine.</p>
<p>I am a college professor; he is an entrepreneur. Our skills and degrees are in English and Fine Art. </p>
<p>We each have a strong technical skill: He’s the photographer and has built his own studio, and I teach writing and literature as a tenured professor at a very well regarded community college.</p>
<p>I would submit that writing well is as marketable skill as cyphering well as mini attests. I have never been out of work and could earn three times what I do if I chose to pursue all the corporate opportunities I’ve been presented with.</p>
<p>The technical knowledge H has acquired over the years, first about film and then about computers could also be put to remunerative use in the corporate setting.</p>
<p>Like mini, we’ll never be reach but we are using our skills in settings more in keeping with our own values and proclivities.</p>
<p>I think Humanities grads are fine if they accept the challenge of actually mastering the humanities and not slip/sliding through.</p>
<p>Writing well is a life long quest as is thinking well.</p>
<p>DD took her American Studies degree to law school. </p>
<p>DS is an ongoing project. He is a Classics major still struggling with the basic skill set of writing a totally successful paper and finding parallels to the world of practical life in a way that yields him some employment. I have cautious optimism though I admit I am a wee bit worried. He also has very advanced skills in music up through composing, so he may find work there.</p>
<p>I think a better distinction might be made in a comparison between pure and applied knowledge. There is not much employment for theoretical mathematicians outside of the academy.</p>
<p>The notable thing about engineering is that it begins as an applied skill so as an area of study it has already taken many steps into the vocational camp. This leaves engineers, to their own delight and envy of all, highly employable.</p>
<p>^^^
I really like this analysis. It pretty much expresses what I’ve been thinking but couldn’t explain half as well.</p>
<p>^^^
As mythmom said:
“I would submit that writing well is as marketable skill as cyphering well as mini attests. I have never been out of work and could earn three times what I do if I chose to pursue all the corporate opportunities I’ve been presented with.”</p>
<p>OK, Ill plead guilty to being ignorant and to living in a bubble of my own making, but I find the economic geography excuse to be quite plausible. In my suburban location, I dont really think I know anybody who works at a corporate headquarters, in food-supply companies, the publishing industry, think tanks, or trade associations. Maybe a couple in similar situations, but even those would be engineers or lawyers.</p>
<p>Never did I claim there were no good jobs for liberal arts majors (the lady dost protest too much, methinks). I was interested to learn the paths by which non-technical graduates progress into the work place if they dont pursue advanced degrees. I have a daughter who just started college, Ive worked with kids in Boy Scouts, and I do volunteer work with students at the local high school. I talk with them about technical career paths, but dont know what to say about the other fields. Hence, the request for examples of initial paths taken right out of school, which seem to be less straightforward and harder for me personally to understand or relate to.</p>
<p>Lest my LAC employment report extract be viewed as a cheap shot, it was the small-minded fretting of a father who will is investing $250K in his daughters undergraduate education, hoping that she will be able to launch her career with a better job then she might have gotten straight out of high school. I did note that these extracts were the exceptions, not the rule. Quite possibly these were the folks who are having trouble finding a job in this tough economy. The report also contained some absolutely stunning listings, though not surprisingly these were more common among the management and economics majors than the humanities. </p>
<p>So apologies for keeping this well, duh titled thread alive too long. Along the lines of the original subject, though, mythmom is accurate in her observations about the ceiling on technical types in their typical employment modes. Engineers can make a good living and start well-paid right out of the box, but their lifetime earnings wont compare with those of smart, motivated people in business.</p>
<p>That’s, of course, assuming they don’t make the jump onto the management track themselves. Many of the highest paid engineers I’ve known have stuck with a lower paying job due to the satisfaction they draw from it. I’m sure that explains a ton of the engineers/scientists working at Brookhaven even though they likely have a PhD and could have earned more money getting an MBA instead of living on slightly more than minimum wage for five years.</p>
<p>^^^^^ True</p>
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<p>Right, but you cited driving down the street and looking at “pizza shops, donut shops, Best Buy, Starbucks, gas stations, barber shops, banks, restaurants, drug stores, delis, a craft store, liquor stores, a book store, and a storefront psychic” – *as if the only jobs that such businesses created were the ‘front-line’ retail jobs<a href=“the%20pizza%20delivery%20guy,%20the%20guy%20who%20makes%20the%20donuts%20or%20the%20coffee,%20the%20waitress,%20the%20check-out%20clerk%20at%20the%20drug%20store”>/i</a>. Blue collar can’t exist without white collar and vice versa. If your intent was to say I prefer my child to have a white collar job over a blue collar and all I see when I drive down the street are the blue collar jobs – there’s a whole white collar infrastructure that had to be in place for those blue collar jobs to exist. </p>
<p>It sounds like when you see the pizza place, all you see is the delivery guy, the cashiers, the waiters / waitresses, the cooks, and maybe the manager of the place. That may very well be if you take that snapshot, but I see something much larger. I see the architects who designed the building, the bankers who financed the whole thing, the packaging-company execs who designed the new packaging, the companies who supplied the furniture, the insurance people who insure it all … and that’s just the beginning. And there are tons of white collar jobs that go into the making of that.</p>
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<p>My undergrad was in mathematical methods in the social sciences (MMSS) and I know my way around cluster analysis and the like, but now I pay statisticians to do that for me and I focus on the art of interpreting the results to be meaningful to my clients.</p>
<p>“It sounds like when you see the pizza place, all you see is the delivery guy, the cashiers, the waiters / waitresses, the cooks, and maybe the manager of the place. That may very well be if you take that snapshot, but I see something much larger. I see the architects who designed the building,”</p>
<p>As the dad of an aspiring archie, who has also looked around at some archie forums, I can tell you that the prospect of being an inhouse architect for a retail chain is one that gives most (AFAICT) young architects the heebie-jeebies. Its what you do if you never manage to make a stable career at an arch firm, and you find a slightly higher salary and much better stability are what you need, more than the opportunity to work on a variety of more creative projects. Also, AFAICT, one you have spent years designing Target stores, its hard to break back into a mainstream Arch practice. I mainly see references to working for a firm like Target or Best Buy. I suppose Dominoes has inhouse architects too (maybe not since most of their outlets are in existing shopping centers - most of which are probably done by design/build firms). </p>
<p>I realize thats something of a digression. It does point to a larger issue raised in this issue. There ARE kids who have good aptitude for tech areas, but pick a LA path because they find the more technical paths leading to careers that appear dry, boring, grinds. SOME of the more common LA grad paths are just as bad. I am not saying whether or not that kind of judging of careers/life paths is wise, or attractive. But if someone IS judging on that basis, they need to be fully informed.</p>
<p>To make it personal, DD has (so far) made the choice of Arch over Civil E. I think in part because she sees Civil E as somewhat drab, relatively. I can see why she wants to use her artistic talents. But if she were aiming at designing Target stores, over and over again (to avoid the instability of Arch practice) I would have to ask her if she wouldnt find more satisfaction as a Civil E.</p>
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<p>Thanks, Pizzagirl, that’s helpful. (Although, when I close my eyes really tight, the closest I come to your vision is the architect with the 5-year BArch, the Banker with the MBA, the engineers who designed the furniture factory, and the insurance CPA with the accounting degree!) I don’t see many examples of those white collar corporate workers or the NGA wonks in my bubble, and I don’t think the kids I work with do either. They see teachers, doctors, restaurant managers, and a few engineers like me who come in to help them build robots. </p>
<p>So, just to avoid any arguments, insults, or ill feelings, I’m not slamming any liberal arts graduates, not claiming there is only one True Path, not suggesing that money can buy happiness, not trying to feed anybody’s ego or insecurities, etc. Really. </p>
<p>If it helps, I’ll concede upfront that I’m an ignorant, thick-headed, unimaginative engineer who lives in a bubble and doesn’t read any newspapers or watch “The Office.” </p>
<p>So the question is:</p>
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<p>What do the first 5-10 years out of college look like for the typical liberal arts graduate if they don’t go to grad/med/law/biz school? (Typical–not Brooke Shields, not Barak Obama, not Harvard grads, not “my-Daddy’s-CFO-of-Chase”)</p>
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<p>My thanks to those who have given personal examples!</p>
<p>LA grad here. Not only undergrad but with a master’s in Southern and African-American History. Never have been unemployed a day in my life. Went from grad school in the 70s to state government to the Federal government to a retirement job at one of the best University’s in the country. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t change a thing. Emotionally and financially rewarding with one pension (and social security and a non-contributory pension when I retire from the current job) that is guaranteed for life and goes up with inflation. And, on top of that I can and have made a difference in people’s lives. </p>
<p>I believe that we need more science education along the line of the History of Science in order to create a well informed electorate. The level of scientific illiteracy among the general public is astounding. But, I do not need calculus or theoretical physics or civil engineering in order to live a meaningful and productive life. Calculating interest rates, basic math, and introductory statistics for my job are all I need. </p>
<p>And, BTW, people with science educations are very susceptible to market variations and the ups and down of Federal funding.</p>
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<p>In your engineering life, what products / services does your engineering firm sell or provide?</p>
<p>"typical liberal arts graduate "</p>
<p>Thats the problem. There too big a pool there. Classics major are LA grads. And english majors. And Econ majors. And quant jock sociology majors. </p>
<p>Some are from elite privates (if not Harvard). Some are from State flagships. Some from lesser privates. Some from state directional Univs.</p>
<p>Those folks are gonna tend to go in somewhat different directions. and even within anyone category - say english majors from state flagships - you will have folks going in wildly different directions - HS english teachers, ad agencies, editors in govt agencies, corp sales, whatever.</p>
<p>“And, BTW, people with science educations are very susceptible to market variations and the ups and down of Federal funding”</p>
<p>natural science is really a very different from ball of wax from Engineering, CS, etc.</p>
<p>"typical liberal arts graduate "
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<p>Yes. Exactly.</p>