This question stems from some conversations with acquaintances who have hiring responsibilities in their companies.
One of the many recession-related news articles a while back covered the misfortunes of a lady who majored in “Womens’ Studies” and was unable to find employment. Discouraged, she returned to school, earned a graduate degree in the same subject, and found the same result when looking for a job. This left her deeper in debt and still unemployed.
I was discussing this with a friend, specifically the unwise choice of taking on more debt for a field that didn’t seem to be panning out. His response was that any resume that crossed his desk with *that *degree field would automatically end up in the shredder anyway. He believed it to be study of victomology, and its owner more likely to be litiguious.
I asked two other acquaintances with hiring responsibilities and got essentially the same answer. Any degree plan which concentrated (in their opinions) on the plight of the oppressed was more likely to yield a problematic employee. Paraphrasing, they answered that there are a zillion other applicants who were less worrisome, so why take a chance?
So I’m curious. Is this unusual? Or are there certain degree plans which are automatically shunned by those hiring? Has anyone else experienced this?
I don’t think I have directly experienced it, but I am certain that yes, certain degrees would work against you in apply for certain jobs. You give one example. If I tried I’m sure I could come up with others.
I have a minor in Women’s Studies but I wouldn’t mention it on a resume.
Frankly, in this job market, any liberal arts degree is questionable. But I wouldn’t question the litigious nature of the Women’s Studies major - but rather her common sense in getting a GRADUATE DEGREE in a field in which the only jobs available are pretty much teaching. Someone who decides the way to fix a useless degree is to get the graduate version of that useless degree has the common sense of a Venti Latte.
(Dangerosa, whose first degree is Art History (Film Studies) with minors in History and Women’s Studies, and who has her Accounting degree on her resume).
If you choose to focus on the plight of the oppressed for your college degree (and my Women’s Studies degree really didn’t - since mine was combined with a History minor - most of what I studied was Women’s History - not how to spell womyn - having studied the plight of Abelard and Heloise probably doesn’t make me any more or less aware of oppression), then it behooves you to choose a career path around the oppressed…community organizing, lobbying, political action. Not sending your resume to Proctor and Gamble.
You are right - there are the “harder” and “softer” liberal arts degrees. The softer ones have a much harder time. I wouldn’t want to be looking for a job right now with an English/Anthropology/Philosophy/Sociology degree…but it might not be so tough with an Economics or Math degree.
(Though, granted I’m ancient, but the people I knew with Math and Econ degrees were not employed as fast as those with degrees in Business or Engineering).
I have a degree in Theater Arts. I never planned on working a real office job so it didn’t bother me that it wasn’t a “useful” degree when I got it. I also figured that getting the degree from the most highly ranked program in the country would count for something, it’s not like I got my degree from a random acting school.
Well, when I decided that I wanted to have a family and that being a full time theater professional wasn’t conducive to being a good father I found out quickly that having a Theater Degree from UCLA, even if I graduated with honors, is roughtly equivalent to going on a job interview with only a GED. I had to spend the first part of every job interview explaining why my degree was a real degree from a real college. When I did get a job my upward mobility was hampered as people who were completing “real” degrees in unrelated fields WHILE WORKING THERE got promoted ahead of me because “well they went out and got a college degree. You should really think about going back to school”
So, I left corporate America and am now back in school. I am going to be a teacher.
In the end I don’t regret the decision to get a Theater degree. I had a good long successful run working in theater for a number of years because of it, and it taught me a lot of good job and life skills. But when I tried to go corporate it really held me back. But the mistake wasn’t the degree, it was trying to then move into the corporate world.
What about law school graduates? There seems to be a huge imbalance between the jobs available, and the number of graduates. Recently, a graduate of the Boston College Law School demanded that the school return his tuition, as he was unable to obtain employment.
I suspect that this problem will get worse, as the Obama depression worsens. There is also the allied phenomena of graduates unable to obtain employment in their fields, who opt to take menial jobs instead.
Try getting an engineering or programming job, when you’ve spent 4+ years parking cars or waiting on tables.
But, the US economy is shifting to services anyway-might as well starting cleaning houses and cutting lawns (though the illegal aliens have those jobs sewn up).
Your friend sounds very ignorant. It’s akin to saying “*Engineering[\i]?! Who the hell drives trains these day?!” in reality, you’d be hard pressed to find a recent women’s studies grad-- it’s mostly been gender studies since the 1990s. Anyway, I see jobs for gender specialists every day on international development job boards. The field has realized that men and women have different economic, health and education needs, and is rushing to develop programming to that effect.
I think it’s less about what you study, and more about how well you know how your field works and how you can market yourself. My undergrad degree in film never held me back, but I’ve always been able to tie it into my (not film) career arc convincingly.
Of course it’d be great if we were all engineers, but flunking out of engineering school is worse than an English major. People who study stuff they are really bad at and don’t enjoy have no advantages in the workplace. Nor is everyone’s first priority to find a stable, middle class job they can tolerate.
I am a hiring authority at my workplace. Would I hire a woman with a degree in Women’s Studies? No. I would assume she possessed certain traits by virtue of her chosen field of study. I would assume, for example, that she is argumentative, bitchy, and litigious, and thus unable to play well with others. A supervisor doesn’t need that kind of headache.
While the resume from a Women’s Studies major would be instantly deposited in the trashcan, there are other majors I am also prejudiced against. A degree in psychology says to me, “I had no idea what I wanted to major in, so I chose psychology.” Generally speaking, any “fluff” degree like psychology, sociology, political science, etc. says to me, “I do not have any skills.”
Rightly or wrongly, people have preconceived notions about people who major in certain fields.
I have an English Education degree. Last fall it took me ten weeks to land a job that pays twice as well as my old one. I only applied to a dozen positions all together and got interview offers for three of them.
The problem I have with women’s study majors is that I don’t know what sort of job they’re qualified for beyond teaching women’s studies. Social work, maybe, but aren’t there college majors that match social work closer than that?
This is exactly what happened to me. The years I both graduated with undergrad and grad degrees were recession years back in the '80s and '90s. Both my fields were either having layoffs and/or had hiring freezes. After resume upon resume and interview upon interview with nothing to show for it, I ended up working several PT jobs. One of those jobs led to what I’ve been doing now. And if I hadn’t had that particular PT job, I never would have seriously considered culinary school :shrug:
OTOH it was easier for me because I had no family to support. I was also living at home, so I didn’t have to overly worry about supporting anybody or paying a mortgage, etc. Had I been in the latter instance, I’m not sure I would have stuck with what I’m doing. I love what I do, but you can’t support a family with the pay.
This. Frankly, I think your extra-curricular activities, internships, and summer jobs in college can be much, more more important than your major. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a theater, engineering, or communications student - if you do a lot of political campaign volunteer work in college, you’ve got a decent shot at a campaign job when you graduate (and a staff job thereafter, if your candidate wins). You can bring a lot of international development coursework and internships into a women’s studies major, econ, political science, anthropology - even a business degree. And all of these degree, with the appropriate internships and volunteer experience, will put you in decent shape for development gigs.
It’s not the label on your degree - it’s the experience on your resume that really matters, with some exceptions.
I majored in communication and journalism, which is a skills-based program. The major requires very little theory and lots of courses in writing, editing, production, and so forth. Most majors join one of the student organizations to get practical experience.
Because the major itself requires only 13 courses to graduate, all students are required to have a minor. Most students minor in softer fields like music or theater or art because they’re easier than a minor in a harder field. The ones who minored in a social science like psychology, sociology, or political science had a much easier time finding jobs in their fields because they had the research and statistical analysis skills to be able to handle a higher level of work, which the typical fine-arts minor doesn’t have. They also understand human behavior and can apply that understanding to their work, which is essential in communications-related fields. And all of my friends who majored in social sciences either went on to graduate school or found jobs fairly quickly, even in a shitty economy.
Those people who major in the social sciences know what they want. They also bring a lot of soft skills that most employers find desirable.
Fuck that noise … I know an female engineering grad from MIT who was an officer in the Air Force in the late 60s/early 70s who is bitchy, argumentative and seriously unable to play well with others. She has so much freaking baggage, she can’t even read a piece of fiction without being a total bitch about the inequality of how women were being treated in a fictional medieval setting [planet is isolated from the rest of the universe for several hundred years and slid back into roughly the middle ages]:rolleyes:
You would think someone with an engineering degree could be logical, but I have never met anybody so toxic … I tend to ignore her in general …
As even sven said, it’s more about the person than the degree. I know a woman who has a degree in Jewish Studies. Doesn’t sound too promising, does it? But she has a succesful career in the pharmaceutical industry, in the regulatory area. (She handles the mountains of paperwork that has to be filed with the FDA.)
I agree. When imagining a woman with a “Woman’s Studies” degree, I picture a ‘death to the patriarchy’, argumentative, difficult to work with bitch who spends her day complaining about why there are more male executives at the company and why the company health insurance doesn’t extend coverage to lesbian partners, and is likely to turn around and sue you into the ground if you say anything that could even be remotely considered as demeaning.
e.g.
Guy 1: “Who do I give the receipts to?”
Guy 2: “Uhh, give it to Mary.”
Guy 1: “Uhh, Mary?”
Guy 2: “That girl (or chick) who sits near the water cooler.”
Mary: “That’s not funny! I’m calling HR and reporting you for Sexual Harassment!”
But observing that an English degree doesn’t help you as much as a math degree is not what the OP was asking about. Having a degree in English is very unlikely to harm you from getting a job as opposed to no degree at all.
My sister has a B.A.H in Drama, which is, obviously, not a useful field of study for 99.6% of all jobs - but her degree has gotten her at least two jobs that I know of, solely because one of the checkmarks on the required job competency list was “Has a B.A.” It’s never stopped her from getting a job where she would have gotten the job had she never gone to university. She couldn’t get a job as an engineer, but that’s not because she has a B.A. in Drama, it’s because she DOESN’T have a B.Sc.
I think what the OP is looking for is situations where an employer woulod say “I will not give you the job because you have Education X.” Like, say, Crafter Man, although one anedcote isn’t much indicative of a general trend. My job required a B.A. Educationally speaking that’s it (there are a lot of other, industry-experience requirements though.) I don’t think my boss even knows what my major was.
I really think its how you market your degree. Something I noticed is that having the degree alone is seldom useful, particularly for certain degrees (English, psychology undergrad, communications, philosophy, etc) because the degrees can get so overly generalist. With no internships or relevant experience, an employer really doesnt know what you know, nor do they know how well you work. When times are flush, employers can take a risk on a hire, but when jobs are scarce its logical they will hire the most qualified person. An applicant whose resume is filled with relevant experience via internships and part time work/apprenticeships/etc shows his potential employer that he is focused on a specific skillset, proactive and ambitious. In contrast…
My ex-girlfriend got a BA in psychology. She wanted to be a sex therapist (?) But never pursued grad school or did internships. Last I heard she was still working part-time at a hotel that she had been working at during school.
My friend’s wife got a degree in Communications, but barely graduated (squeaked by with an anemic 2.5 GPA, or whatever the minimum allowable was.) Not surprisingly, she couldnt find steady employment in the field she wanted to work (high tech PR)
My stepbrother’s girlfriend got a degree in Sociology from a good school, graduated Summa Cum Laude, then failed to find a job in her field. She never did any internships that I know of, and had swallowed the propiganda that good grades in school guaranteed a prestigious job.
Some degrees are more marketable than others. But if you’re going to saddle yourself with student loans and years of hard work, it pays to do your homework ahead of time and research what it will take to make your major marketable.