I double majored in Economics and Political Science. I’d say yes, I’ve worked in the financial markets and they’re obviously influenced by politics.
I’m an English professor, so yeah. Honestly, though, I’d say that any writing and analysis-heavy degree directly applies to any career field where you use those skills; you don’t have to get hired at Billy-Bob’s House o’ History to “use” a history degree. (This is a difficult point to get across to our students, since most of their peers are majoring in fields that have the same name as a popular career, like nursing or physical therapy; nevertheless, it is true.)
I was an English major, mostly because it came easiest to me and I was a lazy student who just wanted it to be over. I’ve been a Program Manager in high tech for 25 years, and my success has largely been because of the communication and persuasion, and organizational skills I gained when comparing and contrasting themes in some literature I probably didn’t actually read.
I have a BFA in Theatre, and cleverly used it to spend thirty years working for the Federal government shuffling paper and acting like I knew what I was doing.
Yeah, pretty much. English and linguistics as a background does help with subtitling. I’ve previously been a teacher and done some proofreading and editing work, which are also connected.
I’ve had a number of students who don’t know why they should finish their ____ degree (as opposed to quitting and mayyyybe going back to college when they figure out their lives). I tell them to stay in school, and that it won’t lock them into one job. That there are fields like mine (Marketing/Advertising/Design) where no one cares what your degree is, or what kind of piece of paper you have from what school.
I interviewed a lot of entry-level applicants (at an Ad Agency/Design Studio), and we hired… let me count… a handful of BA degrees (almost none “in the field”), a couple of BS’s, quite a few Associates Degrees (great Marketing and Graphic Design programs at technical colleges in Wisconsin)… And here I was, a supervisor who was pre-med in college.
One of our best guys had no degree at all, and one had a Ph.D (in obscure literature, so even less applicable than the guy who’d been busy working since high school).
Going by this list on Wiki, my A.B. in linguistics definitely relates to my job teaching English.
I hold a BA in Computer Science, and I’ve worked in software my entire career.
BA History, BS Secondary Ed (Social Studies), Minors in Geography and American Studies
I teach middle school US history. So sure.
BA in English with a writing concentration. I work as a Technical Writer, so it’s completely relevant and was even what I was studying to become.
I have a BA and MA in Mathematics. I’m currently an accountant, having gone to business school and gotten a masters degree in accountancy. Whatever math I need for this job, I learned well before college. There’s no calculus or group theory useful in accounting at any level. Maybe some statistics is useful for auditors, but I didn’t take any statistics as an undergrad.
I have a degree in math. You might think it would be relevant to my job as an actuary, but you’d be wrong. All the math i use at work i either learned in high school or learned on the job. I’ve never actually used topology or real analysis at work. I don’t regret it though. Such beautiful stuff. And i got a degree.
Yeah, I was in the philosophy department for a year before switching to math, and that stuff sometimes is useful. Moral reasoning, in particular, is always relevant.
Excellent question.
My degree: major in Classics (i.e., Latin, Ancient Greek and Ancient History, with a smattering of other topics pertaining to Classical civilizations, such as Roman law of delict). Minors in French literature and English. My job: English as a Foreign Language teacher.
My degree hasn’t made me rich. There must be tons of people who apprenticed in a trade or who studied something practical at a community or business college and who earn way more than me, such as my friend Mike S., who took robotics and ended up servicing car factory robots at different places in North America. However, I wouldn’t say it has been useless. Although most of what I do with my students does not pertain to my degree, it does help in two ways. Firstly, it has taught me interesting things that I can sometimes share with students when relevant in context. Secondly, and I think more importantly, I have learned a lot about linguistics and where different words come from, which I can impart to students (in more detail in the case of the more advanced ones). A good example: “CH” is pronounced like a harder, guttural “H” sound in Czech (similarly to how a Scots speaker would say “loch”). I explain to my students that we cannot pronounce it in this way in (standard) English but rather in one of three ways: as “TCH”, in many words, as “K” - typically in words coming from Ancient Greek (which pronounced it in a similar way as in Czech), or as “SH”, often but not necessarily in words that come from French.
I note the following additional fact: as a student, I was aware that liberal arts degrees do not typically lead directly to a job. I intended to go on to teachers’ college and become a teacher in a public school, but was not admitted due to there being a gross excess in demand over supply (let’s say 4 times as many applicants to teachers’ college as spaces).
I think this topic warrants an additional question: if a child of yours intended to take a liberal arts degree in college (English Lit., a foreign language, sociology, media studies, gender studies, whatever), rather than something practical like science, IT, engineering, etc., how would you feel about paying for their education? Would it depend on whether you had some evidence that the chosen field did lead to a career or could be supplemented by one that would (for example my original plan to go to teacher’s college, which is a requirement in Ontario, or for example if in your state there was no requirement to go to teacher’s college, just the requirement to get a BA followed by having to promise to finish an MA after being hired as a teacher, as I think the requirement is in New York)?
I’d feel great about it. I’m happy that the hypothetical child wants to go to college and has a preference about what they’d like to learn about.
I’m surprised you weren’t recruited by the Department of State.
Honestly, the problem kids have post-college has nothing to do with the type of degree they get, and more to do with raising your kids not to have a sense of ownership/agency over their career, over their life. I’ve been helping kids with college admissions for 20 years, now, and watched their post careers, and the path to success is not really about your major, it’s about your attitude toward your career.
I don’t know why this is true, but there’s a lot of kids who just don’t have any clue they will ever be adults. They don’t worry about it. They may get good grades, because that’s expected, or incentivized, but they aren’t really thinking about the future at all. They just . . . coast. And then they graduate, and suddenly need a job, but even then, they don’t really “get” it. They can’t see themselves as a grownup. They don’t know how to cross the gulf. They don’t look for any sort of job that they didn’t have experience with as a kid–retail or food service. Jobs that a teenager can understand. Those kids, IME, tend to disproportionately major in certain areas: Psychology, Generic “business” majors, History, Communications, a few others. The kids you know “majored in Liberal Arts and now can’t find a job” generally fit into this category. If they graduated, they graduated with a 2.4 (that is, more Cs than anything). The degree is a symptom of an overall inability of the person to move toward any sort of adult existence. If they could get through an engineering degree (which they probably wouldn’t–a C in certain humanities majors is probably the easiest degree you can get, which is what attracts these types. Being an A student in these fields is very different)
On the other hand, in those same majors, you meet lots of people that have that sense of ownership, of agency. Sometimes they have a clear idea of what they want to do (teach, law school, whatever), but others don’t–but they know they need to be developing an idea, and so they are paying attention to opportunities and what other people are doing. They pursue internships and social changes that are opening up new jobs. They pick up skills. They are engaged. Those kids are almost always fine, even if they end up doing something very different than what they planned.
Finally, it’s really important to point out that the tragic oversupply of Liberal Arts majors is greatly exaggerated. Official stats:
Of the 1,981,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2017–18, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (386,000), health professions and related programs (245,000), social sciences and history (160,000), engineering (122,000), biological and biomedical sciences (119,000), psychology (116,000), communication, journalism, and related programs (92,000), and visual and performing arts (89,000).
The solid bulk of those are in fields people would consider “pragmatic”. We don’t have a generation graduating with a degree in Lesbian Studies.
Call me an a-hole, but doing a liberal arts degree makes one less of a hick, and that’s a good thing for a lot of jobs.
I think this question makes the unwarranted assumption that the former are impractical and the latter are practical, and that a college degree should be training for a particular job—which this thread has shown is very often not the case.
No, not really. I have a BA in Political Science and Economics, but I went to Law School right after and my law degree does have relevance in my current profession (Federal Investigator).
I majored in Elementary Education and English. Now I’m a writer, and since most of my published work has been for children, I’d say my degree applies to my current profession very much.