Much of what you say makes sense, Sam. At the same time, I must disagree entirely with the conclusions that you draw regarding the social value of liberal arts degrees.
I am currently finishing my PhD in art history. And, yes, I realize that I will be in a mountain of debt by the time I graduate. I know that I will spend most of my working life paying off my student loans. I am also aware of that having a PhD to teach art history or to work in the upper levels of an art museum is pretty much a given–so it brings me up to the same level as my competition, as nearly all viable candidates for any of the jobs I’m interested in are going to have PhD anyway.
I have also had a taste of the experience that Phlosphr describes above. With a masters degree, I’m already overqualified for most jobs outside academia and the museum world. While I’m writing my dissertation, I’ve been working a full-time job at the university’s library, and I’m just getting over $20,000 a year. I’m finding that I can barely scrape by with my take-home pay, and I know that it would be very difficult and financially-draining to be paying off my student loans on such an income.
So, in many ways, I fit perfectly your description of people who have spent lots of money and time on a non-practical degree, all while stupidly forgoing opportunities in fields that don’t require college degrees.
But, you know what? I don’t want to be a carpenter. Or an engineer. Or a doctor. Or any of those fields that you consider to be socially productive. Because the subject that I’ve been studying (no, it’s not Mesopotamian architecture) is something that I love and that I find fulfilling–not just for personal development, as you implied in your first post–I enjoy teaching art history and the interaction that it invites between my students and me. I feel like my classes have a real impact on my students, even if art history is not their major.
It’s not the most financially rewarding career–I’m definitely not in art history for the money. But I reject the notion that it’s not socially productive. Those students who take anything from my class will have learned more than just the dates and names of dead artists and crumbling buildings/statues/paintings. They will have learned a new way of understanding the world’s cultures through the art objects that those cultures make.
This, to me, is what makes art history interesting, and is also what makes it relevant to anybody with an interest in humanity: the stuff that I study and teach is the very stuff that documents what people have believed and how their cultures have worked throughout history. I honestly believe that most people would benefit from a little knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian history, if only because it will help them understand the role that Iraq has played throughout history–that is surely relevant to contemporary events.
And while all of this may strike you as idealistic, Utopian thoughts with no relation to practical things like making a buck, consider this: art is a huge part of the economy. When tourists visit a major city, they will almost invariably go to the art museum–some do so because they feel a vague cultural obligation (“you *have[/] to go to the Louvre in Paris…”) but many others do so because they’re genuinely interested in learning about art. So art museums (and theaters, and concerts, and films…) are a huge tourist draw, and I believe that this only proves that art has a real meaning to many people–and that it does have social value.
And, so, while I appreciate your advice, I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of arts degrees as not contributing anything really useful to society (or that graduates with such degrees are essentially a drag on society’s productivity). My belief is that art does make a very valuable, nay, invaluable contribution to society, and this is what motivates me to pursue it as a career–even though I know I will never be rich or famous.
