What careers can I pursue with a degree in sociology or political science?

[Dangerosa]

@CrankyAsAnOldMan

I see people have plenty of snarky/bitter input about “useless” majors, but put me in the other camp. I know a number of people who have gone far with social science and humanities majors.

I think the New York Times just featured an opinion piece on this, about how the world keeps changing, as do job expectations, and that it’s hard to nail down any major that will thoroughly prepare you for a specific job. People need to stop worshipping at the altar of the almighty applied professional major. I think if you want to be someone who fits in well in the knowledge economy, you need to be adaptive, creative, and good at critical thinking. There are lots of ways to work on those skills–no one discpline (or applied field!) has a monopoly on them.

Studying political science and sociology means your friend will be studying power and relationships and human interaction. That’s not exactly irrelevant stuff.

I’ll agree…Brainiac4 and I both have six figure incomes with “useless” degrees - hell, neither of us actually HAS our degree…I’m a paper away from a B.A. in Art History (IT Project Manager), he’s a class away from a degree in Sociology (Senior Manager, Fortune 100).

What a liberal arts “almost a degree” taught me - an ability to think abstractly, to think outside the box, to pull together information and make sense out of it.

Granted, both of us have some “native” talent and have just had great luck (it was nice to have computer skills, people skills, and an understanding of business during the IT boom - none of which came from those Art History classes).

I’m back in school getting a business degree, but its a resume check in case I have to go job hunting.

(I know a few MBAs currently employed pouring double skim caramel lattes).

[Slypork]

My wife has a BS in Sociology with a double minor in Psychology and Criminal Justice. Learning how to read people and understand behavior and motivation proved invaluable in her career in…sales. That’s right, she worked in sales for some major companies and learned how to manipulate people into buying whatever she was peddling. Made six figures doing it, too.

From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t really matter what your degree is in (outside of the technical positions such as engineering or computers), most companies are just looking for you to have a degree. A BS seems to be more acceptable than a BA but YMMV. When I worked for a commodities trading firm some of the top traders had degrees in psychology, philosophy and music history.