# What job can you get in a communications degree? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 10, 2020, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910 "2020-07-10T04:35:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/21 "2020-07-11T18:33:58Z")
Which of the three sentences above the last would you like us to think about? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/22 "2020-07-11T18:35:49Z")
For what reason did you get a communications degree? Did you have anything in mind before you started down that alley? ---
**Author:** ![Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yankees_1996_Champs)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/23 "2020-07-11T19:46:43Z")
I had wanted to create my own media company, I still think of doing so. I believe a communications’ degree is a wide array of careers you can enter, but what do you think of a communications’ degree? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/24 "2020-07-11T19:54:41Z")
Which country are you in? What is your native language? Because your use of the English language does not sound like that of one who was raised and educated in the United States, and especially not what one would expect of one with a degree in communications who works in public relations. ---
**Author:** ![Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yankees_1996_Champs)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/25 "2020-07-11T20:11:13Z")
I was born in the U.S, why because I have a different way of talking? I have folk talk. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/26 "2020-07-11T20:14:31Z")
Honest feedback: your writing is full of errors in grammar and punctuation. If you do, in fact, have a degree in communications, and work in PR, you nonetheless often come across as inarticulate or uneducated on this board. I work in advertising, and have done so for over 20 years. If I saw a statement like the one below, written by one of my colleagues, I would worry about them, because honestly, it’s written poorly. > [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](#): > > I believe a communications’ degree is a wide array of careers you can enter, but what do you think of a communications’ degree? In proper written English, the above would have read: “I believe a communications degree allows you to enter a wide array of careers, but what do you think of a communications degree?” Even the title of this thread is written poorly. It should be “What job can you get _ **with** _ a communications degree?” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/27 "2020-07-11T20:17:12Z")
> [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](#): > > I was born in the U.S, why because I have a different way of talking? > > I have folk talk Try again. Where did you get your degree in communications? ---
**Author:** ![Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yankees_1996_Champs)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/28 "2020-07-11T20:35:26Z")
Rutgers University, NJ ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/29 "2020-07-11T20:45:40Z")
> [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](#): > > Rutgers University, NJ#160; You got a degree in communications without being able to correctly write _communications degree_? I’m skeptical. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/30 "2020-07-11T20:50:56Z")
I could almost believe that of a Rutgers graduate or really anyone who went to school in New Jersey. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/31 "2020-07-11T20:54:21Z")
Your syntax and word choice is very strange. I had assumed you were not a native English speaker. For example, “I have folk talk,” is a laughably bizarre construction. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/32 "2020-07-11T22:12:05Z")
> [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](#): > > I have folk talk. Is that a code for “I speak jive”? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/33 "2020-07-11T22:30:49Z")
In my opinion, a communications degree is worth whatever you learned while getting it. If it made you a better speaker, writer, or communicator in general it will have a positive effect on your career, because those skills are needed by any professional. If you graduated without those skills, then you could have a Ph.D. in communications and no one will hire you because you can’t actually communicate. If you have those skills with a degree in something else, even better. As a credential, however, a communications degree isn’t worth much. It’s a highly popular degree, yet the unemployment rate is high and the pay low, which means there are too many people with that degree, and it can be seen as the ‘easy’ way to get through university. This is why it’s so popular with college athletes. I used to pay attention to a candidate’s communication skills when hiring, but never gave a rat’s ass for a communications degree. And all our tech writers came up through engineering or eng tech. We didn’t hire tech writers without technical educations. As for blogging or starting a media company, see the first paragraph. If your B.Comm teaches you useful things, maybe it will help. But in general, I would say that if you want to be a freelance communicator, learn something worth communicating rather than just learning how to communicate. Bloggers and Youtube authors are a dime a dozen. The ones with something actually useful to say are the successful ones. Figure that out first, then learn how to say it. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/34 "2020-07-11T23:25:10Z")
This is a very entertaining thread, and not because of the thoughtful comments that have been made. But as Sam and a few others took the time to give serious answers, despite the lack of evidence that our OP will ever make use of them, I’ll add my two cents. I’m not a big fan of “communications” as a discipline. I worked in intersection between the fields of international development and communications because I had technical credentials my employers needed, and I could also write. Much of what I did that was useful, especially in my last job, was to take nearly incomprehensible material written by economists and engineers, and turn it into prose that an intelligent lay person could understand. Much of what I did that was an utter waste of resources was to placate the communications officers in the government offices that funded our work. The individuals I worked with who had degrees in communications were nice enough, but their academic pretensions were exasperating. Yes, there are some tools in the communications field that are useful. Being able to identify the goals of a communications campaign, articulate your core messages, define your audiences, determine which channels you will use to reach those audiences, conduct risk assessments, and monitor & evaluate the results of your efforts are valuable skills. Knowing how and why to brand is good, as is understanding how to make the most of “champions.” And of course, in this day and age a thorough familiarity with all kinds of social media is essential. A good academic program can help people to become facile with those tools. Where the professional communications staff lost me was in their insistence on using jargon to describe their work. That’s a common behavior in many fields, but it’s ironic and a little sad when “communicators” puff up their importance by obscuring their intent through the use of unnecessarily grandiose language. I support the idea of writing focused activity plans, but I was forced to spend much of my time writing 50-page tomes, where a few paragraphs and a timeline would have sufficed, to ponderously describe how we intended to communicate. Now that I’m mostly retired, I’ve deleted much of the horror that was on my computer when I was working full time, but here are a few choice phrases I found by a few minutes browsing through what remains of my work history on my hard drive: “identify current and potential space for dialog” “stress the political capital that actors on the supply can gain” “collateral materials should have a relationship to the knowledge sector” “we’ll sponsor outcome mapping for the learning community” Ugh. I’m sure I could find more, but some of the experiences I had in relation to the above were so unpleasant that I’m going to stop. I have no need to relive those frustrating experiences. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/35 "2020-07-11T23:43:21Z")
(Just saw at least one typo in my screed above. It serves me right. Gaudere lives!) ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/36 "2020-07-12T00:11:02Z")
> [@Yankees\_1996\_Champs](#): > > I have a communication’s degree. I work in PR/small business. > > I want to know what the rest of the thread thinks about it. Geez. Well, OK. It’s just that people wonder why you would begin the thread by saying, “I hear it is a wide array of options”? That very sentence–_the first sentence_–communicates that it is a topic with which you are only peripherally involved, and haven’t really considered. So, as a communications major, you surely recognize and must admit that you started the thread in a way that was incompatible with your actual perspective, and that it is something which gives pause. Surely, as a communications major, you would understand the metapragmatic function of a reporting verb like _hear_, used to frame the proposition in such a way, contradicts later assertions. As a communications major, you surely understand why people would respond in this way–right? ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2020, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/37 "2020-07-12T02:46:27Z")
" a communication’s degree"? 🤨 ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2020, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/38 "2020-07-12T17:56:45Z")
So it’s an affectation? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2020, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/39 "2020-07-12T17:59:28Z")
No, but the translation is grammatically correct: > У меня народные разговоры ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2020, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910/40 "2020-07-13T16:58:29Z")
It’s also kind of an oddball way of answering the university question. One would typically just say “Rutgers” or “Rutgers Univserity,” not “Rutgers University, NJ.” I’ve certainly never heard anyone answer a question of schooling as “Brown University, RI” or “Harvard University, MA” or “Johns Hopkins, MD.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-job-can-you-get-in-a-communications-degree/914910.md?page=3)