Alec Schaffer
aschaff3@wyo.edu
Liberal Arts, English, History, Philosophy, Fine Arts and Music. What do all these majors have in common? They all made Forbes magazines list of “the top ten worse college majors”. The means Forbes used to determine that these are “inferior degrees” were ineptly based off the average yearly income of people with these degrees.
However, The Atlantic published an article on why a degree in humanities is not as useless as many think. While, the lore of taxi drivers with PhD’s is all burned into our minds, underemployment is not as common as we are lead to believe.
The Atlantic attributes this to a vocal minority of underemployed well-educated folks. However, often these humanities students find their way into many fields beyond academia, such as business or other private sector jobs.
While I do understand the implications of degrees like business, there’s a lot more one can gain from a degree than just a paycheck. Also, a specialized degree in a currently profitable field does not automatically translate to a well paying job. Oftentimes economic and political shifts can drastically devalue a highly specialized degree.
Just because a field is profitable right now does not mean it will remain profitable.
Take petroleum engineering as an example. In 1980 Colorado had an explosion in the petroleum industry. Soon the field became flooded with petroleum engineers. As the economic and political landscape shifted, the already-saturated field size continued to grow and many eager young petroleum engineers were no longer able to find work. A similar shift in the field is happening right before our eyes in Wyoming. Political and economic tribulations are effecting the state of the energy sector in Wyoming. One petroleum engineer that was unable to find work in the Colorado energy field was Colorado Governor Hickenlooper.
Oftentimes fields that are commonly regarded as respectable, useful and well paying become over saturated for the very reason tthey are believed to be profitable. Law is one such field. Although not affected by economic and political shifts in the same way as petroleum engineering, the field has become over saturated in recent years making a once lucrative degree less valued.
This is not to say that these degrees are now without value. But rather that a degree in a highly specialized field does not translate into a well paying job. Many of these fields are highly competitive and very saturated. If one is to achieve that six figure salary, they are going to have to put in long hours and a lot of hard work and really know your stuff- not just have a degree.
And that is really what it all comes down to. If you want to be successful you are going to have to work hard, you have to be smart and you have to want to do it. It’s not dependent on your degree as much as it is dependent on you.
The humanities teach you a wide variety of subjects and skills that are, in many cases, very valuable in a wide scope of careers. Because most college graduates end up switching careers multiple times throughout their lives due to countless reasons, humanities degrees are useful in that as well. So perhaps having a less specified degree would make it easier for one to adapt to the unforeseeable changes that will affect the job market through out our lives.
