Take That!

Being an English major, I have often found myself having to justify my choice in major (as detailed in one of my prior blog posts which you can find here, http://clarkenglishblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-english.html). I have become used to the lectures about why my choice was a poor choice if I want to see a significant return on my investment. I have politely chuckled at the jokes of which I and my fellow humanities majors are the butts.

But no longer—well, probably yes, longer. In any case, people should perhaps think twice about teasing liberal arts majors. This week the higher education community was abuzz with a recent study conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities which shows that over the course of a career humanities and social science majors make more than those who obtained professional and pre-professional degrees. (To read one of the articles for yourself, see http://chronicle.com/article/How-Liberal-Arts-Majors-Fare/144133/ or http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/22/see-how-liberal-arts-grads-really-fare-report-examines-long-term-data.) While professional degrees may serve graduates well in the first few years after college, the findings show that as humanities and social science majors get older, their average earnings surpass the earnings of their professional and pre-professional counterparts.

What does this really mean though? It means I am vindicated! Just kidding…sort of. What it seems to indicate is that humanities and social science majors are getting advanced degrees as they get older. Forty percent of the older liberal arts graduates had some form of advanced degree on top of their bachelors. By getting their masters or doctorate, the liberal arts majors are ultimately gaining the earnings edge over the other majors within the study. In other words, liberal arts majors may lose the battle, but they are winning the war.

There are three important points that I take away from this news. The first is that my degree is not terminal; I will be coming back to academia for another degree. It is something I came to accept long ago. So while I do not want to get my masters next year, I know I will want to get it eventually, and maybe even after that I will want a Ph.D. For some people that may be a deterrent from selecting a degree in the liberal arts, but I do want to make the point that this is probably also true for many other majors and many other professions. We are all going to have to consider that perhaps the coming trend in education and in the job market is that graduate degrees are expected. Maybe no undergraduate degree will be able to be a final degree. My second take-away is that the money you earn just out of college—and even beyond that—is not everything. I study English because I like it, because I am good at it, because I know I can do good things with it, and because it matters. I may not earn more than an engineer, but I know I will be happy in what I do, whatever that will be. My final point is that the humanities majors and social science majors of the world no longer need to stand quietly while people give those lectures and make those jokes, feeling awkward and without defense. I know the next time my father brings up how I should have been a business major that I will be bringing up this article. So take that, doubters! I am an English major, and I will do just fine.