Career growth
For everyone who’s been told your degree is “useless,” this is for you
It seems everyone has something to say about whether a liberal arts degree is worth the cost in today’s job market. For every person who says a liberal arts degree doesn’t add up in dollars and cents, there’s someone else who says it’s absolutely worth the cost.
What are you supposed to make of these questions, when you’re the one holding a hotly debated liberal arts degree? Have you really invested four years and incurred an avalanche of debt for a degree that’s not going to help you support yourself?
Not so fast. There are plenty of reasons to feel good about your liberal arts degree. Maybe more than you realize.
Key takeaways
- A liberal arts education prepares you to work in a wide variety of fields
- Your liberal arts degree is seen as a valued asset by many employers
- A degree in STEM doesn’t always mean bigger paychecks for life
- Liberal arts degrees teach you how to be a continuous learner—something everyone needs in a rapidly changing world
What is a liberal arts degree?
Many college majors provide direct preparation for future employment. Pre-med leads to a career in medicine. Accounting leads to becoming an accountant.
A liberal arts degree involves studying a wide range of subjects, but not necessarily in preparation for a particular role. That’s part of its historic appeal. Get a liberal arts degree, and you can adapt the skills you learn to a variety of roles.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says this about liberal arts:
In the broadest sense, a liberal arts education is an approach to learning that involves diverse coursework so students develop a range of knowledge. Generally speaking, it’s designed to prepare students for a variety of career options, rather than for a specific occupation.
A liberal arts degree can be considered the ultimate degree in learning how to learn.
Get a liberal arts degree, and you can adapt the skills you learn to a variety of roles
Why people wonder whether liberal arts degrees are worth it
There was a time when a college degree, any college degree, was the ticket to a better life. Things look a little different today. Over the last couple of decades, we’ve become a culture obsessed with science and technology subjects.
In 2005, Congress commissioned a report from the National Academies, looking for policy recommendations to help Americans compete in an increasingly technological world. Ever since the National Academies Press released their “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report, the U.S. has focused tremendous resources on developing STEM education to prepare the next generation to succeed in the workforce.
There is a narrative out there that people with a degree in STEM will earn more overall than people who have a liberal arts degree. Recent data from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard supports this idea. However, research from Georgetown University claims that people with liberal arts degrees eventually catch up with their peers in other fields.
Why a liberal arts degree is attractive to employers
As we mentioned earlier, studying liberal arts prepares you for the workforce in a broad sense. In some ways, the more creatively you can apply your knowledge to different roles, the more options that will be open to you.
Some of the skills that are hallmarks of a liberal arts education are the exact skills employers are looking for in today’s workers:
- Critical thinking
- Creative thinking
- Empathy
- Problem solving
- Collaboration
- Humility
- Cultural competency
Jaime C., who guides the content strategy for web design projects, sees her English degree at play in her job every day. Central to her role, she says, is the “ability to take in information and translate it into a narrative.” Jaime’s been asked to act as editor in almost every role she’s had since college. Jaime agrees that her background in liberal arts helps her relate to people more empathetically.
The story of an actor
Josh C. works in digital marketing. He caught the acting bug during high school. When an agent signed him, he decided to pursue a career in acting.
His parents, hoping their child would have a secure future, discouraged him. They wanted him to get a degree in something more practical and suggested he minor in acting.
Josh graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing. Live theater and film and television productions were completely shut down. Not an auspicious time to enter the workforce. Not an auspicious degree to have in hand—or was it?
A BFA in acting may seem like a hard sell to a potential employer. But, Josh gained a lot of the same type of skills that a broader liberal arts degree provides. Josh says, “I knew that as someone with acting training my social skills were going to carry me far. So, if I could just get an interview, I would probably be okay.”
How did he convince an employer to take a chance on him in a field he hadn’t studied? He chalked it up to his elevator pitch during the interview.
“I had sort of a script,” he says. “I would have a couple of sentences that I said at the beginning of every single interview. I would start every interview with these words. When they ask me the first question, usually ‘Tell me about yourself,’ I would say, ‘Well, cards on the table I am likely different than every other applicant that you’ll be speaking with. I have an acting background, which you might not immediately consider as the most qualifying experience. But I think that it has a lot to offer that might be unique that you might not have seen.’”
Josh landed a job at a marketing agency and credits his background in acting with providing him with the resilience and persistence it takes to succeed in his work.
Josh says two of the top skills he learned by studying acting were, number one, to roll with the punches.
The other skill is learning to say, “Okay, I’m game to try,” no matter how unexpected the ask. He honed this skill in moments like this one:
You have…..extremely taxing movement classes that are exhausting. You had rehearsal at 11 pm last night. And then you walk into a class and your voice teacher is like, ‘Okay, I want you to become a blender. Okay?’
“And…what? What does that even mean? But you have to do it without judgment. Just sort of like, jump into the abyss of trying. And I think that is a skill that any employer would value.
There was a time when a college degree, any college degree, was the ticket to a better life. Things look a little different today.
Take heart—your liberal arts degree will serve you well
If we’ve learned anything over the last several years, it’s that nothing is as constant as change. A liberal arts background helps you adjust to an ever-changing career landscape. That may be the best recipe for a successful career you can find.
