Liberal arts versus ‘practical’ disciplines
By Brian Kreissl
For the longest time, the prevailing wisdom was that what people chose to major in at university didn’t matter. The idea was that just completing a degree in anything was often a good precursor to a great career — regardless of what you studied.
Many people pointed out that completing a university degree was a great way to learn how to learn, improve your communication skills, research and find information, construct logical arguments, signal your ambition and prove to the world you could see a major project through to completion.
This was very true when relatively few people attended university and having a degree was still considered a major accomplishment. At the time, university graduates — regardless of major — were often fast-tracked into management trainee programs.
It’s still very much the case that people often end up working in fields that are completely different from their majors. This is especially true for those who study the humanities and social sciences.
While I’m not criticizing people for studying history, economics or sociology, the truth is very few people who study those subjects (at least at the undergraduate level) ever become historians, economists or sociologists. There just aren’t enough jobs in those fields, and advanced education is normally required beyond a bachelor’s degree.
While some people have started to question the value of a liberal arts education, most employers still don’t think it’s unusual for someone with a history degree to go into banking or a psychology major to pursue a career in software development. Additional experience and training is frequently required beyond the degree in order to obtain the necessary skills and signal an interest in working in those fields — but it can be done.
But what about someone who majored in something more “practical” such as engineering, education or journalism?
‘STEM’ careers and ‘practical’ degrees
A major debate is happening between people who still believe a degree in anything is a great start to a career and university was never meant to be a trade school, and those who believe the only useful majors these days lead to so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers — or at least something “practical” and “useful.”
For every list of “best” and “worst” majors for career and monetary success, there’s an article encouraging people to pursue their passions and pointing out that someone’s academic major likely won’t impact their career much in the long-run.
Both sides make compelling points, but I would generally lean towards recommending something more career-oriented. Even if things do pretty much equal out eventually, it seems to me people who study areas such as computer science, engineering or nursing have a headstart on liberal arts grads.
Nevertheless, I believe people who study so-called “practical” subjects have a much harder time making a career change if they decide that field isn’t for them or cannot enter that field for whatever reason. Law degrees are a perfect example.
Law degrees are often touted as being versatile and opening a lot of doors, but take it from someone with two law degrees — unless you plan on practising law in some way, shape or form, law degrees aren’t that helpful. Foreign law degrees are a double whammy because even fewer people understand the value of learning a foreign legal system or the transferrable knowledge and skills taught in law school. Most people wrongly assume law school is just about memorizing legal rules.
If you have a law degree and never qualify as a lawyer or if you decide to do something else, people won’t know what to make of you and will either believe you’re some kind of loser for not working as a lawyer or you won’t stick around because you will take the next high-paying lawyer job that comes along. Several articles and blogs I’ve read confirm this.
But law graduates aren’t the only people who experience this. It almost seems like employers these days are looking for narrowly focused specialists with a laser-like concentration on their field who have never studied anything else, never worked in anything else and will never change careers in the future.
It used to be that a job posting asking for candidates with a computer science degree was really asking for someone with a degree in anything and some relevant coursework and experience but, nowadays, it really feels like many are really insisting on that specific degree and only that degree.
