What do you do with a humanities degree from an ivy, if you are not going to grad school?

[Anonymous]

For context, both DH and I are immigrants and have advanced degrees in STEM and have done well financially. We have a middle schooler and a freshman in high school so we are starting to look into the whole college admission process.
I am really surprised how families make such a huge deal about their kid getting into an Ivy, only to realize that their child is doing some obscure major like Native American and Indigenous studies, or Medieval and Renaissance Studies (an actual major at Dartmouth)
I am truly asking a genuine question, because, in our country of origin, similar degrees that don't lead to a job either do not exist or are not taken seriously at all, even at the best universities. I also can't imagine anyone spending $400K+ on a degree that does not yield much of an ROI unless they are very wealthy (which I am assuming a lot of ivy kids are, but not all)

I am truly asking a genuine question here: is this a strategy that kids do just for admissions, and then switch majors to something like economics or applied math? If not, what job opportunities exist for someone with a Bachelors degree in those humanities majors?

[Anonymous]

"What do you do with a humanities degree from an ivy, if you are not going to grad school?"

Save your money.

[Anonymous]

They don't lead to good jobs here either. Maybe they are a trust fund kid and and just want the experience or to work in a museum for fun? I would never pay for that degree. If you aren't going to law school or something similar, humanities degrees are useless.

[Anonymous]

You don’t sound like you know much about Ivy league degrees. Students have already signaled their worth to future employers by being admitted and being a candidate for their degree.

Students with Ivy humanities degrees are easily employed by consulting firms, Silicon Valley companies, the financial industry, media companies,and government.

Elite universities publish a post-graduation report summarizing where their students are employed or attending grad school each year. Typically 90 pct are employed within 6 months of graduation. You can take 5 minutes to google and read if you’re actually interested.

But your post seems to me more like you want to concern troll about majors such as “medieval studies.”

[Anonymous]

Are you including law and med school in your grad school bucket?

At Liberal Arts schools, one can get an esoteric degree while still completing all the pre-med requirements, and the law school path is obvious. So that's one route. Students may also have that as their major with a heavy set of courses in economics / etc. and go the consulting route.

Likely other options as well, but those are the ones that jump out as also having the ROI you're targeting.

[Anonymous]

Some people do become professors.

"Studies" majors go pre-med, into public policy, and non-profit work.

People with unusual majors often end up in a not exactly matching career. For example, foreign language majors from my era tended to go into computer science type jobs.

[Anonymous]

Management consulting and investment banking (if they do an econ/stats/math minor)

[Anonymous]

My spouse received a bachelors in philosophy from an Ivy. My spouse didn't get recruited by consulting firms or IB firms because there are enough Ivy econ, math, and STEM grads to staff those firms.

Spouse works in the not-for-profit world and earns a modest income. While their income is better than a hair stylist's, their income alone would not justify an Ivy education. Nevertheless, there are a lot of other reasons to study liberal arts at an Ivy.

[Anonymous]

Consulting. Government jobs. Intelligence. Law school. We discovered recently that four people in my unit had medieval studies degrees.

Looking at how the tech world is shifting, look how quickly the computer science degree is becoming unemployable. If you really want your kid to get a credential for a job, go to trade school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My spouse received a bachelors in philosophy from an Ivy. My spouse didn't get recruited by consulting firms or IB firms because there are enough Ivy econ, math, and STEM grads to staff those firms.

Spouse works in the not-for-profit world and earns a modest income. While their income is better than a hair stylist's, their income alone would not justify an Ivy education. Nevertheless, there are a lot of other reasons to study liberal arts at an Ivy.

There are thousands of philosophy majors at consulting firms and IB firms.

[Anonymous]

Don’t they go to McKinsey for pretty girl day care and HR Chief training where they either end up banging the founders of a successful start up or staying on if daddy has enough money to help McKinsey make sales.

[Anonymous]

The beauty of an American college education used to be that it’s a liberal arts education, even if you’re doing STEM. You used to see a major firm’s CEO with an “obscure” college degree. However, things seem to be changing here, along with the college admissions process. I’ve always wondered if it’s at least partly influenced by the East Asian educated immigrants (those who got a Ph.D. here) over the past few decades?

[Anonymous]

My son tells me that humanities majors are becoming more sought after recently at his consulting firm because in the age of AI, they are looking for people who can really think, communicate, question assumptions, etc. This is anecdotal for sure but they were mostly hiring CS and math majors a few years ago.

[Anonymous]

It’s a good idea for humanities majors to mix in a at least few courses in math and business/economics. The added courses improves their attractiveness to employers.

[Anonymous]

I’m a humanities major, so not knocking it but you do realize that thinking creatively and communication and questioning status quo are skills all college graduates develop, regardless of major, right? I think STEM majors do all of this very well. They may not be as good at writing but that just takes dedicated practice.