College Grads Regret Majoring in Humanities Fields

[Anonymous]

Most college students are too lazy or dumb to get a degree in STEM from a decent university.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most college students are too lazy or dumb to get a degree in STEM from a decent university.

Harsh but fair. My daughter is neither of those things (she takes after my wife) and is working her tail off to keep up as a biochem major. Pchem is apparently worse than organic (I hope those NYU kids can survive Pchem!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Investment banking, medical schools, law schools and management consulting have high percentage of humanities majors.

Investment banking =Must attend target schools usually top 15-20
medical schools = Humanities majors lack the requisite courses (organ. chem, physics etc.) to apply to med schools (also need 3.92+ GPA)
law schools = Must go to top 10 or bust now days
management consulting = Look at IB answer.

you're not too sharp are you? Many, if not most, pre-meds ARE humanities majors. You do not need to major in any specific major as long as you hit the required courses. My DC is a humanities major and doing pre-reqs for med school. Its not hard. I mean the classes are hard yes, but you do not need to be a chem major or a bio major or anything of the sort to go to med school or any other similar health related endeavor.

[Anonymous]

As an employer, I am honestly very wary of hiring humanities majors because most lack any serious work ethic and drive — even at Top 20 schools. STEM majors, even Bio and Chem, tend to be much more driven, resilient, and hard working. Of course, occasionally you’ll get a star English major, but the vast majority of hard working college students these days major in STEM or a more quantitative aspect of business (ie: accounting, finance, MIs, data science, supply chain management — NOT marketing or general management).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an employer, I am honestly very wary of hiring humanities majors because most lack any serious work ethic and drive — even at Top 20 schools. STEM majors, even Bio and Chem, tend to be much more driven, resilient, and hard working. Of course, occasionally you’ll get a star English major, but the vast majority of hard working college students these days major in STEM or a more quantitative aspect of business (ie: accounting, finance, MIs, data science, supply chain management — NOT marketing or general management).

I dont believe you that you are a hiring manager.

Humanities majors tend to be much better writers and communicators than STEM majors. Also, very few hiring managers would be hiring for vacancies that are relevant to STEM and non-STEM majors. I call troll.

As it happens, DH and I are both humanities majors. He went to—shocker—a state school. Our HHI is $430K and his stock package is worth $1.5 million.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an employer, I am honestly very wary of hiring humanities majors because most lack any serious work ethic and drive — even at Top 20 schools. STEM majors, even Bio and Chem, tend to be much more driven, resilient, and hard working. Of course, occasionally you’ll get a star English major, but the vast majority of hard working college students these days major in STEM or a more quantitative aspect of business (ie: accounting, finance, MIs, data science, supply chain management — NOT marketing or general management).

You would be in the minority then. Many, many people working in the “business side” of the corporate world came into it with a humanities major. In fact, I am leary of hiring a Chem or bio major into the corporate world because they have not learned to communicate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, my kid doing a double major in STEM field and Foreign Language is a rare bird?

Kid has always been interested in both and did not want to choose one at the exclusion of the other.

I think that what's really going on here is that humanities majors are, really, pre-law majors, and law is in the doldrums. Once law recovers, the popularity of humanities majors will recover.

DP. Strange take. Far fewer people are going into law these days. All my kids were humanities majors and work in a variety of fields - intelligence, foreign affairs, think tanks, cartography, etc. Law was never even considered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an employer, I am honestly very wary of hiring humanities majors because most lack any serious work ethic and drive — even at Top 20 schools. STEM majors, even Bio and Chem, tend to be much more driven, resilient, and hard working. Of course, occasionally you’ll get a star English major, but the vast majority of hard working college students these days major in STEM or a more quantitative aspect of business (ie: accounting, finance, MIs, data science, supply chain management — NOT marketing or general management).

You would be in the minority then. Many, many people working in the “business side” of the corporate world came into it with a humanities major. In fact, I am leary of hiring a Chem or bio major into the corporate world because they have not learned to communicate.

Totally agree.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:can we NOT have this discuss again? this was posted several weeks ago, we've already hashed it out ad nauseam.

I have to kids who are humanities majors, politics and anthropology. I was a humanities major (political science) and my DH was as well (english). in fact every other member of my side of the family, all humanities majors (math, econ, etc). Not every kid should be, or needs to be an engineering major people.

Amen to that.

[Anonymous]

Well, I’m a former humanities major married to a former engineering major. It doesn’t matter who may have tried to force us — neither of us could have fit a square peg into a round hole to try to become the other. People have different skills and preferences.

Sure, many English majors would struggle as engineering majors. But, as anyone who has attempted to read a user manual could tell you, many engineering majors would struggle as English majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:can we NOT have this discuss again? this was posted several weeks ago, we've already hashed it out ad nauseam.

I have to kids who are humanities majors, politics and anthropology. I was a humanities major (political science) and my DH was as well (english). in fact every other member of my side of the family, all humanities majors (math, econ, etc). Not every kid should be, or needs to be an engineering major people.

Amen to that.

I think this is more important than some collge ranking threads.
What good is there if you go to a higher ranked school but are only capable of easy humanities majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/college-grads-regret-majoring-in-humanities-fields/

Lack of critical thinking in choosing a major which is a very important thing. They focused too much on 'college experience' was

Humanities majors need to have a plan, more so than a traditional STEM major. They need to be proactive and find a path that interests them career wise. It is also beneficial if they add in a minor in business, data analytics, CS, math, really anything that will help them find direction and possible internships. They also need to realize that while they can make as much as STEM majors, it will take a few years to do that. Very few art history majors start out making $75K/year.

This. The pathways out of humanities are harder and many students don't have a good sense of what their career is supposed to look like. It's a bit of a black box.

I think many universities also do humanities students a disservice because many humanities departments treat academia as the default career path and it's very much not. There are many ways to use a history or English degree that don't involve graduate school or teaching. But you are unlikely to meet people working in your college major department who have a sense of what those uses might be.

Universities should be telling kids getting humanities degrees about this early on and part of getting a degree like this should actually include developing a career plan, and that career plan can also influence what classes you take, what minors or double majors you pursue, etc. We actually do need people who are experts in literature, history, political science, etc. Lots of jobs to be had. It's just very hard to know what they are when you spend 4 years mostly working with people who think the main option is "Professor of Humanities Subject" and not, like, doing historical documentation for a major corporation or training new hires on the internal writing style guide or whatever actual job with benefits these people are qualified to do.

Totally agree! There has been very little effort on the part of colleges to define what types of jobs students should expect to do if they get a _____ degree. That is SLOWLY changing by colleges requiring students to do an internship/externship experience. But, colleges are STILL putting the burden on the 20 yr old student to figure out how/where to get an internship with a partial degree in anthropology, psychology, history, English, etc. Colleges have figured out that internships are crucial to getting a job AFTER college. But they still aren't doing enough to define (up front -- when HS senior are applying for admission) what one can expect to do with ____ degree. And still not doing enough to help kids get ACTUAL TRANSFERRABLE, INDUSTRY-DESIRABLE SKILLS while they are getting the degree.

It is really up to to student to figure this out. I'd argue that a coop focused school is a good choice if you want to be a humanities major----they expect all their students to do coops, so you get real world experience. If you want to major in Humanities, you need to work harder to figure out what you actually want to do. Humanities are fine---they are great. They teach critical thinking skills and the point of college (IMO) is to develop critical thinking and love of learning. But yeah, if you are gonna be an anthropology major and don't want to be a professor/get your PHD, then you need to think seriously about what you can (and want to) do with this degree. Seriously look at minors in business, data analytics, cs, etc. and realize that you really need to find internships in something so you do have the transferable skills for employment after a BA. You need to realize that there are not going to be tons of companies searching for someone with a BA in anthropology. So you have to work harder than a CS/Engineering major. You have to market yourself and it will not be as easy, but it is totally doable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:can we NOT have this discuss again? this was posted several weeks ago, we've already hashed it out ad nauseam.

I have to kids who are humanities majors, politics and anthropology. I was a humanities major (political science) and my DH was as well (english). in fact every other member of my side of the family, all humanities majors (math, econ, etc). Not every kid should be, or needs to be an engineering major people.

Amen to that.

I think this is more important than some collge ranking threads.
What good is there if you go to a higher ranked school but are only capable of easy humanities majors.

+1

IIRC the average salary of Harvard English majors one year after graduation is $50k. Such a waste.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a ton of underemployed Bio majors, just saying.

Because anyone knows that a BS/BAin Biology leads to low level, grunt work and that you really need your PHD or masters to utilize the degree to its fullest extent. So be a Bio major, but take a data analytics minor (if med school or the like isn't your path). But a Bio degree alone is not the best choice, unless you like grunt work in a lab at low pay.

But even a little bit of research will tell a potential bio major this. That is why pre-med students should major in what they like, and then fit in the prerequisites. Because Bio isn't the best "fall back " major if you don't make it in medicine or change your mind

ooof, we keep saying this to our DD.

My kid loves chemistry but "doesn't like lab work". So we guided them away from a straight chemistry degree, which is similar in that to really use the degree you need a masters/PHD, anything less and you are relatively speaking low pay and grunt work. They are pursuing Chemical Engineering with a biological focus, because for now they don't want a PHD and they don't want to do grunt lab work for minimal pay (although chemistry is a bit better than bio) and they have no desire to be a doctor. But our kid is lucky that both parents are engineers, so we are well versed in what career choices there are and can help guide them. But it always shocks me how many major in biology when there are many better options---medical school is much easier to get into if you are different---so pick something else that you love and take the necessary prerequisites.

good luck with your DD. Hopefully she sees the light before it's too late. Many many other choices for someone who wants to be a doctor---and better if you change paths

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a ton of underemployed Bio majors, just saying.

This pains me greatly b/c a Biology major is NOT a walk-in-the-park! (no pun intended). It's hard! Those Chemistry classes and upper level Biology classes are difficult. It seems like something that is hard should be more desired in the marketplace. It worries me a lot b/c my DD is getting a biology degree and has no interest in teaching HS. I worry about her future.... but at the same time, I am happy she found something she is really passionate about that she wanted to study in college. Crossing my fingers that it works out in the end. Ugggh. Why go through all the torture of Chemistry and upper level Biology classes to end up earning $15/hr!?

But your DD knows this. So encourage her to at least pursue a minor and internships that will help her see other options. Fine is she's happy with grunt work and low pay, but I agree, for such a difficult majority is painful to see the job options.