Why would non-one percent families let their kids major in the humanities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people just don’t care about prestige and doesn't function well when focused on social mobility. I was a humanity major knowing I could be driving a taxi at the end. Not everyone’s cut out to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. This world also needs social misfits, taxi drivers, line cooks, and janitors.

Noble jobs, but I wouldn’t want my kid being part of the 50% of Americans who have trouble finding enough money for a $600 emergency.

PP humanities major here. I sent my kid to an ivy. I don’t have to worry about her being part of the 50%.

No one who goes to 99% of colleges will have to worry about that either.

2 million students graduate from U.S. colleges every year. I assure you - that's a worry from a great many of them. Too many idiots getting too many degrees period.

You either have a useless degree or you have a useful degree but you're in the bottom percentage of your class. Either way - - you're screwed.

Haha that’s literally 0.6% of the US population. College grads kill it over non-college grads on average without even controlling for school prestige.

2 million is roughly 40% of the yearly age-group of 18-year-olds in the U.S. So that means every year 50% of the age-eligible population is matriculating to a college/university degree.

Note: 30 million 18-24-year-olds in the U.S. That's 6 separate age-groups and a total of 5 million per group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

That's primarily the kid, not the degree. Self-motivated kids with humanities and liberal arts degrees do fine. Kids who are not self-motivated will not do fine, regardless of degree type. They are not as likely to finish a STEM degree, so you'll see more of them with completed degrees elsewhere, but it's not like signing up for STEM would have changed their outlook or likelihood of success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raised middle class, majored in a foreign language at a school I went to on scholarship, and now I make 500K (big law).

But the point of college isn’t social mobility or making lots of money. Yes you need a job but there is so much more to it.

Only the wealthy say shit like this. For everyone else, the main point of college is social mobility. Sure, the other factors are nice, but they’re an afterthought. Shit like this is how you get underemployed Harvard grads. Embarrassing.

I don’t know any middle or upper middle class people who would say the main point of college is for something other than getting a job or going to grad school.

+1. I wish my kids were going to college to become better people or learn about the world or whatever. I hope those things happen but that's not why they are going.
It's pretty much for their career (unless they meet some hot child of means and they get married!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

Business is a terrible undergrad major. Terrible. Research shows that students who major in general business and marketing are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that don’t require a college degree. They also earn less than those in more math-focused business majors, such as finance and accounting. In fact, in the latest college degree salary survey from Payscale (see https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors), business is NOT one of the best-paying college degrees. When PayScale looked at starting and mid-career salaries of college graduates in dozens of college majors, business came in as the 56th best-paying college degree. It fared worse than such "impractical" college degrees as philosophy, history and American studies.

Philosophy, on the other hand:

...when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/

[Anonymous]

I was always told for undergrad not to go into debt for an amount higher than your expected first years salary, and generally I think that’s a good rule. There are a lot of problems with unemployed college grads but they wouldn’t be so bad if we hadn’t pushed the narrative that college automatically means a salary high enough to pay off any amount of undergraduate debt.

But yeah I would never tell my kid what they can ans can’t major it. They know they need to get a job, and they know which careers lead to which kind of jobs and how much they pay. That’s all you need to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

Business is a terrible undergrad major. Terrible. Research shows that students who major in general business and marketing are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that don’t require a college degree. They also earn less than those in more math-focused business majors, such as finance and accounting. In fact, in the latest college degree salary survey from Payscale (see https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors), business is NOT one of the best-paying college degrees. When PayScale looked at starting and mid-career salaries of college graduates in dozens of college majors, business came in as the 56th best-paying college degree. It fared worse than such "impractical" college degrees as philosophy, history and American studies.

Philosophy, on the other hand:

...when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/

Here is a Georgetown research report indicating that business majors earn far more than humanities majors, using BLS data. BLS is the most accurate labor data:

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors

Here is a quote from the report: "STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), health, and business majors are the highest paying, leading to average annual wages of $37,000 or more at the entry level and an average of $65,000 or more annually over the course of a recipient’s career."

You can play around with the data yourself and figure out exactly how much the earnings differential is throughout the entire distribution and over the lifetime, not just the median earnings at graduation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raised middle class, majored in a foreign language at a school I went to on scholarship, and now I make 500K (big law).

But the point of college isn’t social mobility or making lots of money. Yes you need a job but there is so much more to it.

Only the wealthy say shit like this. For everyone else, the main point of college is social mobility. Sure, the other factors are nice, but they’re an afterthought. Shit like this is how you get underemployed Harvard grads. Embarrassing.

I don’t know any middle or upper middle class people who would say the main point of college is for something other than getting a job or going to grad school.

+1. I wish my kids were going to college to become better people or learn about the world or whatever. I hope those things happen but that's not why they are going.
It's pretty much for their career (unless they meet some hot child of means and they get married!)

I’m not sure that you are getting the distinction between social mobility and getting a career, but even still, you can major in the humanities and still have a good career plan.

Also even people who marry rich people need a career plan, you don’t want your kid being one of those stay at home moms stuck in a bad marriage because they can’t afford to get out!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn't there a whole thread on this recently? Must it be rehashed again? 1. Education has inherent value. 2. You can support yourself having earned a degree in humanities and most professions require a grad degree now anyway. Signed, formerly middle class French major who is now a 1% biglaw attorney.

I'm curious, are you the SAH wife of a French major 1% big law attorney, or do big law attorneys have a lot more DCUM free time than I thought?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

Business is a terrible undergrad major. Terrible. Research shows that students who major in general business and marketing are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that don’t require a college degree. They also earn less than those in more math-focused business majors, such as finance and accounting. In fact, in the latest college degree salary survey from Payscale (see https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors), business is NOT one of the best-paying college degrees. When PayScale looked at starting and mid-career salaries of college graduates in dozens of college majors, business came in as the 56th best-paying college degree. It fared worse than such "impractical" college degrees as philosophy, history and American studies.

Philosophy, on the other hand:

...when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/

Here is a Georgetown research report indicating that business majors earn far more than humanities majors, using BLS data. BLS is the most accurate labor data:

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors

Here is a quote from the report: "STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), health, and business majors are the highest paying, leading to average annual wages of $37,000 or more at the entry level and an average of $65,000 or more annually over the course of a recipient’s career."

You can play around with the data yourself and figure out exactly how much the earnings differential is throughout the entire distribution and over the lifetime, not just the median earnings at graduation.

But both agree that philosophy majors earn more than business majors.

[Anonymous]

My English degree led to a stable middle class job, teaching.


My other humanities major friends are doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people just don’t care about prestige and doesn't function well when focused on social mobility. I was a humanity major knowing I could be driving a taxi at the end. Not everyone’s cut out to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. This world also needs social misfits, taxi drivers, line cooks, and janitors.

Noble jobs, but I wouldn’t want my kid being part of the 50% of Americans who have trouble finding enough money for a $600 emergency.

PP humanities major here. I sent my kid to an ivy. I don’t have to worry about her being part of the 50%.

No one who goes to 99% of colleges will have to worry about that either.

2 million students graduate from U.S. colleges every year. I assure you - that's a worry from a great many of them. Too many idiots getting too many degrees period.

You either have a useless degree or you have a useful degree but you're in the bottom percentage of your class. Either way - - you're screwed.

Haha that’s literally 0.6% of the US population. College grads kill it over non-college grads on average without even controlling for school prestige.

2 million is roughly 40% of the yearly age-group of 18-year-olds in the U.S. So that means every year 50% of the age-eligible population is matriculating to a college/university degree.

Note: 30 million 18-24-year-olds in the U.S. That's 6 separate age-groups and a total of 5 million per group.

So what’s your point? The rich should go to college (and end up making even more money) and the poor should just not bother and go to trade school?

I bet you tell people “fewer kids should go to college” while of course sending your own kids to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

That's primarily the kid, not the degree. Self-motivated kids with humanities and liberal arts degrees do fine. Kids who are not self-motivated will not do fine, regardless of degree type. They are not as likely to finish a STEM degree, so you'll see more of them with completed degrees elsewhere, but it's not like signing up for STEM would have changed their outlook or likelihood of success.

NP here. I very much think it's this, though I've yet to see a study that tries to assess whether it's the person or the major. I think it's partially because it's hard to separate these things in the data, and I also think it's because everyone who studies labor markets seems to be so enamored of STEM that they refuse to look critically at the observed correlations.

I grew up UMC/UC and have a STEM PhD (and double majored with a humanities degree). I have a comfortable, UMC/UC lifestyle, though that's at least partially because growing up UMC/UC I know how to navigate the types of workplaces and networks to get the opportunities I have. I also know a lot of people with STEM degrees (esp. in the life sciences) who are underemployed and underpaid. Anecdotally, the people I know who have moved up in financial status the most all have humanities degrees and went into finance, law, or consulting.

There's a lot of things hidden in the data that suggests that people with STEM degrees have better career outcomes. For one thing, those data usually include healthcare, which overall tends to have high-demand whether you are an MA, RN, PA, or MD. Especially at the lower levels of education, you are more likely to always be employed if you want to be...so your lifetime earnings will be higher. Beyond that, anyone with computing skills is currently in high demand, because there's been steep growth in need for those skills. The same is not true for other STEM-related skills, meaning not all STEM degrees are created the same. Nevertheless, I suspect in 5-10 years programming skills will be as ubiquitous as, say, Excel skills, and the premium for having them will be significantly diminished if not gone altogether.

[Anonymous]

It seems like the only people that start these threads are immigrants, kids of immigrants or have working-class/lower middle-class backgrounds. I can understand their position/argument as they do not have the social/cultural capital and income security to take a different view about college and social mobility. My spouse is successful (STEM) and comes from a working-class background and is a child of immigrants. This is how he thinks about the world, which I have learned to accept and understand even though I don't agree based on my own experience (UMC, humanities degree from an Ivy). Luckily our kid is all STEM but even so, my spouse still ranks STEM majors and doesn't think some areas are worth pursuing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy reason: Because parents don't pick majors, their adult children do.

Reason in my family: The humanities are critical, and enhance your ability to succeed. DH and I both have jobs that are basically translating STEM concepts into policy and persuasive documents. STEM in the absence of humanities (includes history, communication, ethics, cultural studies, etc) is often useless or harmful.

+1

~Philosophy major making a good living

I'm very happy that some people have made a good living with humanities degrees. However, nationwide representative data clearly show that humanities majors on average earn far less money than peers who majored in things like STEM or business.

Business is a terrible undergrad major. Terrible. Research shows that students who major in general business and marketing are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that don’t require a college degree. They also earn less than those in more math-focused business majors, such as finance and accounting. In fact, in the latest college degree salary survey from Payscale (see https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors), business is NOT one of the best-paying college degrees. When PayScale looked at starting and mid-career salaries of college graduates in dozens of college majors, business came in as the 56th best-paying college degree. It fared worse than such "impractical" college degrees as philosophy, history and American studies.

Philosophy, on the other hand:

...when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/

Here is a Georgetown research report indicating that business majors earn far more than humanities majors, using BLS data. BLS is the most accurate labor data:

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors

Here is a quote from the report: "STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), health, and business majors are the highest paying, leading to average annual wages of $37,000 or more at the entry level and an average of $65,000 or more annually over the course of a recipient’s career."

You can play around with the data yourself and figure out exactly how much the earnings differential is throughout the entire distribution and over the lifetime, not just the median earnings at graduation.

But both agree that philosophy majors earn more than business majors.

Correct.

Note as well: Elite schools do not offer undergraduate business degrees, on the whole. (Cornell is the only Ivy League school, other than University of Pennsylvania, to offer an undergraduate business program.)