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

Don’t be so sure your spouse’s income is better than a hair stylist’s income. I just paid $1,200 for highlights and haircuts for myself and my daughter. Add in a $300 tip, not bad. There is a huge range of salaries in hair stylist’s salaries, probably the same in the not-for-profit world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have two nieces that recently graduated with these degrees from an ivy. One is working at a publishing house and the other works in a museum. A lot of them transition into things like marketing or law or go back for the PhD to teach college or teach HS.
I’m a lawyer and it drives me nuts when people say they are studying pre law. That’s dumb. You’ll learn law in law school. Just study something interesting that will make you an interesting person. Sometimes that stuff even comes up in the law. If you end up with a case representing a tribal nation, that Native American studies major may come in handy. You never know.

Ditto on the pre law from another lawyer. It's completely useless. Study anything else.

I'm a poli sci major from HYP. Worked as a legal assistant at a public interest org for a couple years then went to law school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

This. I definitely had classmates who could work for fun but would never have to work to live.

And even more graduates work in a meaningful job and do just fine with an average income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic, was an English literature major.
So to answer your question (and to follow up on many other answers here): a humanities major can do ANYTHING

...as long as their siblings is a competent STEM major who can set them up? That's a pretty dim view, don't you think?

... and you've worked under a CTO in your prior job, and you start a business with 7 ex-Open AI techies.

Basically, you need guidance and talent from a tech team cause you ain't building AI with a humanities degree.

IMO, she's a head figure at Anthropic. The techies are the ones who actually built AI. Anthropic's focus is AI built for ethical use, which is where her focus on humanism comes in.

Fun fact: she also worked in Business Development at the IRIS Center, located at the University of Maryland, College Park.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CS graduates have had a horrible time with jobs this year due to AI. 20% of med school graduates don’t get matched with residencies. The STEM majors are not a sure fire path to employment anymore.

Meanwhile I know a recent philosophy grad who got a great job offer in an AI company.

eh, and I know CS grads not from ivies who got offers at quant firms.

Doubtful since there are very few of those offers in any given year and you are highly unlikely to know one. But if making stuff up makes you feel better then you be you.

um.. ok. Just because you don't know any doesn't mean no one else does.

Here are some examples:
https://topquantunis.com/?region=USA&category=engineering

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Humanities teaches you to think and question and review material.

I now run my own business, it has helped me every day in making decisions.

Yea, all those people with tech backgrounds who are CEOs.. they don't know how to make decisions and run a business. They must rely on humanities majors to do that. /s

I am not saying that at all, but I was not trained in one narrow little field, I took tons of classes across many subjects.

Ok, so I guess those tech CEOs who didn't take " tons of classes across many subjects" are still able to lead billion dollar companies, compared to your company with a revenue of probably not billions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m an Ivy humanities major and now a C-suite exec at a global publishing company. I worked my way up in the field and started at modest pay, but my comp started taking off about 10-15 years in. I now make 7 figures and didn’t have to go to grad school to get here. I love my work.

Great to hear this but not relay applicable to anyone graduating after 2025. AI is changing everything.

Actually, we hire a crop of new grads every year, AI continuing education is required but figuring out how to incorporate AI into our workflow actually takes critical thinking skills. Right now it unfortunately isn’t good enough to not essentially require double-work: the prompting and the proofreading. I know it will get there but as someone who is working closely with it I am not impressed yet. What I actually need are human minds who are excited to help envision the future of my business. It’s not tech industry pay but there are opportunities and paths for growth.

[Anonymous]

Every May, 10,000+ Ivy League bachelors grads enter the workforce. There are at most a couple of thousand entry level IB/ consulting positions. An unexceptional Ivy philosophy grad has zero chance when there are enough Econ/Math/STEM plus exceptional Liberal Arts Ivy grads for those positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every May, 10,000+ Ivy League bachelors grads enter the workforce. There are at most a couple of thousand entry level IB/ consulting positions. An unexceptional Ivy philosophy grad has zero chance when there are enough Econ/Math/STEM plus exceptional Liberal Arts Ivy grads for those positions.

But if your kid is good at philosophy and passionate about it, they are more likely to do well in those classes than they are to do well in econ classes or engineering classes. Maybe they won't get a job at MBB or in IB or maybe they do not want one. But learning to think rigorously and write well are valuable skills. That said, if your kid wants to be a humanities major, they are likely going to need to hustle and forge their own path - that or go to med school or law school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The amount of replies on here talking about entering consulting or other lucrative career tracks with an art history Ivy degree are giving me hives.

First of all, almost none of us on this thread will be able to get our kids into an Ivy right now, unless seriously hooked (I say this an a parent at a private feeder that gets mentioned here) or rural low income. Wait another 5 years, spots will open up.

Secondly, the people who are already in consulting now who would be hiring your humanities grads are themselves deeply concerned about being replaced by AI. They won’t have time to hire more human overhead onto their team. The managers who migrate more of their budget and output to AI vs human employees will get to stay. That’s what pretty much all of the conferences and half of the strategic meetings I attend know talk about these days. Those entry level consulting jobs will be extinct by the time your DCs graduate if they are entering college now.

If you are filthy rich and your kids won’t have to work for a living, let them do whatever they want; spend it on at Ivy even. If they need to work for a living, best you can do is put them in robotics or chemical engineering (energy jobs), preferably at a state school so you can save at least $50k a year on tuition. Use that savings for a downpayment to buy them a commercial property near a city where AI data center buildout are getting approved so they can collect rent when they graduate. AI will replace a lot of jobs but can’t replace real estate and food, at least not for a while.

All of you who still care about the Ivy names are seriously delusional about what’s ahead. No one will care about the Yale name in 15 years; they care about the names of your AI agents. There will be drastically different markers for wealth, status and influence; the Ivies with all their 80-year-old tenure professors and old buildings made of stones that won’t have enough compute to run the most rudimentary AI data centers won’t be one of them.

Does anyone here recollect all the hype about the metaverse only a few years ago?
Lets reach back further - does anyone remember pets.com and all the hype?
Way before that - Japan was considered the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is depressing. All the tech overlords that people seem to think are hot stuff were all humanities majors, or social science majors. The third-world thinking that you need STEM degrees to be valuable are the reason that India continues to produce zero innovation. Also the reason that China is finally able to innovate without just stealing IP from America--they have western educated elites now, so they are moving away from the test robot STEM zombie system.

1000000000%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is depressing. All the tech overlords that people seem to think are hot stuff were all humanities majors, or social science majors. The third-world thinking that you need STEM degrees to be valuable are the reason that India continues to produce zero innovation. Also the reason that China is finally able to innovate without just stealing IP from America--they have western educated elites now, so they are moving away from the test robot STEM zombie system.

1000000000%

There has been and continues to be plenty of innovation in both China and India...which you would be able to see if you weren't a provincial idiot. Try setting foot in those countries--there are many aspects of their infrastructure that makes the US looks backwards.

[Anonymous]

A humanities major CAN do anything but the chance for success is low. Yes, there will be anecdotal success stories but a small % of the total. A STEM major not only CAN do anything but DOES do anything. Almost guarantee of success. STEM majors communicate beautifully and now with AI, can write anything. STEM majors are way more creative, have better problem-solving skills, critical thinking, can relate to people better because they are designing solutions to make human life better. Managers will not be needed so much as people can use AI to do the stuff managers were doing.

Do something that is useful and needed in society, so when the next pandemic hits, you have no worries about your job security. Any other interests - make that a hobby or retirement project or side gig.

STEM majors are good at STEM and all things non-STEM. non-STEM majors are only good at non-STEM.

[Anonymous]

Fire the Stembots after they have trained their AI replacements.

"People are holding back profits" is the new corporate mantra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A humanities major CAN do anything but the chance for success is low. Yes, there will be anecdotal success stories but a small % of the total. A STEM major not only CAN do anything but DOES do anything. Almost guarantee of success. STEM majors communicate beautifully and now with AI, can write anything. STEM majors are way more creative, have better problem-solving skills, critical thinking, can relate to people better because they are designing solutions to make human life better. Managers will not be needed so much as people can use AI to do the stuff managers were doing.

Do something that is useful and needed in society, so when the next pandemic hits, you have no worries about your job security. Any other interests - make that a hobby or retirement project or side gig.

STEM majors are good at STEM and all things non-STEM. non-STEM majors are only good at non-STEM.

If you are an example of what is in your view a STEM major "communicating beautifully," whether with or without AI, I'd think again.

We're also talking specifically about Ivy League humanities majors in this thread--we are not talking about humanities vs. STEM in general. You can go ahead and start your own thread if you'd like to do that.