What are you going to do with that major? This is the question often posed to humanities graduates. The assumption behind it is that while it may have been enjoyable to study the humanities while pursuing your degree, you will have difficulty securing meaningful employment following graduation. Although this myth has been addressed many times, it has influenced policymaking. One example is Australia’s recent reform of its university fees that increased fees for humanities degrees by 113 percent while decreasing STEM degree fees. This made humanities degrees among the most expensive degrees to complete in Australia. The purpose of this fee reform was to strengthen graduate employability by responding to “modelling showing 62 per cent of employment growth in the next five years will be in health care, science and technology, education and construction” (Conor Duffy). Given the areas of growth, the fee reform effort was designed to discourage students from pursuing humanities degrees.
Although federal and state governments have not taken a systematic approach to limiting the study of the humanities in the United States, the attitude towards the relationship between humanities degrees and employability is similar to that in Australia. This attitude, however, is based on false assumptions. Contrary to popular belief, humanities graduates, particularly History majors, not only find meaningful employment but often outperform peers in fields like business in terms of salary and career flexibility.
The rest of the blog can be found here: https://www.graydi.us/blog/gray-insights/history-majors-beyond-the-myths-and-into-the-workforce