Jokes Aside: Monetizing a Humanities Degree

“The problem is that… a lot of young people are no longer seeing the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career. But I promise you, folks, that you can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than… with an art history degree. Now there’s nothing wrong with history, I love art history. I don’t want to get a bunch of emails from everybody…” – President Barack Obama

When I tell people I major in art history, I usually add my own self-deprecating comment to preempt the other person’s response. I say something like “Leave it to me to pick the most useless major,” or “Don’t even ask what I’m doing after graduation,” but recently I’ve begun to wonder why I do this. Why should I treat studying something I love like an absurd, worthless folly? We’ve all heard enough jokes about majoring in the humanities, and the debate over the value of a liberal arts education feels trite and tired. We wouldn’t be here at Connecticut College if we didn’t believe in what we were doing.

I could have titled this “In Defense of the Art History Degree” or “Why This Country Needs More Art History Majors” but that’s been done, and frankly I’m not trying to validate my major for anyone—because I shouldn’t have to. As Professor Alchermes of the Art History Department stated, “We’re all aware of how well the study of the history of art, and of the liberal arts in general, equips students with so many essentials—to name just two, the capacity for analysis and critical thinking, and an ability to write and speak concisely and precisely.”

Professor Robert Baldwin of the Art History Department noted that the discipline is an obvious target because its students are predominantly white, upper-middle-class females, and that the subject matter deals with luxury objects.

I recognize that the President’s comment (quoted above) was not an attack on art history, and that his point was that there’s money to be made in the trades and skilled manufacturing. Fair enough. The slight was inadvertent, and I’m not personally offended by it (although I found it a bit tactless). What I’m more interested in is why a legitimate academic discipline has become fodder for jokes to the degree that our own president can publicly make a comment like that without a second thought (not that there hasn’t been backlash—but there is a general understanding that what he said was harmless).

Granted, I didn’t make the decision to major in art history with a great deal of foresight (about career prospects or anything else). As a college sophomore, it was hard for me to think that far in advance. I did it because I was so captivated, so utterly fascinated by the discipline, that I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I majored in art history because I couldn’t help it.

I’m certainly not making a case for taking oneself too seriously, though. My roommates major in anthropology, philosophy and religious studies, respectively, and we often joke that other people are curing disease and saving lives while we analyze French marriage rituals, cases of incest in the Bible, decorative sculpture in the bathhouses of ancient Rome and so on. But there’s a difference between the lighthearted, semi-ironic comments like these, and genuine cynicism about our futures.

Professor Karen Gonzalez Rice of the Art History Department seems confident in recent graduates’ professional opportunities. She remarked, “The discipline of art history may appear disconnected from the current job market—an easy target for denigrating the humanities.  However, even in the last few years, Conn’s art history majors have consistently and successfully obtained jobs after graduation.  It may not be immediately obvious to non-majors, but there is a vast global network of museums, galleries, and auction houses—as well as law firms, advertising agencies and other businesses—that are seeking graduates with sophisticated visual skills, strong writing experience and a critical understanding of how our visual world works. Art history and architectural studies majors practice these skills daily.”

Professor Baldwin has a somewhat harsher outlook, more in keeping with the President’s point: “The bottom line is that except for a few majors, a college education now offers no guarantee of any good employment. No humanities majors have high-paying jobs waiting for graduates—the same for most of the social sciences and sciences. That reality lies behind President Obama’s speech whether it was spelled out or not.”

As humanities majors, maybe we’re not helping the economy. Maybe we should ask ourselves, “Is it our responsibility to put national well-being before personal passion?” But then I remind myself of the kinds of jobs my roommates and I are applying for: teaching, human rights activism and similar lines of work that are hardly “useless.”

“Humanities majors do better if ‘doing well’ isn’t defined only in terms of money,” said Baldwin. “Nowadays, that crude measure seems to be more and more prevalent, which is understandable given the crazy cost of college and the need to pay off mountains of education debt. One needs to remember that majors in the humanities are a self-selected group with a much higher percentage of people who measure their happiness in terms of their value to others, not the size of their paycheck.”

Professor Baldwin told me about his nephew, a junior in college and a computer science major, who has secured a job on Wall Street for after graduation. “He’ll be making more at 25 than I will make in three years at 63, after 34 years of full-time teaching,” remarked Baldwin, “Would I want his job for twice his salary? Not a chance.”

So no, I don’t know what I’m doing after graduation. Will I make as much as a skilled manufacturer or someone in the trades? I don’t think it really matters. •