What can you do with a humanities degree?

Question

I've spent years studying and become detached from the world. What careers can I go into with a sociology degree? What more do employers want apart from a degree on your c.v.?

Answer 1

What Can I Do With A Humanities Degree?

Probably the most common question prospective humanities majors ask is "What good is a humanities degree? I really enjoy what I am studying, but I need to be concerned about getting a job. What can I do with a humanities degree?"


This question can really be understood in several ways:
1. Will humanities help me think of a good career? I don't know what I want to do yet, and I don't know how to find out.

For many people, this is what they really mean when they want to know whether a humanities degree will lead to a job. The fact is that there are a lot of careers out there, and most undergraduates don't have enough experience in the world to know what the options are. Our ideas about possible careers are informed by what people we know do and what we see on television. That's not a very large sample set.

What's needed is experience. And there are ways that you can get that while you are in school. Find internships, service learning, co-operative learning, or volunteer opportunities. Travel. Work somewhere other than your home town in the summer. Talk to people you know who seem to like their jobs, and ask them what they like about them (people usually like to talk about themselves and what they love, if you catch them at the right moment). And keep your eyes open.

You can go to one of the big career websites and see what's listed there, but those listings don't really tell you much about what it means to be in the career. It's better to just start experiencing the world. You can probably do that with the help of your university. UCF has a coop/experiential learning department, as well as an international studies office.

But there's another aspect of this that you should keep in mind. What you really are asking is about whether the humanities will help you identify a vocation. We sometimes talk about careers as "vocations", which in the Latin root (vocatio) literally refer to a calling, a summons, or an invitation (think of other English words that use the same root - e.g., vocalize, invoke, evoke). "Vocation" is often used in religious circles - people are called to be clergy. But the term really refers to the connection between life and action, between who you are and what you do. To have a vocation is to do the thing that makes you the best of what you can be. A real career is a vocation - you know you're in the right place, doing the right thing for yourself.

There's another related Latin term, vocamen , which means "to have a name" (or "to be called something"). A vocation is like having a name. It means that you can say, for instance, "I am a writer", rather than just, "I have a job writing" or "My job involves writing". If you have a vocation, your job becomes an extension and expression of who you are. It means that you are doing something that truly exercises your skills, and something in which you can say at the end of the day, I've made a difference today.

A vocation is like having a name.

Isn't that what we all really want, to do something that integrates our thoughts, desires, and actions? It's worth noting that, in order to get to this vocation that I've been talking about, you need to know yourself. This is ultimately what the humanities do the best. It is, after all, what the Delphic Oracle meant with the inscription "Know Yourself", what Socrates meant when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and what Kant meant when he summarized enlightenment in the phrase Sapere Aude! - "Have Courage to Use Your Own Reason". Of course, this isn't going to be completed in your humanities degree - knowing yourself is a lifelong task, more of a journey than an achievement. But this is a good place to start.

Now, a job might be part of a vocation, and it might not. Vocations are made up of jobs, but jobs don't necessarily make a vocation (and indeed, some peoples' vocations don't involve a job at all). Most people want a good job, one that pays lots of money. Money is fine, but it's a means to an end (see below for more on this). You still need to figure out what that end is.

2. I have a good idea of the career I want, but I'm concerned about whether humanities will prepare me for it.

You're actually in a good position. If you know the kind of career you want, you can start to identify the skills that the most successful people in the field have. The earlier you identify those, the earlier you can start deliberately working on those skills yourself.

A humanities degree will make your chosen career better

Find a mentor, if you can - someone in the field who can tell you what it takes to succeed, and who would let you tag along sometimes. Then, start deliberately cultivating the skills that are needed. Take some courses that will develop those skills. Find a minor (or double major) that will help further with that. In your classes, you might have an opportunity to write a paper on some issue in that field - take that opportunity. You will develop your skills, and you will also have tangible evidence of your interest when it comes time to look for a job.

Will humanities prepare you for your desired career? Obviously, it depends on what that career is. In some cases it will, and in some cases a career requires very specific educational qualifications. One thing is certain, though - a humanities degree will make your chosen career better. It will enable you to succeed in your career, as well as helping you to get your first job.

3. Can I really study what I want to, and still earn a living at the end of it?

That's the real question for many people. The humanities have the virtue of being amazingly interesting, because they deal with what it means to be human in all its complexity and wonder. It's hard to resist that, which is why we tend to get students who are passionate about their life and their studies. But we have this idea that doing what is good for us must be boring, and doing what's interesting must not be productive.

You should not be asking yourself

how I can make as much money as possible

but rather

what does living well mean for me?

In fact, the opposite is true. If you truly enjoy your studies, you will find your own way to bring it to life, and to make it your life. Do you really want a disconnected life, one in which you have a career you don't really like but which makes money, so that you can enjoy your life on the weekends? Ideally, we all want an integrated life. Your goal should be to find a way to do what you love, and make your education support that. That's what a real vocation is (see above).

So, the question is not, how do I make a lot of money, but rather, how do I live a good life? We need to support ourselves, surely, and we all want to have money, but money is just paper if it doesn't lead to a good life.

Does all this mean that we don't think you can make good money with a humanities degree? Not at all. In fact, many extremely wealthy and famous people started with degrees in humanities disciplines. CEOs of major corporations started with humanities degrees. Actors, directors, artists, musicians, and sports figures started with humanities degrees. Doctors, judges, presidents, humanitarians, environmentalists, business leaders, broadcasters, diplomats, social activists - all these and many more started with humanities degrees. The point is that you need to first think about what makes sense for you, and second, how you can turn that into a living.

4. Are there jobs out there that ask for humanities graduates?

Of course, you need something concrete when you get out of university. All this talk about careers and vocations may be fine, but there are student loans to pay and nice things to buy. Will your humanities degree lead directly to your first job?

If you're looking for a job that says in the job ad "humanities degree preferred", you won't find many of those. That doesn't mean that your degree doesn't lead to a job, though. You have to think in terms of marketing the skills you have developed. You have to translate your skills for an employer. This is where your ability to understand and communicate becomes crucial. What skills have you gained? Start with these, and add some of your own:

1. Independent learning skills - Learning how to learn.

2. Research skills - Knowing where to find information and ideas, and being able to critically judge between various sources of ideas.

3. Writing skills - The ability to structure your thoughts coherently and express yourself in ways that are appropriate to the occasion.

4. Speaking skills - The ability to confidently and clearly express your ideas. The ability to convince someone of your arguments and persuade them of your point of view.

5. Critical thinking skills - The ability to tell better ideas from worse, the ability to test ideas by subjecting them to relevant criteria.

6. Problem-solving skills - The ability to understand and express a problem that needs to be solved, and the knowledge of various methods of analysis that might be relevant to the problem.

7. Interdisciplinary skills - The ability to work at the borders of traditional forms of knowledge, using the resources from more than one area to help define a problem and suggest approaches to it.

8. Global understanding and cultural sensitivity - The ability to appreciate cultures and religious traditions outside of your own.

9. Historical understanding - The ability to see how and why things came to be as they are.

10. Aesthetic understanding - The ability to recognize and produce visual, narrative, and musical structure, order, and appeal.

11. Perspectival understanding - The ability to understand how other people or groups think.

12. Adaptability - The ability to apply knowledge and skills to a wide variety of contexts.

13. The ability to ask good questions - Recognizing that all knowledge is really the answer to questions, and that truly understanding something means understanding the questions that are asked, and being able to refine those questions to produce better knowledge.

14. Time and resource management skills - The ability to work under pressure and maximize resources to produce a desired outcome.

15. Linguistic skills - The ability to operate in more than one language.

In a sense you have to do exactly what business colleges think we should all do, which is to market yourself in a competitive world. And how do you market something? You know your product (yourself, in this case), and you know your market (what's available out there, what the range of options are, who might be interested in someone with your skills). Some highly professionalized careers have very controlled access points (e.g., medicine, law), governed by qualification exams in their areas. A humanities degree might be the first step to one of those professional programs. That suggests more school, which would be necessary for many desirable careers today.

But if you just want to get a job after your undergrad degree, the best place you can go would be to your university's career resource center. (UCF's is here). The people in that office should have concrete ideas about connecting your set of skills with current jobs.

5. What do people with humanities degrees do?

Lots of things. You will find successful humanities students in just about every area of human endeavor. Here's a list of philosophy majors who have gone on to be famous in other fields, for instance. But a list like this one only scratches the surface of where humanities grads have found themselves.

Don't forget about graduate work as well. Many humanities majors go on for another degree, in some cases in the same area as their undergrad degree, in some cases in different areas. Humanities degrees may well be accepted by graduate programs outside of the humanities - it depends on the university and on the program. Some humanities majors also go on for post-grad professional degrees. A humanities degree in conjunction with law school, journalism school, seminary, or education college, for instance, can be an exciting combination. And, humanities degrees in general have proven to be excellent preparation for the GRE (Graduate Records Exam), the LSAT (Law School Admittance Exam), and other graduate requirements.

Bruce Janz
Associate Professor of Humanities
Department of Philosophy,
University of Central Florida

Answer 2

There are plenty of things you can do.

So many jobs do not require any specific degree.

PR, marketing, media sales, HR, off the top of my head- all things you can do with a humantities degree. And there's so many jobs that you dont even know exist until you see them advertised so keep an eye out and join every agency you can.

I have a Sociology degree too and didn't have too any trouble getting interviews as a graduate, and I ended up in a reasonably paid graduate level position. I also had a lot of general work experience- bar work, telesales, etc. So get as much of that as you can.

Good luck!

Answer 3

A thousand and one things. Infact you have more job varieties than a doctor for instance as a humanities graduate fits into quite a lot of job functions. With a sociology degree your horizon/opportunities are less restricted as you fit into various job positions e.g. HR, Procurement, Social welfare, Strategic Planning e.tc unlike a Doctor for example who would fit only into a medical outfit. Further more there is no kind of organization that does not have slots that Humanities graduates can fit in. All these are apart from the option of using your knowledge and exposure to go private in business.

Answer 4

A lot of employers don't want you to have a degree, they want you to have work experience. Just get out there and gain some valuable experience. Try temping, that way you can try a variety of different jobs. - Good luck!

Answer 5

1

Answer 6

A degree can be used for anything really. Just look around and see what you fancy doing.

Answer 7

I have asked the same question 3 times, and haven't got an answer

Answer 8

Here's a new phrase for you to get used to!

"Would you like fries with that?"

Sociology isn't actually useful for anything and is considered as being a waste of time!

Answer 9

Regret the fact that you wasted time and money on a pointless 'degree'...

Answer 10

is someone able to tell me what is the right answer for this question?

Answer 11

you could become a Barrista, if you think you're up to the challenge