Liberal Arts Majors Vs. Career-Oriented Majors

If you're like most college students, your number one concern is your career prospects after you graduate. In fact, you've probably heard for years that you cannot get a good job without a degree.

But a degree won't guarantee employment. For that, you have to have the right skills at the right time. This is where your major helps, enhancing your knowledge in a specific field of study. However, not all majors are created equal. Some majors are inherently designed to prime you for a certain career, while others give you broader-based skills that may be useful for a variety of careers but don't train you for a specific one. This article will describe which majors fall into these two categories and their advantages and disadvantages.

Career-Oriented Majors

The majors that prepare students for specific careers are called "career-oriented majors."

Examples of career-oriented majors:

Accounting, Architecture, Business Administration, Computer Science, Education-Primary and Secondary, Engineering, Finance, Marketing, and Nursing

If you pick a career-oriented major, you're most likely set for a career, especially if you're in a sought-after major like engineering or nursing. You'll gain specific skills that you'll put to use at your future job.

Liberal Arts Majors

Liberal arts majors, also called "academic-oriented majors," may have a trickier time when it comes to finding a career after college.

Examples of liberal arts majors:

Anthropology, Art History, Communications, English, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology

Even the hard sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) fall under the heading of liberal arts majors.

Unlike career-oriented majors, liberal arts majors do not have a corresponding career to every major. The career field is open-ended, meaning that while you won't be constrained to a specific career path, you also typically won't gain specific skills. It's up to you to hone marketable skills.

Liberal Arts Majors versus Career-Oriented Majors

Those career-oriented majors are looking pretty good now, huh? Poor philosophy majors constantly face the brunt of bad employment jokes. Well, don't force yourself to be in a major you hate. If you dislike math, and you change your major to accounting, believing it will help you find a job after college, you will most likely be miserable not only in your major but also in your future career. If I picked a major based on how likely I would be employed and how much money I'd make, I'd have been an engineering major. I'd also would either A) have flunked out of college or B) be designing shoddy buildings (A is much more likely).

If you excel at math (accounting) or science (engineering), or love people (education or nursing) there's no denying that a career-oriented major is generally a better choice for employment prospects after college. According to a 2008 longitudinal study (which followed college graduates and their careers from 1993-2003) by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), career-oriented majors are able to establish themselves in their chosen fields faster and without going to graduate school. But if you're passionate about a liberal arts major or if it's an area in which you have the most talent, then go ahead and pick a liberal arts major. However, you should be aware of these three points:

1. You might not find work in your major after college. In fact, according to Occupational Outlook Quarterly, the most common occupations for a liberal arts major after graduation are management, sales, graphic arts, teaching, and social work.

2. If you want to work in your field, you should strongly consider graduate school. According to NCES, about 90 percent of liberal arts students with a graduate degree considered their education to be important to their job compared to 56 percent of liberal arts students with an undergraduate degree.

3. If you don't want to go to graduate school, take advantage of all the internships you can. The more connections you make, the likelier you'll have a good career after you graduate.

Since I've listed a bunch of discouraging caveats about liberal arts majors, let's discuss some of the benefits. The major advantage of a liberal arts major is flexibility. While that flexibility will not prepare you for a specific career (as mentioned earlier), it will equip you with wide-ranging skills that allows you to comfortably switch careers. Here are three such abilities:

1. Critical thinking skills

2. Writing skills

3. Verbal skills

If you work on sharpening these skills while in college, you will be a valuable employee for any company-and don't worry, it won't be for an entry-level job at McDonald's. In fact, no matter what your major, the NCES study concluded that after ten years from graduating college, people found a career compatible with their education and doubled their salary from their first job.

Conclusion

So what should you choose for your college major if you want a good career? Whatever you want. A career-oriented major will undoubtedly give you immediate benefits. But if your passions lay in a field within liberal arts, don't be afraid to pursue it-especially if you're likely to be miserable in a career-oriented major. As trite as it may sound, only you know the best major for you.