Counterpoint | Minnesota humanities graduates thrive in meaningful careers

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The Oct. 3 article “With degree seekers in decline, liberal arts must prove value” paints a grim picture of shrinking programs in English and other college humanities disciplines. But enrollment numbers reflect fashion, not value. And despite headlines warning us of dying humanities departments, graduates of those programs are thriving in Minnesota.

Numerous studies show that majors in the humanities — typically, in departments of English, history, philosophy, religious studies, classics and languages — lead students to employment and life satisfaction outcomes as positive as those for majors traditionally championed as “practical.” Humanities majors in Minnesota are as likely to be employed as are engineering or business majors, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators Project. And humanities BAs earn 64% more than workers with only a high school diploma. Publisher W.W. Norton found that 96% of graduates surveyed said they would major or minor in English again, with successful careers in everything from communications to finance.

These data tell us what college enrollment trends do not: that there are no grounds for the popular misconception that the only way to have a solid career is to choose a major that has a direct correlation to a job title, like accounting. In fact, 29% of Minnesota’s lawyers and 38% of our library and museum workers were humanities majors as undergraduates. Humanities majors in our state work in everything from the nonprofit sector to sales, from education to management positions.

The stereotype of the underemployed history major is simply not true. According to Humanities Indicators 2023 data, the median earnings of humanities majors with a bachelor’s degree in Minnesota’s full-time workforce are $73,317 per year.

Still, earnings data are not the whole story. Choosing to be an engineer or a scientist will indeed earn students more money over the course of their lifetimes, on average, than will a humanities degree. But not everyone has the aptitude or desire to work in a STEM field. More important, to have a functional society, we need many people to not be engineers. We need teachers, translators, journalists, archivists, literacy specialists and people who will run community organizations — all jobs that tend to be filled by humanities majors. Because these are careers that pay less than, say, doctors or marketing executives does not mean that the only worthwhile majors are biochemistry or marketing.

How do we manage scarce resources for future generations? How do we make sure our workforce can adapt to technological change? How do we learn from history, so we don’t repeat past mistakes? Liberal arts college majors such as geography, English or data science teach students how to think and write persuasively, do research, collect and interpret data, and tackle complex problems from multiple angles to work collaboratively to answer hard questions like these.

I am proud to live in a state that funds libraries, champions initiatives to protect and restore the fragile Mississippi River ecosystem, and faces up to the low points of our history by doing things like restoring Dakota names to our lakes. This is the sort of work that could not happen without historians and environmental scientists working together with politicians and community groups. In other words, it is the sort of work that could not happen without humanities majors or the multifaceted approach to understanding big problems that a liberal arts education fosters.

Students should not feel that the only way to get a job is to study supposedly practical subjects that they don’t think they are good at or that they don’t enjoy. A liberal arts education invites students to lean into their aptitudes, interests, and the local or global issues they care about. Then it teaches them the skills (evaluating evidence, locating gaps in logic, distilling key details, considering others’ viewpoints, turning data into narrative, and much more) that will enable them to turn their inclinations into meaningful careers.

If we want to continue to make our state better for future generations, we need to cultivate the bright minds of students who want to do work besides STEM. Students and families in Minnesota might assume, on the basis of shrinking enrollment numbers, that there are whole branches of study that are dying or pointless. In fact, we need students studying these subjects now more than ever, and we need them to know that they can make successful lives for themselves — and even improve conditions in their communities — by doing so.