This story offers evidence to challenge the stereotype that under employed humanities majors are stuck working in service jobs years after graduation. STEM jobs are indeed the most marketable, but a recent study found that after five years, business, health professions, education and psychology make up far more of the underemployed graduates than English or foreign languages.
If you believe the Burning Glass data, those four majors alone – business, health professionals, education, and psychology – put more than half a million people in the underemployed camp. And given that the 21 selected majors in the Burning Glass report totaled 904,000 underemployed graduates after five years, just those four majors accounted for more than half (56%) of the underemployed in the study.
It’s also interesting that although it’s a popular target of those who insist that a college education should connect to a good job, majors in “Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities” left a scant 18,824 underemployed grads after five years. “English Language and Literature/Letters” had just 16,422 similarly underemployed. And the major with the fewest underemployed graduates, according to the report, was “Foreign Languages, Literature, and Linguistics.”
In other words, for every cliché of a barista or bartender with a liberal arts degree, there were ten with a degree in business. —Forbes
