“ Aaaah, it is Arts then. You paint and all, right?”
“ Actually, no. It’s not Fine Arts, it’s an interdisciplinary study in humanities, for example, History, Philosophy, Anthropology, Literature and so on.”
“ I still don’t get what you’re studying!”
This is pretty much my usual conversation with people who ask about my major! At times, even I cannot explain myself what I study and I don’t blame anyone if they can’t figure it out quite easily; it’s a complicated major for people like me who have no idea how to deal with the vast sea of Humanities! Originally, I wanted to pick Linguistics, but this program caught my attention as it offered a variety of courses, each more interesting than the other. You indulge in multiple readings each week and your task is to think and analyze! It is “almost” perfect. The only thing missing is a clear career outline; a clear path that assures you’re going to get employed after graduation.
Unfortunately, Liberal Arts is like that neglected child with a lot of potential! You know what you are capable of, you know you have the ability to succeed, but you just don’t have the right degree! You can get hired as an HR specialist, but you neither have enough experience nor have you passed credits in HR management. A company would have to provide additional training for you and often that’s not profitable for them. Even if they do so, you still have a drawback in your Liberal Arts degree which can be compared to a bouquet with one stem of every flower! You don’t specialize in any of the in-demand fields in the labor market. However, you may still be a good writer, critical thinker, and often more meticulous than many other people. That must count for something, right?
The main idea is not that a Liberal Arts student is doomed to be unemployed. On the contrary, the degree is a clear sign that you have to either continue your academic acquisition or start working in certain fields. These fields will require your literary skills, such as content creation/supervision, editing, secondary school teaching, public relations, etc. If the competition for the mentioned positions were not high, a Liberal Arts graduate would get employed with the snap of a finger! These are jobs for which various graduates can apply; graduates of Journalism, Literature, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Communication Management, and whatnot. All the aforementioned make a tough competition for the Liberal Arts graduates, especially if they’re not native in the language of their higher education, even though they might have mastered it well. A simple search in the career portals can show how important it is to be a native speaker.
Another significant aspect of this degree is that it is on the verge of total elimination. Many universities simply cannot afford to offer such degrees as they are becoming redundant in the labor market. The society is hungry for technology and IT and doesn’t fail to put all the investments into developing new devices and technologies. The emergence of new digital studies and their high desirability by the market leaves very little space for conventional studies such as Liberal Arts, Philosophy, History, etc. If universities don’t make an effort to save or revive these studies, we will become aliens to future generations.
Humanities are, after all, the inseparable part of our lives. We need Humanities in order to understand ourselves, form our moral compass, and develop our individual and social behaviors. Had it not been for Humanities, men would have never stopped petty fights, perhaps they would have never come up with ideas such as “Diplomacy”, “Democracy”, “Rule of Law”, “Pluralism”, “Liberalism”, etc… But witnessing the situation with the mentioned studies in the modern world, I can’t imagine what Humanities will be like thirty years from now!
Taking together the research findings and my personal opinion, there is hope to create a better connection between universities and the labor market for Humanities graduates. Universities like mine are trying to fit more digital courses into our curriculum, just to familiarize and prepare us for different job opportunities to come. This is a simple, yet pragmatic, step to preserve Humanities, as it seeks to avoid conventionality, yet preserve the essence. In the project “Future Experts Meet Current Experts”, we aim to tackle these hindering factors that have created a gap between universities and the labor market. We hope to explore the solutions to the employment drawbacks by locating the “bugs” in the academia-labor relationship!