The practical benefits of arts and humanities degrees

When a student announces they want to go to college to study English, history, theatre, a foreign language, or art, they may receive pushback from well-meaning relatives or counselors who are concerned about the professional viability of humanities and fine arts degrees. Nationwide, the number of humanities degrees conferred declined 24% between 2012 and 2022.

Fortunately for students who are interested in one of these fields, research shows that fears about career prospects for humanities and fine arts majors are unfounded. In fact, academic instruction in humanities and art-related fields leads to tangible benefits for students across all levels of education, beginning as early as elementary school. According to Americans for the Arts, studying the arts has been shown to reduce instances of student disciplinary action, reduce dropout rates, and improve SAT scores. At the college level, studying the arts and humanities helps students gain evergreen skills that are more marketable and desirable than ever.

“Businesses are not looking for specific training in a particular field, they’re looking for general skills and abilities. Critical thinking, oral communication, the ability to work in teams with others, problem solving, these kinds of things. These are really the valuable skills that college is able to give them if they approach it correctly,” Dean of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Religion Michael Vines said. “I would say the humanities are a very good place to develop those communication skills, those critical thinking skills, and so forth, in ways that can be quite attractive to incoming students.”

The questions that are encouraged by a study of arts and humanities are often existential ones that deeply ponder life, the human experience, and interactions with others. These conversations, and the ability to form well-researched and well-articulated arguments around them, help strengthen the skills Vines lists, which are vitally important to any career field.

“I think it has a lot to do with the abstract nature, the indefiniteness, of history, or English, or religion, or philosophy. Students have to engage in intellectual or mental problems that have no clear solution. If you’re in a laboratory and you’re dissecting mice, the answers are right in front of you. You’re either right or you're wrong,” Vines said. “In the arts, you’re dealing with things that have no final resolution, and that creates this gray space that has to be navigated, and as you navigate it you build these critical thinking skills about which arguments are stronger than other arguments.”

With this perspective, Vines hopes that people can begin to think a bit differently about the “why” behind earning a bachelor's degree in the first place. Often graduates entering the workforce with a bachelor’s degree end up landing a job that is not directly related to their field. In fact, a study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics and published in 2019 found that of employed people who had graduated with a four-year degree in 2012, seven years before, only 44% said their job was “closely related” to their bachelor’s degree field of study. 22% of these graduates said their job and their degree were “not related at all.”

In cases like these, graduates are relying on the general, qualitative skills they earned while in college, rather than the hard, quantitative skills that may have been tied more closely to their specific field of study. With a greater emphasis on developing these skills, degrees in the humanities and arts are well suited for preparing graduates for the workforce more generally, rather than simply funneling them into a specific job or career.

“Often a student loves English, but they are dissuaded from studying that because they are told there’s no market for it. Consequently, education becomes a tedious task for them because they’re not doing what they really are passionate about, whereas if they were doing what they are passionate about, they would get the skills and abilities that would make them a valuable employee in a host of different fields,” Vines said. “As I look at our graduates, it’s really not about the specific things they learn in my religion class that gets them the job, it’s that they are skillful thinkers and communicators that work well with others, and this makes them successful in whatever they set out to do.”

The School of Arts and Humanities at Lees-McRae is proud to offer a variety of humanities and arts-related academic programs that are invested in building these foundational skills for students. From Theatre Arts students who go on to become Broadway stage managers, to Communication Arts and Design majors who go on to own their own design firms, the programs in the School of Arts and Humanities prepare students for careers both similar and different from their degree fields.