Education Answers

Before the early 20th Century, a college degree was not meant to train a person for a job. A college education was for personal enrichment. To turn you into an educated person with skills in critical thinking to allow you to take up a career in public administration, the clergy or business where you would learn on the job.

There was no intention for a degree to train you for a specific career.

However since the 1940’s the expectation of the public about a college or university degree has changed and a college or university education is now expected to lead you to a career.

Unfortunately the college and university system has not changed with the times.

A degree in Anthropology, Archeology, Art, Art History Creative Writing, General Studies, History, Humanities, Liberal Arts, Literature, Political Science, most any language including English, Music History, Philosophy, Religious Studies or Sociology is considered a “personal enrichment” degree. That is, these degrees are degrees that are meant to enrich you personally in the classical sense of a university education without leading to any specific job.

However, in today’s world where people go to university to enable themselves to get a job and hopefully a career a bachelor’s in these fields is essentially useless. With a degree in these fields and a GPA generally over 3.0 you can:

1. Get into law school. However law schools today graduate far more lawyers than there is business for lawyers.

2. Get into graduate school in a different field. Hopefully one without too many prerequisites you do not have. Consider getting a masters in Technology Management. You can make a similar salary to an engineer but you need essentially no sciences prerequisites.

3. Get into graduate school in the same field and eventually into a PhD so you can become a college professor in this field someday. However, there are far more PhD grads in some fields like Philosophy than there ever will be professorships or any kind of teaching programs.

4. Take a teaching qualification, which is usually 2 more years, so you can teach the subject at a public K-12 school.

5. Look for a job in a field where they want you to have a degree without any concern what it is. Where they only want the degree because they want educated people who have proven they can stick with something difficult and see it to completion. Like the insurance industry.

6. If you join the military you are more likely to enter as an officer instead of enlisted personnel.

Do note that if you do go for a more advanced degree, no one cares where you got your bachelor’s degree. Only the school where you got your most advanced degree counts. And that counts for a lot less than the name schools would have you believe.

If your GPA is over 3.0, don’t take a second undergrad degree if you already have one of these degrees. A graduate degree will be more valuable to you.