What are you planning to do with that humanities degree?
PITTSBURGH — Jenna Baron knew she wanted to major in the liberal arts or social sciences when she started as a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh in 2009.
“I’d always known it would have something to do with learning about people,” she said.
Baron discovered anthropology as a way to learn about different cultures and to travel. Taking courses on Africa and volunteering as a tutor for a Somali family in Pittsburgh instilled a passion in learning about the continent. She declared a certificate in African Studies and studied Swahili in Tanzania and Kenya over a summer.
Anthropology, like many majors in the liberal arts and social sciences, doesn’t have a clear career path. Still, such majors can inform what college graduates do afterward, as well as how much they earn.
Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, which collects and analyzes national and state data on college majors and earnings, reported in 2015 that about 80 percent of majors are “career-focused,” meaning coursework prepares students for specific field or jobs related to that field.
For example, “You do see a large percentage of health majors preparing for health but also ending up in health occupations, everything from health practice to health administration,” said Neil Ridley, director of the state initiative at the center.
Students with less career-focused majors — such as arts, humanities and social sciences — comprise about 20 percent of all college students nationally, according to the report.
The types of jobs they get are highly variable, Ridley said. They could end up in graduate school or in international fellowships, in consulting or health care, in sales or education, in nonprofits or office support, with no dominant career track.
“For humanities and liberal arts, there are winding paths into the workforce and into careers,” he said.
Often, guiding students down those winding paths are university career centers.
Erin Howard, a career counselor for arts and sciences majors at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, said most students who don’t want to go into academia understand that they will not get a job directly related to their major.
“Humanities majors don’t expect Aristotle Inc. to open up offices in downtown Pittsburgh and hire college grads at $50,000 a year, with benefits, to think and philosophize 40 hours a week, and we don’t expect employers ... to do the same,” Howard said.
Still, students of history or philosophy sometimes don’t have a good idea of what they want to do, so people like Howard help them find out. That could mean taking a personality test, shadowing someone in a particular career or finding an internship or student job.
Howard said she helps humanities majors focus on skills with wide appeal, such as critical thinking and synthesizing large amounts of information.
Karl Sparre, vice president of talent solutions in human resources at Pittsburgh health insurer Highmark Inc., one of the largest area employers, said many entry-level positions require a specific skill set: actuary positions require courses in actuarial science while finance positions require business courses or an MBA.
However, other positions suit graduates of any major, Sparre said.
Liberal arts students tend to be good at problem solving, critical thinking and communication — skills well-suited for roles in human resources or marketing.
“What you’re really looking for is someone who has demonstrated an ability to work through a more challenging academic and extracurricular experience,” Sparre said.
Important to working at Highmark, he said, is previous experience. The company hires many of its own interns — often recruited from career fairs or other channels at area universities — and it looks for students and graduates who display an interest in working in a specific area.
“Most of the students are juniors and seniors,” he said. “They’ve had other jobs. They’re interested in confirming that marketing is an area of interest after graduation, or maybe they want to try something new.”
As she developed an interest in Africa, Baron joined Keep It Real, a volunteer group through which she tutored a Somali Bantu refugee family.
Three years with the family showed her that she wanted to work with immigrants and refugees.
During her senior year, she interned with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, working on issues surrounding immigrant and refugee youth.
The job involved working alongside service providers, organizing groups of people, planning meetings and making presentations. She also made contacts who helped her start a summer camp, the Pittsburgh Refugee Youth Summer Enrichment Academy.