What Jobs Can I Get With an Associates Degree in Liberal Arts

Okay, let's get this out of the way up front: we accept heard all the jabs people take at liberal arts majors. It follows that liberal arts jobs tin sometimes accept it on the chin likewise.

"I'thousand sure information technology's fun, just the average college graduate with a degree in something like English language is going to end up working in a shoe store," said venture capitalist and Netscape founder Marc Andreesen. Fifty-fifty the typically optimistic President Barack Obama said, "I hope you, folks tin can brand a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree."

Barack Obama was a poli-sci and English lit major who managed to become president of the most powerful nation in the earth, so maybe paychecks aren't everything.

It'southward sort of become a worn-out cliche. Scientific discipline, technology, technology, and math (the so-called Stalk fields) are the only fields offering the kind of hard skills required to brand information technology these days. But the countless successful liberal studies grads who keep to revolutionize industry, arts, politics and academia are proving things aren't so black and white.

As the costs of college have risen in contempo decades, there's even more pressure level to pick a degree that promises a loftier salary soon after graduation. The average student will have a lot of loans hanging over their head correct after they are handed their diploma. There's a strong sense of futility in staring down decades of payments equally that witty barista with the philosophy degree.

What Jobs Can You Get with a Liberal Arts Degree? – Liberal Arts Values Are in High Need in Many Fields

It's somewhat ironic that these misconceptions nearly the education you demand in the modern job market are rooted in a pretty outdated thought of what a caste in liberal studies is all about. What y'all're getting with a liberal arts and sciences degree isn't just the power to come up up with Wittgenstein quotes for whatsoever occasion. Instead, you are learning exactly the kind of talents that employers really say they are looking for.

Ask any employer exactly what kind of people they are looking to hire and they volition all say:

We want talented people who are self-motivated, with stiff written and verbal advice skills, who can think critically and come up with artistic solutions to real bug.

Guess what kind of skills a liberal arts degree gives you?

The reality is that nearly task-specific knowledge and skills are things that you lot selection up on the job anyway. Ask whatever economic science major how well their degree actually prepped them for that trading desk job at Goldman. Turns out the theory was all the easy function, and all the existent-world grooming just happens after you get hired and get some feel. The real skills you need to build in college are the skills information technology takes to apace absorb and master what those jobs throw at you.

With a liberal arts caste, yous already accept the training to quickly pick up what your mentors and peers are throwing down. You've spent your entire fourth dimension in school thinking nearly how to think, learning about how to learn. Those are talents that every employer is going to value in a higher place most anything else.

The reality is that a liberal arts caste can requite you lot exactly the skills that employers want. What you practise with those skills will exist up to you.

What Can I Do With a Liberal Arts Degree?

The merely correct reply to this question is "anything you lot want."

That'southward the ability of a liberal arts education. You lot become the tools and skillset to take on whatever subject, to reason your style through all kinds of issues, to blot, learn, and categorize boosted knowledge in any area.

People get confused about what to exercise with a liberal arts caste because there is no ane standing at that place telling y'all what to do. Yous get a degree in medicine, you're going to be a doctor. Get a caste in engineering, yous'll probably wind up as an engineer. Information technology's right in the title!

Liberal arts degrees are different. They don't paw you chore titles. They hand you lot the tools to get jobs washed.

When you wrap your head around it, a liberal arts career can make a lot more than sense in terms of personal satisfaction and professional person potential than the alternatives.

According to the National Heart for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2019 the average 6-twelvemonth graduation rate for undergraduate students in the United states of america was only 63 percent. That means that almost four in every ten students who kickoff on a baccalaureate caste don't terminate information technology inside the outset six years.

At that place are many reasons that happens, but 1 large 1 is that after starting downward the path of a specific career field, many find that it isn't as great as it sounded in the get-go.

But a liberal arts program offers a kind of freedom and flexibility in pursuing careers even very late in the educational procedure. Since the principal skills you are learning are general enough to give you lot a boost in any field, you tin switch career paths on a dime. That's a practiced value in a college didactics—and a keen benefit to your potential employers.

Liberal Arts Career Options Can Take You lot From Wall Street to Silicon Valley

excited students Ted Turner, founder of CNN, was a classics major at Dark-brown. Carly Fiorina, one-time CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the about hardcore computer scientific discipline corporation of its time, studied medieval history and philosophy at Stanford. Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street heavyweight J.P. Morgan, studied psychology and economic science at Tufts. Pecker Belichick, the most winning autobus in NFL playoff and Super Bowl history, majored in economics at Wesleyan.

These are just a few of the enormously successful people who have launched their careers with liberal arts degrees.

And these aren't simply random exceptions in a body of water of unemployed arts and sciences graduates. No less a visionary than Steve Jobs, founder and leader of Apple (and a liberal studies major who dropped out earlier completing his caste), directly and publicly connected the visitor's success with the fact that their approach to applied science and design incorporated liberal arts:

"Information technology'due south in Apple tree's DNA that applied science lone is not enough—information technology's engineering science married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our middle sing."

And you lot don't need years of reflection in philosophy to understand that this isn't just a chance discovery or random coincidence. The humanities offering united states the context in which all other human invention and aspiration fit.

So any company that is betting heavily on The Next Big Thing needs some sense of what makes things big, and what homo beings are looking for next. Those are exactly the type of things that liberal studies majors excel at identifying.

Did Y'all Know the World's Most Powerful Intelligence Apparatus Actively Recruits Liberal Arts and Sciences Majors?

important man in suit When you lot mention liberal arts jobs, people immediately beginning thinking of academics or other soft skill positions that involve a lot of talking and not much activeness. Just information technology turns out the U.South. government is a big fan of liberal arts graduates when information technology comes to a much more hard-nosed career field: the cloak and dagger jobs of intelligence operatives and analysts.

Chore ads for intelligence analysts at agencies like the Key Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency openly adopt applicants who accept degrees in liberal arts fields over those with professional person or hard science degrees.

Although the recruiting process for field operatives is more shadowy, enquire yourself what kind of graduate would be more successful in a deep-cover overseas assignment: a informatics nerd who has spent four years with their olfactory organ upwardly against a screen, or a liberal arts grad with linguistic communication preparation, psychological profiling skills, and the kind of cultural sensation to blend in to a diverse and exotic environment?

Liberal Arts Jobs Can Pay Big Salaries But The Career Potential is Where You Strike True Gold

If you were paying attending at all, you probably already guessed that owning your own cablevision news channel or working equally CEO for a tech company or one of the biggest trading firms in the world are all jobs that come with pretty bulky salaries. And indeed, if y'all wait at Jamie Dimon'south $31.five million salary for 2020 and the net worth of nearly $two billion he amassed along the way, that psychology degree sure seems to accept paid off.

Of class, nosotros're not suggesting that every liberal arts degree volition take you right to the boardroom. Y'all may non even desire that kind of career. But the signal is that a liberal arts degree doesn't actually come with any upper limit on salary potential. In line with the very philosophy and method behind liberal studies, your education and your career will be what you brand of it.

You tin go wherever your appetite takes y'all—the hallmark of a liberal arts education is that it makes y'all capable of stepping in and picking upwards exactly the skills you demand in any field.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 62 percent of liberal arts graduate'southward piece of work in 1 of v fields:

Educational instruction and library occupations
Management occupations
Sales and related occupations
Function and administrative support occupations
Business and financial operations occupations

Those fields span a broad range of potential salaries and opportunities. In part, where yous land volition depend on the level of degree that yous earn. A master'due south graduate will no doubt state a far better paying chore than someone with but an associate'due south degree, for example. But at any level, they will be applying similar concepts from their liberal studies education.

Bachelor'southward Degrees in the Liberal Arts

Co-ordinate to chore analysis business firm Burning Glass, jobs postings that crave a bachelor's degree equally the minimum qualification jumped anywhere from 35 percent to 175 percent, depending on the industry, for positions that previously required only a high school diploma. Caste inflation is existent, merely, surprisingly, the industries that are existence hit the hardest are those where technical skill requirements are increasing. More than and more employers are realizing that a four-yr pedagogy in liberal studies offers rock-solid proof of a job candidate'south ambition, literacy, and adjustability. Information technology's not your specialization that makes a liberal arts bachelor's special: information technology's your power to specialize in anything.

Primary's/Doctoral Degrees in the Liberal Arts

Master'due south grads in liberal arts don't need someone to tell them what they tin can do. They are in a position to make their own opportunities. Master'southward or doctoral grads are often already accomplished professionals. They use the independence of a liberal arts master's to milk shake loose their creativity and inspiration, either branching out into a new field or returning to their sometime one with the vision and creativity it takes to reach new heights.

What's Up With Doctoral Jobs in the Liberal Arts?

Yous'll notice that we are lumping together master'due south and doctoral level qualifications in our examples of jobs you tin get with liberal arts degrees. "Wait a minute," y'all are saying. "A doctorate is, like, v extra years of expensive teaching—doesn't that earn me a fiddling actress staff of life on the back end?"

There's no question that boosted years of study, and the depth that comes with independent research and writing a dissertation will make you a more capable innovator, communicator, and leader. Simply doctoral studies in liberal arts aren't a conventional path to traditional careers.

Instead, a doctor of liberal studies (DLS) program is more often an intensive exercise you undertake for your own purposes, not a paycheck. If learning more and thinking harder builds your insights into business concern such that y'all invent the side by side iPhone, you lot're gonna exist a billionaire. But if learning more and thinking harder just offers intense personal satisfaction and never earns you an extra dime, that'due south neat as well.

Liberal studies come with and from the conventionalities that noesis is its own reward. Doctors of Liberal Arts may go rich, or they may spend their days maintaining motorcycle engines. A DLA graduate has the insight to know which holds the greater value.

Yous volition find dissimilar opportunities at each of these caste levels in the various concentrations available in liberal arts studies.

Arts and Humanities Build Your Capacity for Empathy and Creativity in Your Career

An arts and humanities focus is the most classic sort of liberal arts educational activity, taking you lot through classical studies designed to enhance your appreciation of the arts and your understanding of individuals. That's perfect grooming for customer service and managerial careers in almost any field as well as sales and marketing positions.

Available's Degree – The combination of arts preparation and communication skills are ideal for anyone inbound a creative industry or managing or coordinating with artists or designers.

Advertizement, Promotions, and Marketing Managers - $141,490 per year
Sales Managing director - $132,290 per year
Marketing Manager - $141,490 per twelvemonth
Producers and Directors - $76,400 per year
Film Editor - $61,900 per year
Copywriter - $67,120 per yr

Master's or Doctoral Degree – Loftier level management positions benefit from master's studies that offering communication and leadership skills ahead of the competition.

Math and Sciences Concentrations Set You Up For Adding and Problem-Solving in Business or Regime

The liberal arts are built not just on art, just on arts and sciences . A math and scientific discipline concentration leans harder on the technical skills of that 2-part instruction, while yet upping your skills in outside-the-box thinking and interpersonal communications.

That'due south a smashing combination when it comes to public-facing positions in science, engineering, or government. Being able to explain complex bug in language that the boilerplate person tin can sympathize may be more important than having a solution to the complex issue in the first place. If you can't convince people to do it, what is the value?

Math and scientific discipline concentrations in the liberal arts mitt y'all the all-time of both worlds: the ability to bargain with highly technical issues, along with the wisdom to understand how to connect them to real-world events and consequences.

Bachelor'due south Caste – A four-yr degree gives you merely the right mix of hard sciences and social skills to qualify you for project management, organizing research projects, or professions where soft skills combine with hard science or engineering talent.

Master'south or Doctoral Caste – Supervising scientists or engineers and interim as their interface with the exterior world takes rare talent, only it's the sort of job that a MALS program is the perfect qualification for.

Inquiry Annotator - $86,200 per year
Urban and Regional Planner - $75,950 per twelvemonth
Project Manager - $84,290 per year
Management Analyst - $87,660 per year
Financial Analyst - $83,660 per year
Architect - $82,320 per year

A Liberal Arts Degree With a Social Science Concentration Prepares Yous For Public Service

One of the key advantages to your wide studies of man history, politics, and governance is a potent understanding of lodge as it exists today. All the ills and inequities issue from forces beyond the control of nigh people. But with your noesis, you are well-equipped to start making a divergence for the disadvantaged.

Social sciences students in the liberal arts have an piece of cake time finding piece of work at the macro level, trying to change society through activism and persuasion, or the micro level, reaching down and helping disadvantaged individuals one by one. Students of history accept the tools to help change it.

Bachelor's Degree – Bachelor of liberal arts graduates accept the kind of soft skills it takes to inspire and lead other groups of people, with the exposure to math, history, and scientific discipline to give them the strategic vision to plan and execute large social services solutions.

Urban Planner - $75,950 per year
Journalist - $49,300 per year
Medical and Health Services Managers - $104,280 per yr
Human being Resources Specialist - $63,490 per year

Master's or Doctoral Degree – Master of liberal studies degrees can prepare you for groundbreaking non-turn a profit leadership roles, or piece of work in local, state, or national regime agencies aimed at facing downwards some of the biggest social and health problems of our time.

Social Worker - $51,760 per year
Survey Researcher - $59,870 per year
Rehabilitation Counselor - $37,530 per year
Social and Community Service Director - $69,600 per year
Political Scientist - $125,350 per year

Education and Human Development Trains Students to Go Teachers and Caregivers

The original purpose of liberal arts degrees was to help plant standards for educators. Wandering scholars actually carted those sheepskins around Europe with them, the ornate lettering inviting potential employers to know their qualifications as instructor, tutor, or scholar every bit judged by a reputable academy.

To All to whom these Messages may come up, Greetings: The President and Trustees of the Academy on the recommendation and approval of the Faculty have conferred the Degree of Bachelor of Arts And all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining…

Although many educational degrees now come up in much more specialized flavors, a liberal arts degree still serves as excellent qualification for anyone whose job is to achieve out to and connect with others. Whether those are formal positions as school teachers or every bit trainers in homo resource, this concentration helps you connect with your own students.

Bachelor's Degree – The general kind of educational and human evolution cognition earned in a four-year program tin, with country-specific training courses, land you a task as a teacher in most schools in humanities or other liberal arts subjects.

Adult basic and Secondary Education and ESL Teachers - $55,350 per year
Middle school teachers - $60,810 per year
Human Resources Specialist - $63,490 per year
Community Health Worker - $48,140 per yr

Master'southward or Doctoral Caste – Education may exist ane of the fields where a doctor of liberal arts degree holds the greatest level of respect, and serves as qualification for the well-nigh advanced positions.

The breadth of a liberal arts degree in any concentration leaves a lot of slack between these positions. Peculiarly for master'southward and doctoral students, the unique nature of the liberal arts curriculum can let y'all to tailor it to highly specific areas of written report or career paths.

Yous never need to feel constrained in your career path past the particular concentration you adopted for your degree. A liberal arts program is all about flexibility, and yous will have the tools to take information technology in any direction after graduation.

The Ability to Remember On Your Feet and Solve Bug on the Job is the True Advantage of a Liberal Studies Pedagogy

The real advantage to having a liberal arts groundwork isn't only getting hired or earning a decent salary, though. The thing about the humanities is that they give you a broad skillset to step up when your company needs a become-to person. Companies famously dearest employees with potential. When y'all have the skills to deal with unexpected problems and get piece of work done outside your job description, it says ane big affair to the bosses: this i has got management potential.

So what a liberal arts caste buys your career actually comes down to i word: potential. You can climb the ladder faster and higher than someone with a more specialized, narrow education. You have the people skills and the insights into order and business organisation that brand y'all a shoo-in for some of the top jobs in nearly any industry.

Of course, the level this will have yous will depend at least a piddling on the level of your degree. How all-encompassing your liberal arts instruction is will influence how y'all remember and what your skills are in these areas. A full general studies AA might get you to management level at McDonald's. A master'due south in liberal studies can put you in the corporate C-suite.

The beauty of the liberal arts path is that the choices are all yours. You determine what career to pursue; you lot decide what classes offering you lot the best preparation. And when everything lines upwards, the heaven is the limit in liberal arts jobs.

2020 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary figures and task growth projections for Liberal arts occupations reflect national data not school-specific information. Atmospheric condition in your area may vary. Data accessed October 2021.

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Source: https://liberalartsedu.org/career-guide/