When coming to college, many students grapple with the task of selecting a field of study to pursue. With many factors to weigh, this decision can create a tornado of doubt. Students are torn between their strengths, parental and cultural expectations, potential salaries and personal passions.
Further complicating this process are articles like “15 Worst College Majors for a Lucrative Career” or “The Most Valuable College Majors.” These lists frequently present contradictory information and tend to favor STEM disciplines, ranking majors based on earning potential and employment rates.
Digital creators such as Andrew Yu often discuss these lists in a factual manner, further propagating their views on which majors are less valuable.
However, much of this advice looks shallowly upon statistics and lacks perspective, leaving students confused and doubting their choices.
Humanities fields in particular are being attacked right now. There’s a pervasive misconception that disciplines such as communication, philosophy, gender studies, English and history are inherently useless and offer little value in today’s job market.
We need to address our understanding of what constitutes “usefulness” in education.
Calling majors useless suggests that there’s no value in studying them, which is simply not true.
Laura Vazquez, a professor of communication at NIU, argues that humanities majors teach important and versatile skills.
“ These fields (humanities) teach you not only about how the world works, but they also teach you how to be adaptable, how to be a critical thinker and especially if youre talking about communication, how to get really good at communication skills,” Vazquez said.
These skills are applicable in all jobs and are not a guarantee that comes with any college major. People don’t realize how often they are influenced or affected by the word choice and manner in which a message is presented.
The reality of the matter is that not just anyone can do communication based jobs, as they require a deep understanding of language and human nature.
Take, for example, when your favorite celebrity’s career is hanging by a thread because they said something offensive and now are faced with the reality of being canceled. In such moments, the outcome hinges on their response: they can either acknowledge their misstep effectively or risk missing the mark entirely.
This is where a public relations team plays a crucial role. They help navigate the complexities of communication, providing these celebrities with strategic guidance to articulate their perspectives and preserve their public image.
In contrast, when national security is threatened and politicians need to deliver a message that holds sincerity and concern, a speech writer that understands how a message should be conveyed is necessary. This is an extremely high-stakes position to hold and requires a great deal of critical thinking and empathy.
Vazquez mentioned the vitality of a crisis communications team.
“You know something like what happened in Baltimore when the bridge was hit by a tanker (March 26),” Vazquez said. “Somebody needs to do crisis communication management. That is a communication degree. And those are really, really important degrees.”
We experience the work of communications teams every day. When we turn on the news channel we are receiving carefully crafted messages. The writers who develop the script and put together the footage must understand how to effectively convey complex events within a short frame of time while capturing the appropriate tone and context.
The world would be chaos without communications degrees. They are the chains that link different facets of society.
This goes for all humanities degrees, understanding the past is essential so that we dont fail in the future – insights that a history major and future historian can contribute to.
Understanding government structure and what works for a set group of people are critical contributions that fields like political science focus on.
Philosophy programs are often a cultivation of history, politics, and logistical understanding – traits that can set a student up to understand difficult nuances in many situations.
Similarly, art students are given challenging prompts they must convey with physical media. There’s a reason why people are attracted to cities like Vienna, Rome, Mexico City and New York. These cities are cherished for the genius artistry which has enriched these cities’ identities and the citizens’ cultures, which directly strengthens the importance of a place.
Right now, people are valuing fields with higher salary potential or a more direct path to a high paycheck. But just because a student picks a major that is not deemed “useless” does not mean that they will necessarily have success.
There are many high salary jobs in humanities fields such as creative directors, media specialists, public relations managers, university administration, museum directors and many more, the path may just be different.
Discouraging majors that are not a highway to a 100k does not benefit students — it diminishes the point of higher purpose education and takes away talent that can be found through these majors.
