What Can You Do with a Liberal Arts Degree?

Whether you’ve received your liberal arts degree or are planning on pursuing one, you might be wondering what you can actually do with your degree. Better yet, the people around you are probably wondering what you can do with this degree.

While a liberal arts degree tends to get a dose of rolling eyes from people who didn’t pursue this major, there’s a world of options it can open you up to. Needless to say, a liberal arts degree is anything but useless.

To better explain that, we’ll look at three areas: (1) possible careers and job prospects, (2) graduate programs a liberal arts degree can set you up for, and (3) necessary skills for life/career.

Possible Careers and Job Prospects

As a result of many liberal arts programs offering a wide range of courses that cover different topics, most liberal arts majors can pursue many different careers. For example, people with liberal arts degrees can pursue editing, journalism, marketing, writing, social services, archaeology, economics, psychology, and the list could go on and on.

Not only that, but according to PayScale, the average salary for people who received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts is $60,000 in the United States.

For all it’s worth, these successful people all majored in liberal arts: Howard Schultz (former Starbucks CEO), Andrea Jung (former Avon CEO), and Michael Eisner (former Walt Disney Company CEO), but the list is certainly not limited to these individuals.

Data USA might have the most interesting data on job prospects and salary among this field:

“The average salary for those who major in Liberal Arts & Humanities is $63,491 and the most common occupations are Elementary & middle school teachers; Miscellaneous managers; and Secretaries & administrative assistants. The occupation that pays the highest of the 5 common jobs filled by Liberal Arts & Humanities majors is Physicians & surgeons at $229,948 per year.”

Graduate Programs a Liberal Arts Degree Can Set You up For:

As a result of a liberal arts degree ranging in different fields and courses, from arts to literature to sciences to music to history to psychology to philosophy, liberal arts majors are at an advantage in terms of graduate programs.

After all, not only could a liberal arts major go on to study a Master of Fine Arts degree, but areas of business, law, and medical and health sciences as well.

While every dentist program is different, you could realistically become a dentist in Morristown, NJ with a liberal arts degree. With that said, a liberal arts degree alone will not be adequate enough in itself — you will need to take a test to get into dental school, as well as take certain prerequisites during your undergrad program. In fact, as long as you meet the prerequisites mapped out by the dental program of your choice, you might even be more well-rounded because you took classes in many different areas, as opposed to sticking with science-like courses; although, some programs require applicants to major in certain degrees and subject, such as biology or chemistry.

Necessary Skills for Life/Career

Taking different classes in different fields, as mentioned above, can make you more well-rounded because you’re gaining knowledge in different areas as opposed to only studying one field.

However, as Study points out, a liberal arts degree can set you up when it comes to gaining important skills for employers; such as, communication skills, reading comprehension, cultural understanding, and analytical abilities. These skills also flow over to daily life, human interaction, etc.

While some people like to hate on the liberal arts degree, this major can open the door to many different opportunities, fields, graduate degrees, and skills.