Attacks on the Liberal Arts Inconsistent with Data

AAC&U just completed an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and, like we have seen in analysis of other data sets, the data is inconsistent with the often-repeated claim that Humanities and Social Science graduates cannot find jobs or earn less than students who choose a professional degree. 

While measuring the value of an education by income earned captures only a fraction of the value of a liberal arts degree, this is the measure that is most often used by those who consistently claim liberal arts degrees are without value.  So, using their own metric what does the data show?

Humanities and Social Science majors start at salaries slightly below those with professional degrees (and slightly higher than those with math and natural science degrees), but over the course of their entire careers Humanities and Social Science majors not only catch up, but surpass, salaries of those who earned a professional degree. 

The data, as always, is complex.  But those interested in advancing empirically unfounded claims about the low value of a liberal arts degree will respond here that 40% of those with Humanities and Social Science earned a graduate degree.  This is accurate, and suggests we should encourage those majors to consider carefully graduate school options, but 30% of the comparison group (those who earned professional degrees) also earned a graduate degree. 

The forces aligned against the liberal arts will also point out that engineers, science and math majors earn significantly more over their careers than either professional or liberal arts degree earning students.  This is also accurate, but engineers account for 9% of working college graduates—we should encourage our students who can succeed in these fields to do so, but these fields are a much smaller segment of the job market.

And this is only comparing the value of various degree based on income, which is not the metric best suited to capturing the full value of any degree, much less a liberal arts degree.  Since we know that many liberal arts majors choose to occupy fields that provide important services but are low paying (teaching, counseling, social work).