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This thread is going to be a very poisoned sample and as a result going to give you a very bad idea of what people with liberal arts degrees end up dong on average, after all, how many liberal arts majors that ended up working at Starbucks are going to post?
Furthermore liberal arts degrees aren't all the same and don't teach the same underlying skills, indeed, some of the degrees don't seem to teach much at all.
This thread is going to be a very poisoned sample and as a result going to give you a very bad idea of what people with liberal arts degrees end up dong on average, after all, how many liberal arts majors that ended up working at Starbucks are going to post?
Furthermore liberal arts degrees aren't all the same and don't teach the same underlying skills, indeed, some of the degrees don't seem to teach much at all.
Maybe the thread is just a sample and a bunch of hearsay and/or individual experiences, but large samples of thousands and thousands of college graduates don't lie. Here are the average starting salaries and mid-career average salaries published earlier this year by payscale.com.
Economics $49k/ $98k
Political Science / $40k / $82k
History / $39k / $73k
Philosophy / $39k / $73k
American Studies / $41k / $73k
English / $38k/ $68k
Literature / $38k / $66k
General Liberal Arts / $36k / $64k
Anthropology/ $36k/ $63k
Psychology / $35k / $63k
Sociology / $37k / $62k
French / $40k / $61k
Spanish / $37k / $58k
Art History/ $39k / $57k
Here's where business majors stack up at starting & mid-career average salaries. Doesn't look to different from liberal arts, right?!
$45k / $78k Accounting
$39k / $77k Marketing
$43k / $74k International Business
$41k / $71k Business
$38k / $62k Human Resources
$42k / $61k Management
You can call the individual experiences of the posters in this thread "poisoned", but facts don't lie and the FACTS are that liberal arts and business majors make very similar salaries once established in their careers.
History / $39k / $73k
Philosophy / $39k / $73k
American Studies / $41k / $73k
English / $38k/ $68k
Literature / $38k / $66k
General Liberal Arts / $36k / $64k
French / $40k / $61k
Spanish / $37k / $58k
Art History/ $39k / $57k
The above is the actual list, you were including social sciences. But this salary information is deceptive, for many of these degrees the most common job is teaching and the salaries cited are consistent with teaching salaries. What are the salaries once you exclude those that went into teaching? This is going to be the key statistic from the standpoint of someone not teaching....
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
Here's where business majors stack up at starting & mid-career average salaries. Doesn't look to different from liberal arts, right?!
Right, because excluding Accounting they are degree problems that lack substance like most liberal arts degree problems.
Your comment about business majors has nothing to do with my point, which is that logically this thread is going to provide no legitimate information about the topic, the sample is entirely poisoned.
The above is the actual list, you were including social sciences. But this salary information is deceptive, for many of these degrees the most common job is teaching and the salaries cited are consistent with teaching salaries. What are the salaries once you exclude those that went into teaching? This is going to be the key statistic from the standpoint of someone not teaching....
Right, because excluding Accounting they are degree problems that lack substance like most liberal arts degree problems.
Your comment about business majors has nothing to do with my point, which is that logically this thread is going to provide no legitimate information about the topic, the sample is entirely poisoned.
1. Hi- I don't know where you went to college, but at my top 50 ranked public university, Economics was in the Liberal Arts College- either as a BA or BS depending on whether students supplement with more math courses or foreign language. Same thing with Poli Sci and several other degrees you nixed from my list. But thanks dude for trying to construe the data to make YOUR point.
2. I don't know what planet you live on, but K-12 "average" teacher salaries don't pay anywhere near $60-70k unless you're way past "mid-career" and also have a master's and possibly a PhD. Even assistant professors (non tenure) don't make in the $70k range. So I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of history majors running around making $110k per year to average out with the $40-50k teacher salaries.....not that the teacher salaries are bringing up the lib arts average. Haha!!!
3. My point about business major salaries has everything to do with this thread, thank you very much. Read a few of these liberal arts threads on city-Data. 99% of the time it's a student with a passion for liberal arts who fears he won't get a job if he's not a business major. My factual information about salaries shows that the average English major is going to end up making the same salary as an HR or Business Admin major so the student should follow his academic passion.
My point is that factual studies- not thread antedotes- prove the average liberal arts major is not going to end up destitute and unemployed, and will even make a comparable salary to business majors (which is perceived as a lucrative and "smart", safe degree to earn). What was your point again?!
1. Hi- I don't know where you went to college, but at my top 50 ranked public university, Economics was in the Liberal Arts College- either as a BA or BS depending on whether students supplement with more math courses or foreign language.
Where a particular school places an economics department is going to depend on the structure of the university and its politics, whether economics is placed in the Liberal arts college, social science college, or whatever else doesn't change the fact that economics is in fact a social science. Likewise of sociology, psychology, etc.
2. I don't know what planet you live on, but K-12 "average" teacher salaries don't pay anywhere near $60-70k unless you're way past "mid-career" and also have a master's and possibly a PhD. Even assistant professors (non tenure) don't make in the $70k range. So I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of history majors running around making $110k per year to average out with the $40-50k teacher salaries.....not that the teacher salaries are bringing up the lib arts average. Haha!!!
I think its safe to say that you don't know the difference between median and average. The the numbers you are citing are medians not averages, as a result the the high number of teachers with liberal arts degrees with incomes around the median very much distorts the numbers. For example, take this data set:
The median is 39, yet there is only one person making 110 and five people with very poor salaries.
Also, the median starting salary for teachers is $35k and mid-career is around $50k, so the salary data for most liberal arts majors do match teachers salaries fairly closely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
3. My point about business major salaries has everything to do with this thread, thank you very much.
You were quoting me and responding to me and your comments had nothing to do with what I said, I have no idea what is going on in threads that I'm not involved with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
My point is that factual studies- not thread antedotes- prove the average liberal arts major is not going to end up destitute and unemployed, and will even make a comparable salary to business majors (which is perceived as a lucrative and "smart", safe degree to earn). What was your point again?!
The data you are citing doesn't support what you are asserting here, you'd need to know the distribution of the data and due to the high number of teachers with liberal arts degrees, you'd have to know what the data set looks like if you exclude these people.
And my point was simple, this thread isn't going to provide anybody with any real information. Just by pure change you're going to have people with liberal arts degrees, despite their poor education, gaining jobs with good salaries. Some are totally unworthy, some have the right connections, some have gained skills else where, etc. Anyhow, a thread like this is in no sense getting a random sample of liberal arts majors....
Where a particular school places an economics department is going to depend on the structure of the university and its politics, whether economics is placed in the Liberal arts college, social science college, or whatever else doesn't change the fact that economics is in fact a social science. Likewise of sociology, psychology, etc.
Whether they're social sciences or liberal arts, degrees housed in the College of Liberal Arts ARE widely considered liberal arts. Read today's NYTimes and you'll see the update from the recent graduates who live at home- one is a liberal arts major in psychology and the reader comments below back up the widespread notion that psych is a liberal arts degree. It's one in the same to the general public.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
I think its safe to say that you don't know the difference between median and average. The the numbers you are citing are medians not averages, as
a result the the high number of teachers with liberal arts degrees with incomes around the median very much distorts the numbers. For example, take this data set:
[12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 36, 37, 38, 39, 39, 39, 39, 40, 40, 41, 45, 46, 46, 47, 49, 49, 51, 110]
The median is 39, yet there is only one person making 110 and five people with very poor salaries.
Also, the median starting salary for teachers is $35k and mid-career is around $50k, so the salary data for most liberal arts majors do match teachers salaries fairly closely.
.
I do know the difference between average and median and I misquoted the payscale article as average. So sorry.
Interesting though that no one is attacking the "lucrative" business salaries as only having one over $100k, while several are in poverty. Would you like to attack the petoleum engineering median of $150k by saying one graduate must be making $700k and the rest are all under $50k. Because it would be
just as plausible as your liberal arts median salary example, right?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
You were quoting me and responding to me and your comments had nothing to do with what I said, I have no idea what is going on in threads that I'm not involved with. .
If you're going to jump in on page 8 or whatever of a thread, you should probably read the whole damn thing first. And you are posting liberally in the other thread on this topic where people are going round and round about liberal arts vs business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
The data you are citing doesn't support what you are asserting here, you'd need to know the distribution of the data and due to the high number of teachers with liberal arts degrees, you'd have to know what the data set looks like if you exclude these people.
And my point was simple, this thread isn't going to provide anybody with any real information. Just by pure change you're going to have people with liberal arts degrees, despite their poor education, gaining jobs with good salaries. Some are totally unworthy, some have the right connections, some have gained skills else where, etc. Anyhow, a thread like this is in no sense getting a random sample of liberal arts majors....
Actually, it does, but I'm not going to waste any more of a lovely Sunday evening bickering with a whiny jerk who won't ever be satisfied until the whole world agrees with him.
What you said about connections, external skills, etc is true of all graduates, not just liberal arts majors, so again it's grossly unfair and inaccurate to dismiss all successful liberal arts majors as flukes or sucessful "despite" their liberal arts majors.
Whether they're social sciences or liberal arts, degrees housed in the College of Liberal Arts ARE widely considered liberal arts.
I really don't care if its "widely" considered such, they aren't the same, social sciences utilize scientific methodologies where as English, History, etc do not. Outside of merely bureaucratic matters, grouping these things together makes no sense, they are categorically different.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
Interesting though that no one is attacking the "lucrative" business salaries as only having one over $100k, while several are in poverty.
No one? I just suggested that business degrees are just as worthless as most liberal arts degrees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
Would you like to attack the petoleum engineering median of $150k by saying one graduate must be making $700k and the rest are all under $50k. Because it would be
just as plausible as your liberal arts median salary example, right?!
Um...huh? If a career has a median of $150k that means half the people in it make more than $150k. Now, its possible you could have a distribution like this:
[50,50,50,50,150,150,150,150,150]
But there is no reason to believe that this is the case, the distribution should be normal as there is nothing distorting it like there is in the case of most liberal arts degrees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
Actually, it does, but I'm not going to waste any more of a lovely Sunday evening bickering with a whiny jerk who won't ever be satisfied until the whole world agrees with him.
I see, showing off those critical thinking skills you picked up studying history. Awesome!
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80
so again it's grossly unfair and inaccurate to dismiss all successful liberal arts majors as flukes or sucessful "despite" their liberal arts majors.
If this thread was titled " What kind of jobs were you able to get with a science degree" or whatever else I'd make the same comment, after all this is a logical matter, the sample is entirely poisoned and therefore not valuable.
Also, I would never suggest that every liberal arts major that ends up doing well career wise is some fluke, just that statistically you should expect a number of flukes. What I would suggest is that, those people that studied English, History, etc and latter become successful would have become successful regardless.
This thread is going to be a very poisoned sample and as a result going to give you a very bad idea of what people with liberal arts degrees end up dong on average, after all, how many liberal arts majors that ended up working at Starbucks are going to post?
Furthermore liberal arts degrees aren't all the same and don't teach the same underlying skills, indeed, some of the degrees don't seem to teach much at all.
i dont buy this thread either.
everybody has an outstanding career and above average income.
easy to make things up when your on the computer.
i also dont buy the defense of liberal arts majors on here.
imo, it is a waste of time going for a liberal arts degree unless your going to grad school.
the only real worrthwile undergrad majors are in the engineering sectors and some business majors, like finance and accounting.
most people i know that graduated with a BA are either unemployed or working menial jobs.
one of those guys was a math major at a top 25 lac, and he is a temp at wells fargo. he should be at an investment bank making 6 figures.
i fell into the trap of a liberal arts degree being something that would be ok, and have thankfully talked myself out of it and plan to leave where im at and pursue a technical degree.
the only real worrthwile undergrad majors are in the engineering sectors and some business majors, like finance and accounting.
most people i know that graduated with a BA are either unemployed or working menial jobs.
Educationally, I don't see any major difference between English, Business, Engineering etc. They are all degree programs that provide poor educations, but unlike English, Historic, etc Engineering does provide strong technical skills that can be used to find lucrative employment.
Business undergrads are worthless...
Right now the economy is very poor for new grads so part of the difficulty in terms of jobs is just the economy. Someone with a strong liberal arts education (which is ironically not obtained by majoring in any particular liberal arts) has numerous employment opportunities, they just have to attach themselves to some industry from the ground up.
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