US humanities graduates feel unprepared for life beyond college

Close to half of US humanities graduates feel that their undergraduate institution did not prepare them for life and regret their choice of major, a leading scholarly society has found.

The analysis of survey data by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences found – as it and others have done in the past – that US university graduates across the range of fields, including many in the humanities, have generally satisfying lives and careers.

Where there are problems among humanities graduates, according to the 241-year-old academy, they appear to be driven largely by unrealistic expectations of entering students.

One leading cause of that, said a co-author of the report, Robert Townsend, director of humanities, arts and culture programmes at the academy, was that humanities faculty too often failed to make clear to their students that they were teaching them both skills and content.

“If students leave their classes without understanding they are learning more than just subject knowledge, I think that is on the teacher,” Dr Townsend said. “I suspect that failed connection lies behind the doubts about their majors and their larger experience in college.”

The academy was created in 1780 by a group of scholars and leaders of the American Revolution. Its State of the Humanities report is a compilation of three major national surveys – the American Community Survey, the National Survey of College Graduates and the Gallup Alumni Survey.

Together, the academy reported, these data show that about 90 per cent of humanities graduates are satisfied with their lives, two-thirds said their jobs let them do what they do best, and most regard their jobs as ideal for them.

At the same time, only 47 per cent of graduates from the arts, and just 60 per cent from the humanities, said they believed their college “prepared me well for life outside of college”, and only about 60 per cent of arts and humanities graduates said they would choose the same major again. Those figures were well below the averages for graduates of science and engineering programmes, the academy said.

Education majors had the lowest median salaries but felt that they had enough money, and they showed the highest levels of satisfaction with their lives and jobs, the report said. Only 41 per cent of business majors said that contributing to society was a vital aspect of their work, the lowest rate among all fields, where the average was 53 per cent, it said.

Data used in the analysis were compiled prior to the pandemic, Dr Townsend said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com