Thinking outside the liberal arts degree to find success after college (while graduating in four years)

Almost a half of all students change their minds on a degree before graduating from college. These students no doubt realize that an undergraduate degree means a lot, and it could direct the future of their career. After all, why would you have an Engineering Degree if you realized you hated Engineering halfway through your college studies? However, when a student chooses to change a degree, it can extend the length of college and the total student loan that will need to be repaid. For parents, this can be a terrifying thought. In fact, my mother expressed gratitude that I had stuck with History as my major throughout my entire college career, for her own sanity as much as for anything else, I’m sure.

And yet, my BA in History was far from a slam dunk on a resume in today’s economy. Most of my options for getting a job in my degree consisted of getting at least a Master’s Degree in order to become a teacher, or a PhD to try my luck at getting a job at a University. My conversations with younger Professors in college left me thinking this wasn’t my ticket to success.

My eventual career landed me far, far away from my History degree, and yet I got the position through a combination of good fortune, determination, and my collegiate experience.

Extra-curricular activities and college jobs can have as much of an impact as your Major on your future job prospects. In fact, many employers see a Liberal Arts major as a big benefit in a potential employee:

A liberal arts education is not designed as training for a specific occupation. What it does do better than any other type of college or university preparation is sharpen analytical and communication skills, teach students how to learn, and provide students with a body of knowledge that can be applied to larger contexts. Thus, it is no surprise that the leaders in most career fields are liberal arts graduates whose specialized training occurred in graduate or professional school.

My addition to that quote is that although graduate or professional school makes a big difference, continuing education takes many forms. In college, I had the good fortune to get a job working at a Greeno Sub Shop, a student-run business at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I learned many business fundamentals like budgets, profit margins, and marketing. I also learned a great deal about what it meant to collaborate and take personal responsibility. Many of my co-managers at the time would agree with me that it almost felt like a second degree, and although I’ve learned a great deal more, I do feel that that experience helped set me apart in a field of applicants, some of whom no doubt had more relevant formal education than me.

Why am I saying this? Because rather than spend all of your time making sure your academics are going to fall in line with what you want to do when you get out of school (which you may change your mind about or reality may force you to change your mind about), it might be worthwhile to spend some time thinking about how you’re pulling on the other resources in a college setting. Getting an interesting student job, running for student government, or getting involved in a club, could open you up to knowledge and experiential learning that you would not have received within your major, making you a more rounded job applicant in the future, without having to worry about how to pay for those extra semesters of college.