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GoGoGadgetChris posted:My sister in law recently finished her 7 year art history PhD program and hopefully isn't facing such awful prospects. Hope you got a spare bedroom
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Aug 14, 2018 03:41
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It's not even just history majors. The real issue is the PhD. Getting a PhD in the humanities is (sadly) one of the dumbest things anyone who cares about their finances could ever embark upon. I have peers who trekked on, some are almost done with their dissertation. Others are in the process of giving up. They're all flat out broke as poo poo and ineligible for most jobs outside of tutoring and low paying academic grunt work. Some of them are older than me and I think very bright individuals. Others have kids and other dependants. It's a pretty sad picture. Those of us who walked away with an MA or even a BA are fine, but that's because a PhD is just too much drat work/time for bullshit rewards. Another 4 years of loans and no opportunity to grow/diversity? Literally a financial death sentence for most Americans, one that they're gonna carry for decades. University is not cheap!! It's nuts but colleges gonna college.
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Aug 14, 2018 03:45
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FAUXTON posted:Good god, that's horrendous. Yep. One of my coworkers is a drummer, got a degree in music production BUT ALSO dual majored with an Economics degree from the business school (eventually went for MBA). Now he has a pretty cushy corporate job and enjoys music as a very devoted hobbyist and has never had to worry about paying bills and stuff. Good with money.
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Aug 14, 2018 03:46
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canyoneer posted:Yep. One of my coworkers is a drummer, got a degree in music production BUT ALSO dual majored with an Economics degree from the business school (eventually went for MBA). Congrats on knowing DJ D-Sol.
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Aug 14, 2018 03:49
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KingSlime posted:I'll second that, the skills I picked up in English Lit have proven to be tremendous assets in the professional world, and any college degree by itself is going to serve as a barebones entry ticket to many lucrative fields. Second that. I was a communication major with an emphasis in Public Relations. Did I ever get a job in my field? No. I wanted to be Brian Kinney and ended up as Ted Schmidt. But it launched me into decent stuff anyway. I've also noticed that in my current company you can be practically illiterate and get in the door...but if you want to move up, you'd better be able to write a coherent sentence. My friends who got degrees in stuff like history now do things adjust insurance claims, administer benefit plans for medium sized companies, or handle commercial property management. They're doing fine. The degrees got their foot in the door, their communication and customer service skills took care of the rest. But without the degree, the door would have been closed.
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Aug 14, 2018 04:13
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bob dobbs is dead posted:friend, art history is one of the only fields which is worse Counter anecdote my friend did an art history masters and now makes Megabucks doing some sort of auction thing for Sotheby's in Hong Kong and Singapore and London.
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Aug 14, 2018 06:01
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Get a nice job on a Park West Gallery Cruise and you're SET
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Aug 14, 2018 06:11
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blackmet posted:Second that. I was a communication major with an emphasis in Public Relations. Even worse: you ended up *scary ghost voice* a goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon
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Aug 14, 2018 08:10
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Brutal, Jesus. My sister in law recently finished her 7 year art history PhD program and hopefully isn't facing such awful prospects. You sweet summer child
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Aug 14, 2018 10:53
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Fell Fire posted:I know two art history majors. One works for the Girl Scouts and the other for a low-income loan coordinator. It's a bleak market. One of my best friends has a bachelor's in history. 15 years later and he's never worked in his field.
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Aug 14, 2018 10:57
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neonbregna posted:You sweet summer child Yes, but now when people get her name wrong she can correct them, "that's DOCTOR barista!" Do art history doctorates call themselves doctors?
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Aug 14, 2018 12:55
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Yeesh, who in the actual gently caress would enter a humanities graduate program that's not fully funded? 
Trustworthy fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 14:00
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Get a nice job on a Park West Gallery Cruise and you're SET
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Aug 14, 2018 14:13
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Krispy Wafer posted:Yes, but now when people get her name wrong she can correct them, "that's DOCTOR barista!" They're entitled to, but unless they're in a very narrow set of academic jobs they almost certainly never well.
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Aug 14, 2018 14:26
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I have a history BA. It was incredibly worthwhile in every way except for job prospects. I actually have a year-round teaching job at a university (thank christ), but they specifically passed over PhD applicants for being too qualified. Even 10 years ago when I was an undergrad my professors were warning us not to go to grad school for history. Society doesn't value it. Universities don't value it (except while you're still paying them for it). It's sad, because honestly if I had to rank the "value" of the various humanities I'd put history at the top. That reddit discussion is very focused on academic employment, but I don't see anyone talking about other types of education. We may not be able to enroll many students in history classes, but history is still a popular media topic. Books, movies, tv shows, games, etc. are all areas that historians should still be valued, even if there aren't a ton of jobs there either.
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Aug 14, 2018 15:00
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I have a History BA and loved the classes and department, and actually credit a lot of my less tangible professional skills and success to that degree. But I also got an Economics BS with a lot of math, modeling, and programming. Even though many of the actual skills I use now are self-taught or learned on the job, I credit that degree with opening up many of the professional doors and opportunities earlier on in my career. It is sad that the humanities are so looked down upon and I disagree with the whole mentality of "college = job training" but when college costs are five-figures per year most people simply have to look at the expected ROI of their degree programs. I don't like it, but it be that way. Many of my engineering friends and colleagues could stand to benefit from more education and exposure in the arts and humanities, both personally and professionally. STEMlords are the worst people. But frankly, taking on near/over six figures of debt for a History or most other arts & humanities degrees is really Bad With Money in the current state of the world. There will always be outliers and success stories, but statistically the odds are stacked heavily against you.
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Aug 14, 2018 18:03
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Taking on six figures of debt for pretty much any BA is BWM, wih only a very small handful of exceptions.
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Aug 14, 2018 18:35
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Good thing we let proto-adults take on undischargable loans, then Otherwise we might blame the lenders
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Aug 14, 2018 18:41
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The sooner we can erase memories all Men in Black/Incredibles style the sooner we can fix the student loan crisis. Don't pay? ZAAAAAAP! Fine, you can discharge it now like any other debt. Unless you got a videogame or law degree with no real value in the first place.
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Aug 14, 2018 18:46
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I wonder if there's a perception (common or not) that humanities degrees are desirable for unrelated fields due to the amount of research and writing work that's inherent to most of those degrees. You may not end up going through any math more complicated than trigonometry or possibly calculus, but being able to process vast amounts of unstructured information into a well-written report goes a hell of a long way, especially when your education is heavily focused on identifying gaps in the available information and seeking sources to fill those gaps. It probably boils down to a left-brain/right-brain beep boop kind of thing. STEM fields thrive on working within a structured set of boundaries (rules/laws/permissions, etc) humanities thrive where the boundaries are largely in defining your end product and not guiding your work in producing it.
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Aug 14, 2018 18:56
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Not a Children posted:Good thing we let proto-adults take on undischargable loans, then Proto-adult is an extremely generous description of 17-19 year olds.
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Aug 14, 2018 18:58
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Make more money with this one weird trick. The IRS hates him!! Need advice: If I make $55k per year, and I contribute 40% of my gross income to my 401k, will my paycheck actually be larger than it is now? quote:I used a few online calculators to compare. Right now, I'm putting in 5% of my gross income into my 401k. Naturally, the New York government taxes the poo poo out of me, so I'm wondering, if I put 40% of my income to my 401k, wouldn't that lower my tax rate thus increasing my paycheck? According to an online calculator, my income would actually go from $41k after taxes to $45k. This seems too good to be true so I just wanted some advice. Thank you!
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Aug 14, 2018 19:01
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder if there's a perception (common or not) that humanities degrees are desirable for unrelated fields due to the amount of research and writing work that's inherent to most of those degrees. You may not end up going through any math more complicated than trigonometry or possibly calculus, but being able to process vast amounts of unstructured information into a well-written report goes a hell of a long way, especially when your education is heavily focused on identifying gaps in the available information and seeking sources to fill those gaps. If you're talking about bachelor's degrees, at least 10+ years ago, it was parents telling their kids that any degree was fine, because jobs just wanted someone with a college degree. I hope most people have realized that's not as true now as it once was. The only people I've ever heard espousing the value of soft skills are people who have humanities degrees and personally experienced the growth of those skills. They're real skills, and I use them every day, but it's just not as marketable to employers who are looking for something like a list of certifications.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:02
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Barry posted:Make more money with this one weird trick. The IRS hates him!! Sure go ahead and try putting 22k a year into that thing
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Aug 14, 2018 19:02
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder if there's a perception (common or not) that humanities degrees are desirable for unrelated fields due to the amount of research and writing work that's inherent to most of those degrees. You may not end up going through any math more complicated than trigonometry or possibly calculus, but being able to process vast amounts of unstructured information into a well-written report goes a hell of a long way, especially when your education is heavily focused on identifying gaps in the available information and seeking sources to fill those gaps. This is pretty much how I spin my English degree when asked during interviews. “Wow you work in IT but have an English degree how’d that happen????”
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Aug 14, 2018 19:07
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Barry posted:Make more money with this one weird trick. The IRS hates him!! 401k accounts are basically perpetual motion machines but with money.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:08
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The bar for a college degree is terribly low. A much higher bar is being able to sell yourself effectively, regardless of degree.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:10
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Fitzy Fitz posted:If you're talking about bachelor's degrees, at least 10+ years ago, it was parents telling their kids that any degree was fine, because jobs just wanted someone with a college degree. I hope most people have realized that's not as true now as it once was. Oh it's definitely a lot less definable than certs, but when you're a hiring manager who's seen both sides of that stem/non-stem coin and needs someone at a relatively inspecific entry-level role who can, say, write an email that answers more questions than it creates, they're going to go with the person who spent substantial amounts of time in school writing and possibly interviewing sources. It may be some business intelligence role that has nothing to do with medieval central europe, but there's a division of labor that is probably driven by schools trying to narrow the focuses of their degree programs as a budget issue.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:18
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Yeah people who don't think "soft skills" and humanities degrees aren't attractive to employers are a bit out of touch with many industry standards and market needs in my experience. At least in thriving, competitive markets, there's countless well-paying jobs that are specifically looking for these types of skills. Every indistry in existence and basically all departments in any given org need staff members who can handle research and communication. It's not that hard to find a niche I know that skepticism with this kind of stuff is high in this thread, which was my first sign that maybe I shouldn't be taking career advice from this forum. Local groups/indistry specific meet ups should be your main source of info for what jobs look like in your region, along with a healthy heaping of online web research. Maybe I'm just in a really good job market but I've never wanted for writing work that pays stem-level wages. You also have to be skilled of course, and many could argue that I didn't need the degree for the talent but at least it's nice to see so many of my English peers doing well and, as douchebros everywhere like to say, "crushing it." And in a job market stuffed with degree-holders, you're really gonna not want to be on the losing end of any screening process Good, effective communications are extremely important and the demand is not going away, what with the world becoming much smaller via the internet. Many people just don't know how to market what they got, which is definitely a problem. KingSlime fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 19:31
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FAUXTON posted:It probably boils down to a left-brain/right-brain beep boop kind of thing. STEM fields thrive on working within a structured set of boundaries (rules/laws/permissions, etc) humanities thrive where the boundaries are largely in defining your end product and not guiding your work in producing it. On the flipside, you could say the same about practicing law, doing positional research, or writing copy.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:35
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C'mon man, they majored in humanities. Let them have this.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:37
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Dik Hz posted:I disagree with this dichotomy. Some science is really formulaic, while other aspects are literally going where the rules aren't known. Some engineering is by the book and some engineering requires flexibility and creativity. Same with coding. Absolutely, I think how formulaic or open-ended a task is really depends on the intended goal + accompanying scaffolding (if any). It's not a simple science/not science split
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Aug 14, 2018 19:37
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KingSlime posted:Maybe I'm just in a really good job market but I've never wanted for writing work that pays stem-level wages. This is just a 'maybe' for you? You're saying the belief that humanities-degree-holders are less desireable appears out of touch to you? What sort of readily available writing jobs in major markets regularly pay stem level wages?
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Aug 14, 2018 19:38
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Tech writers can do quite well for themselves at big tech companies, but it sounds like god-awful boring work (to me).
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Aug 14, 2018 19:40
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This latest iteration of humanities/STEM arguments is god-awful boring (to me)
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Aug 14, 2018 19:42
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Something Offal posted:This is just a 'maybe' for you? You're saying the belief that humanities-degree-holders are less desireable appears out of touch to you? Yeah I think it's a big myth perpetuated by people who don't have a full picture of how orgs function/the roles that they need to fill See: all the empty headed, very well compensated MBA peeps who are absolutely vital to the business development/sales side of things. They're needed everywhere, in every single context. The same rings true for other skillset, including researchers, writers, analysts, etc. Humanities degrees lend themselves very well to those roles and employers know this. But like I said maybe my analysis is a bit rose tinted, as I'm in a very busy metro area Guinness posted:Tech writers can do quite well for themselves at big tech companies, but it sounds like god-awful boring work (to me). I am dead inside, yes Something Offal posted:What sort of readily available writing jobs in major markets regularly pay stem level wages? Grant writing, tech writing, online marketing, copywriitng (avoid the low skilled entry level gigs), ghostwriting, just off the top of my head. There's so much more out there too. Did you guys know that presentation designer is a well paying, respectable career? Making god drat powerpoints and poo poo. I've done a few myself. That's what I mean when I say people just talk out of their rear end when they paint such a bleak picture without even looking onto their options. College level skills are super attractive to any entity that wants to make money KingSlime fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 19:42
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New HOA company is sending me a bill after two years of living in house with no proofquote:I bought a house in Utah back in May, 2016. When I bought it I was under the impression that I would be paying a monthly HOA fee. After moving in I received no word as to how to actually pay this, how much, or where to send it. I had an escrow setup for me and I erroneously thought that the HOA dues where being taken from there.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:43
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KingSlime posted:Yeah I think it's a big myth perpetuated by people who don't have a full picture of how orgs function/the roles that they need to fill Posted a question the second half of my post, sorry for the ninja edit. Could you answer? Curious as to what job types are readily available beyond 'technical writer' which is a little niche and I don't think pays stem-level wages. Though the average salary for that title is $70k which isn't bad. I don't think MBA-only positions qualify as readily available roles because the MBA is a prerequisite, and I would qualify that as a business pedigree regardless of what your BA/BS was.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:45
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Something Offal posted:Posted a question the second half of my post, sorry for the ninja edit. Could you answer? Curious as to what job types are readily available beyond 'technical writer' which is a little niche and I don't think pays stem-level wages. Though the average salary for that title is $70k which isn't bad. Bro of course he's going to support his point with anecdotal evidence and not numbers or statistics, he's a loving humanities major.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:48
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KingSlime posted:Yeah people who don't think "soft skills" and humanities degrees aren't attractive to employers are a bit out of touch with many industry standards and market needs in my experience. At least in thriving, competitive markets, there's countless well-paying jobs that are specifically looking for these types of skills. Very much agree with this, but with an important caveat. One of the biggest things that are missing from people trying to jump careers is not showing they are capable of learning the skills. What I look for in a comp sci grad is not they know the exact language we're using, or they have coded things that are similar to what we're looking to build, it's the fact that a BS in Comp Sci (usually) shows they have the ability to learn something and produce something. If you have an English degree, but you have a github repository that shows a bunch of stuff you've built, that works too! Lots of people just want to say "I'm smart, I can learn fast", but hiring managers like me don't really want to just take your word for it. Spend some time and actually learn something and have something to show for it (and know it enough to be able to answer questions/defend it) and we'll overlook the "wrong" degree and see that breadth of soft skills as a big plus. Lockback fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 19:48
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