| Daily News | News Releases | Special Bulletins | Daily News Archives |

| The View from Trent | Trent Magazine | Focus Trent | Build 2000 |

Calendar of Events

Search the Site

Value Added:
Humanities and Social Science Degrees

by Torben Drewes, Associate Professor of Economics, Trent University
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of the OCUFA Forum

Students regularly appear at my office door looking for help with their career decisions. Whether selecting a major or deciding upon graduate studies, the question they ask more often than any other is what type of job one gets with a Bachelor's degree in Economics. A simple enough question, but one that is rarely answered to their satisfaction.

There is no specific occupation, they are told, for which their degree represents professional certification, but the analytical, communications, team-work and learning skills they acquire while in university are valued by employers in the new economy and will put them in good stead after graduation. What they would rather hear from me is a job title ... the name of an occupation ... some identifiable labour market destination to which their degree is a necessary condition of entry. Without that, they remain skeptical about the financial return to their education. Life would be easier if I taught Engineering for I doubt that any student would then ask me what they would be after graduation and, even if they did, the answer would be easy ... they would be engineers.

To some extent, these students are right to be concerned, for the disconnect between curriculum content and identifiable occupations does present difficulties for liberal arts and sciences majors immediately after graduation. In a recent research project, Philip Giles and I used the five-year panel of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics to compare the labour market experiences from 1993 through 1997 of these graduates with their counterparts in the more applied university streams. The sample consisted of almost 1,500 individuals in the labour force whose highest level of education was a Bachelor's degree and was divided into two categories: those with a degree in the Humanities and Social Sciences and those who graduated from more applied programs.1

Humanities and social science graduates who were less than 25 years old at the beginning of the survey period experienced an average of almost 23 weeks of unemployment over the five years from 1993 to 1997. By contrast, their counterparts emerging with degrees in the more applied streams faced an average of less than 10 weeks. And when they were working, the applied graduates earned a significantly higher hourly wage. Young men in the applied stream earned an average hourly wage rate 25 per cent higher than young male humanities and social science graduates. For women, the difference was much smaller at 3.3 per cent.

The school-to-work transition is clearly more difficult for the humanities and social sciences graduates. The picture changes considerably, however, if one looks beyond the several years following graduation. The unemployment experiences across the two educational streams are almost identical for individuals in the 35-44 year old age category and, once beyond the age of 45, the humanities and social science graduates actually experienced significantly fewer weeks of unemployment over the survey period (5.4 weeks vs. 9 weeks for the applied grads). A similar story holds true for wages where hourly wage rates for both genders with humanities and social science degrees catch up and then overtake those of their applied counterparts in the over 45 year old age group.

These findings of convergence in labour market outcomes are consistent with other empirical work using different data sources and income measures rather than wage rates. Indeed, one might elevate these results to the level of a stylized fact: graduates in the liberal arts and sciences may initially be disadvantaged by the lack of vocational content in their programs of study, requiring them to undertake longer job search or more labour market experimentation before embarking on a continuous and upward career path. Once established in that market, however, they do as well as graduates from applied courses of study.

The wider public debate about the value of liberal arts and sciences in the labour market parallels the discussions in my office. Just as I extol the usefulness of the essential skills produced by such programs, so too do business leaders talk about the need for people with the ability to communicate, analyze, work in teams, and learn on the job in rapidly changing environments. The statistical evidence supporting the contention that graduates from these programs face comfortable futures in that labour market is also widely available to the public. Why, then, is there continued and widespread skepticism about the liberal arts and sciences?

In my view, the primary reason is the inability to draw a one-to-one correspondence between programs of study in the liberal arts and sciences and identifiable occupations. A computer science major will be put to work as a computer scientist, applying the technical knowledge learned during his or her studies. But a history major will not get a job as a historian after an undergraduate degree, so what good is an intimate knowledge of medieval Europe? Even people who ought to know better jump from the observation that philosophy majors do not generally obtain employment as philosophers to the conclusion that the deepest question they will have to deal with after graduation is "Would you like fries with that?"

The evidence simply does not support these conclusions. Indeed, the paradox is that the development of more generic, but valuable, skills may actually give the liberal arts and science graduates a leg up on their more vocational counterparts since such skills are much less likely to be rendered obsolete by technological or trade induced shocks. The SLID data, for example, shows that graduates of these programs are more mobile between industries and occupations. The ability to switch sectors of employment has value in a rapidly changing economy, reducing the riskiness of the skills portfolio.

Post-secondary education is about much more than the economics of labour markets. But if a bottom line is required, it is this: the labour market clearly has room for, and rewards, a very broad and diverse range of skills. Students whose interests and aptitudes lead them into the liberal arts and sciences will not be financially disadvantaged by their choice.

Footnote:
1. Full details are available in Giles, P., T. Drewes, Liberal Arts Degrees and the Labour Market, Perspectives on Labour and Income, Vol. 13, #3 (Autumn 2001).

Click here to open a pdf of corresponding graphs. (requires Acrobat Reader)

Back to Trent's Daily News