Some of the most important questions for policymakers and educators in the humanities concern the career paths of humanities
students once they leave the university. How directly are they applying the skills they acquired in their undergraduate work?
How much can they expect to earn? How satisfied are they in their positions? These questions cannot be fully addressed with existing
data, but the findings of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B), a longitudinal study of graduating college seniors, give some
answers for one cohort of young Americans who graduated in the mid-1990s.
In addition to providing information on the career paths of humanities college graduates, this section focuses specifically on the
relationship between humanistic education and work in fields such as business, medicine, and law. Analyses of employment data, as
well as data on graduate school admission tests, permit a rudimentary assessment of the extent to which humanities training prepares
college graduates for a diverse range of occupations.
Although master’s degrees can be comparable to professional degrees in terms of preparing students for specialized occupations,
as well as in the investments of time and money that these degrees require for completion of courses of study, there are currently
no national data on employment outcomes for master’s degree recipients in the humanities. Because questions relating to master’s
degree recipients must be bypassed for the time being, this section on college graduates in the humanities is followed by one on
those with humanities Ph.D.’s.
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Indicator III-3
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Occupations of College Graduates Who Majored in Humanities Disciplines
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Data pertaining to the educational and occupational trajectories of college graduates are available from the B&B study. This study
tracked a nationally representative sample of individuals from the time of their college graduation in 1993 through 2003. Because the
NCES’s other longitudinal studies of young adults’ educational and occupational paths do not include sufficient numbers of college
graduates to permit analysis by college major, the B&B study of this one cohort group is the main source of information on which this
indicator relies.
The B&B data indicate that in 2003, ten years after graduating from college, students with an undergraduate background in the
humanities were largely concentrated in two fields: education and business (Figure III-3). The humanities sent a greater proportion
of their graduates into education occupations than did any other field—and more than twice as large a percentage as the social
sciences, which sent the next greatest share of its graduates into education-related occupations. Only social science majors were
substantially more likely to go into business. Ten percent of humanities graduates were employed as editors, writers, or performers.
Occupations of this kind were considerably more common among humanities majors than among those in other fields.
Further editions of the Humanities Indicators will include a comparison of the occupations of humanities college graduates from
1993 and 2003 using data derived from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG), which provides a once-a-decade snapshot of the occupations and
incomes of people with undergraduate and advanced degrees in a variety of fields. These data are collected by the NSF in an effort
to monitor the career paths of those with training in the sciences and engineering. In order to generate a cohort of such students
to track, the NSF gathers detailed educational and occupational information from a sample of approximately 200,000 persons drawn
from the larger pool of all those who indicated on their decennial census forms that they had completed at least an undergraduate
degree. This process generates a wealth of data on nonscience degree holders, which the NSF does not analyze itself but makes
available to researchers and the general public.
Beginning in 2009, data on field of undergraduate degree will be collected as part of
the American Community Survey (ACS). This will make possible the generation of annual estimates of the percentage of humanities
majors in different occupations. The first of these ACS data will be available in 2010.
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Indicator III-4
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Salaries & Job Satisfaction of Humanities College Graduates
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Data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ B&B study describe not only what kinds of occupations humanities
college graduates pursue (see Indicator III-3,
Occupations of College Graduates Who Majored in Humanities Disciplines)
but also the quality of their work experience. The salary and job satisfaction data presented here were collected in 2003, ten years after
survey respondents had left college.
At approximately $48,000 (2007 dollars), the median salary of humanities college graduates (Figure III-4a) was higher than that of arts majors
and those with degrees in the “helping fields” (social work/public administration and education). At the same time, however, it
was notably lower than the $55,370 median salary for all college graduates and was also substantially lower than the incomes of
students who majored in the natural sciences, engineering, business, and law, all of whose median salaries were greater than that for the
1993 cohort as a whole.
In spite of these differences in level of compensation, the academic fields all reported similarly high average levels of job
satisfaction: 87–93% of respondents with degrees in each field described themselves as being “generally satisfied” with their
jobs (Figure III-4b). Regarding the more specific question of whether their current employment afforded them opportunities
to use their education, approximately 80% of humanities majors said that it did. The majority of these graduates also reported that
their jobs provided opportunity for advancement. The only groups to report substantially higher levels of satisfaction with this
aspect of their 2003 jobs were biological and physical science majors.
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Indicator III-5
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Undergraduate Humanities Majors and the Professions
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In order to assess the extent to which individuals with undergraduate majors in the humanities are prepared for professional
employment, this indicator first focuses on their performance on professional school entrance examinations in business, medicine,
and law. To be sure, data on the educational backgrounds of those taking professional school admission examinations do not reveal
what careers those individuals actually pursue after college. Nonetheless, given the substantial fees and preparation involved in
professional school examinations, test-taking by humanities majors does in itself indicate what career options they are seriously
exploring. Moreover, test results can provide some measure of the applicability of the humanistic knowledge and skills gained in
college to the entrance requirements for various professional occupations. After reviewing such professional examination data,
this indicator looks more generally at professional degree holders in order to ascertain what proportion of them have bachelor’s
degrees in the humanities.
The Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) is the primary admissions test for business school. Data on who takes it, which are
available from the Graduate Management Admissions Council, reveal not only that humanities majors have constituted one of the
smallest percentages of those pursuing graduate business education but also that since 2001 this percentage has declined, so
that by 2005 humanities majors accounted for less than 5% of all GMAT examinees (Figure III-5a). They have, however, tended to
perform strongly on this test. Thus, while science, engineering, and mathematics majors have collectively had the highest scores
in recent years, averaging 571 (on a scale from 200 to 800) in 2005, humanities majors were not far behind, with an average score of
551 in 2005 (Figure III-5b).
Like the GMAT, the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) did not draw a large percentage of its examinees
from the ranks of humanities majors, who must do significant work in science, in addition to fulfilling the requirements for their
major, in order to be prepared for the MCAT and apply to medical school. Between 1991 and 2005, the proportion of humanities majors
taking the MCAT was approximately 3.5% (Figure III-5c).1 But even though they were in the minority,
humanities majors were once again strong performers relative to majors in other fields; they were also the highest-scoring group of
majors on the MCAT between 1991 and 2000 (Figure III-5d). Between 2001 and 2005, only math and statistics majors scored higher than
humanities students.
In comparison to both the GMAT and the MCAT, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) has a much greater proportion of test takers
with undergraduate degrees in the humanities. Between 1995 and 2000, the humanities share of LSAT examinees hovered around 21%
of all test takers (Figure III-5e). Although the percentage declined slightly between 2000 and 2002, it began to rebound by 2003
and was back up to a level of almost 20% by 2004. And, once again, relative to graduates in other fields, humanities graduates were
strong performers on the LSAT, with an average score between 154 and 155 (the LSAT is scored on a scale that ranges from 120 to 180)
every year for the 1995–2005 period (Figure III-5f). Only those who majored in science, math, or engineering have traditionally scored
higher—but by less than one point.
Not only did humanities majors tend to take the LSAT in greater numbers than the GMAT and the MCAT, they also represented a significant
proportion of those who completed law degree programs. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program
Participation (SIPP), 28% of those holding advanced degrees in law (LL.B., J.D., and Ph.D.) majored in a humanities
field in 2001 (Figure III-5g). Although this percentage was already somewhat higher than for any other field, the proportion
would actually have been greater if those with bachelor’s degrees in history, a discipline that the Census Bureau classifies as a
social science, were included. Humanities majors were less well represented among doctors. Only 8% of those with medical degrees
majored in the humanities as undergraduates (Figure III-5h).
Data on law and medical degree holders are presented for 2001 because this is the only year for which the U.S. Census Bureau
has conducted this type of analysis of SIPP data. The Bureau’s analysis did not estimate the proportion of business degree
holders who majored in the humanities as undergraduates. For subsequent editions of the Humanities Indicators, project staff
will conduct their own analysis of SIPP data in order to determine the share of M.B.A.’s with humanities backgrounds and to capture
changes, if any, over time, in the proportion of professional degree holders who majored in the humanities.
Note
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Field percentages will not add up to 100% for each year because the figure excludes the percentage of examinees who reported an
undergraduate major in biology; these students are the majority of MCAT test takers.
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