The Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State University recognizes a simple truth: that 'as more people get information from YouTube, Twitter and other non-traditional sources, newsrooms need journalists who understand how to tell compelling public affairs stories in cutting edge ways.' As a consequence, the program aims to train experienced journalists in marshaling social media to tell their stories. Where might those cutting-edge journalists come from? In the case of W.M. Kiplinger, namesake of the Kiplinger program, it was Ohio State's undergraduate program in journalism. But of course journalists can come from a broad range of undergraduate backgrounds. The bottom line is that universities house a number of undergraduate and graduate education and training programs for turning out professional journalists.
One caveat for that bottom line is that journalism is among the majors that appear regularly these days on lists of 'worst college majors' for your career and financial prospects. According to Forbes, the unemployment rate for recent journalism graduates is 7.7%, and the average salary for recent journalism grads is $32,000 a year.
This brings me to a recent Kiplinger.com article in the popular genre of 'worst college majors' for your career. Kiplinger is of course a major publishing company founded by W.M. Kiplinger, namesake of Ohio State's journalism fellows program, former journalism major. The ten very, very bad, bad college majors on the Kiplinger list are, in order:
10. English
9. sociology
8. drama and theater arts
7. liberal arts
6. studio arts
5. graphic design
4. philosophy and religious studies
3. film and photography
2. fine arts
1. anthropology
For some context, bearing in mind that journalism, not on the list, but the course of study that resulted in the modern-day entity known as Kiplinger.com, a very respectable and very lucrative business and finance news outlet, has a recent graduate unemployment rate of 7.7% and average starting salary $32,000, this Kiplinger article informs us that:
English majors (infamous number 10) who are recent grads have a lower unemployment rate (6.9) and a median starting salary of...$32,000. Drama and Theater Arts recent grads (infamous number 8) have an unemployment rate of 7.8% and median starting salary of $26,000. Notably, the Kiplinger article characterizes such circumstances as 'a brutal combination of low compensation and high unemployment.' Imagine what you could earn were you to major in one of Kiplinger's Ten Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career? If you majored in medical assisting services (laudatory number 10), your unemployment rate as a recent grad would be as low as 5.4%, and your median starting salary would be as high as $43,000 a year. Obviously majoring in medical assisting services over English is, for Kiplinger, a no-brainer. And journalism? I'm sure good old W.M. Kiplinger himself would have traded his journalism training for a guaranteed more lucrative career in medical assisting services, or management information systems (laudatory number 9), or construction services (laudatory number 8), or medical technologies (laudatory number 7). If I'm reading correctly: if your major has the word 'services,' 'technology,' or 'systems' in it, you're good to go. If your major has the word 'arts' in it, you're fucked.
To this point I've put aside the fact that many of these 'majors' are actually just buzzwords and assemblages of actual courses of study that in many cases bear little relationship to actual college programs. 'Philosophy and Religious Studies,' for example, sounds great if your purpose is to write an article demeaning non-vocational majors; but philosophy and religion are usually and broadly two different majors that feed into two very different career paths. Likewise it's easy to lump 'medical assisting services' into one big category, as though training in a top nursing or physical therapy program is the same as doing a two-year associates degree in 'hospital communications.' Once we start seriously splitting hairs--in other words, once we start evaluating courses of study based on the factors that matter most, rather than how closely the names of the courses resemble the names of jobs in general fields of work--it becomes clear that these lists of 'good' and 'evil' majors tell us nothing more than this:
These majors don't sound like any jobs, so these majors are bad for your career.
These majors sound like jobs, so these majors are good for your career.
Beyond the specifics of programs, it's also important to consider quality and reputation of degree, regardless of major. Would Kiplinger by any chance want to compare the unemployment rate of Yale sociology majors to the unemployment rate of entrepreneurial studies majors at Gateway Community College in New Haven? Would Kiplinger dare to compare the average starting and mid-career salaries of 'liberal arts' graduates of colleges like Bucknell, Amherst, or Dartmouth, regularly ranked among the top colleges for graduates' salaries, to for-profit or open-admissions colleges' medical technologies graduates? I'm not suggesting that elite colleges are the only way to go, or even necessarily the best way to go; but judging even the market value of a degree by type of major is even more shallow than judging the value of a degree by institutional prestige. And if we're judging on a shallow basis already by creating a hierarchy of degrees, perhaps Kiplinger should have the courage to fully own the elitism behind its article and note, as any responsible journalistic outlet should, that graduating from Harvard still means more for your pocketbook and your career prospects than graduating with a degree in management information systems.
All of this is of course beside the point, really. The most disgusting thing about this genre of 'worst majors for your career' articles is that they're written by a bunch of narrow-minded, know-nothing business and finance reporters whose job is essentially to tell you that your value system ought to be primarily monetary, and anything else is idealistic or, dismissively, 'a nice sentiment.' For these people, there is no acknowledged, practical middle ground between 'doing what you love' and completely selling out to a mind-numbing job that's clearly in demand because what it demands, in more cases than not, is to be an unthinking body performing a series of alienating tasks for 8-10 hours a day. At the end of the day, you can have a salary of $43,000 instead of $37,000, because you gave up that totally idealistic pursuit of studying something in college that you find interesting. Now, with that extra dough, you can buy things to occupy the rest of the life you've traded for Kiplinger's version of career-minded practicality. Congratulations.
In all seriousness, making a few extra thousand dollars a year is a big deal. It can be the difference between saving for a home, a vacation, a more comfortable retirement, etc., and living check to check. But if we put all of this in perspective--not Kiplinger's warped perspective--even making $32,000 a year is doing pretty well for yourself, better than many of our parents and grandparents ever had it. If you can start out at $32,000 a year as a teacher, a museum curator, a journalist, a theater manager, a graphic designer, an editorial assistant, a grantwriter, an analyst at a nonprofit organization, a community organizer, a social worker, a psychologist, etc., doing something that doesn't make you feel alienated or like you're lending 40-50 hours/week to a cause or purpose in which you feel no stake whatsoever, you're at worst doing pretty damn well for yourself, and at best in the early stages of a truly great career. Maybe as a founder of a highly respected and highly profitable publishing business like, say, Kiplinger.
I feel sad for all the young students and their parents who are consuming these kinds of articles about what college major is best or worst for a career. I feel especially sad for those who will enter a course of study simply because such articles say it's hot, and find that by the time they've graduated the technology has changed or the industry has changed or the economy demands something entirely different. I feel bad for the fact that the United States, whose most far-reaching and lucrative exports are our arts and creativity industries, has begun to lose sight of the bigger picture, to lose sight of the value of not merely creative enterprises themselves, but the relatively expensive time and space it requires to innovate and to achieve great things. I feel bad for the fact that so many of today's college students won't have the opportunity to understand college as perhaps the only time in their lives where they'll be afforded the privilege of learning about something they love, find interesting, find relevant, no matter what job it ostensibly leads or does not lead to. I worry for a country of excellent widget producers, non-thinkers, safe betters. I wonder about those who think that the expert building of scaffolding around substance will somehow come to replace substance itself.
