Careers & Humanities
Careers & Humanities
Humanities Futures
Time to set the record straight: the humanities provide an excellent path toward both personal and professional success after college.
Read on to learn more about what studying the humanities really means for your future and to find tools to help you get there.
Employers Prioritize Skills the Humanities Cultivate
In addition to providing meaningful personal benefits that last a lifetime, humanities majors develop practical skills that are in high demand by employers.
Humanities Majors are Employed in a Variety of Occupations
Research shows that humanities majors are employed in a wider variety of occupations than nearly any other field.
Bachelor Degrees in Humanities Bring a Big Return on Investment
Majoring in the humanities is a solid financial choice; not only are humanities majors’ earnings nearly identical to those of business and engineering majors, but there’s also evidence that humanities majors have a higher ceiling in terms of income later in life.
Humanities Majors Matriculate to Medical School at Higher Rates
Majoring in the humanities is an excellent choice if you want to go to graduate or professional school; humanities majors excel at entrance exams and are accepted at higher rates than nearly any other major for medical school.
Demand For Humanities Skills Will Increase
In the new era of AI-powered technology, humanities majors will be even more in demand as employers seek critical thinking and creative skills that can’t be replicated through automation.
More Humanities Majors Are Satisfied With Their Jobs
Humanities majors also develop practices that help them build meaningful lives over the long haul and are more likely to report satisfaction with what they studied during college.
Humanities Futures Tools
One challenge of professional development for college students: there has never been so much information at your fingertips, and yet, it can be overwhelming to sift through it all. Where to start?
Whether you’re already a humanities major, or just humanities-curious, below you’ll find a curated set of resources that can help you make connections between your humanities skills and experiences and your professional goals.
Humanities Careers Podcast
This podcast provides a window into the lives of humanities majors, exploring why they chose to study what they studied and how those choices have manifested throughout their lives after graduating from college.
What Are You Going To Do With That? Podcast
Humanities Toolkit
Looking for facts about how the humanities prepare you for life after graduation? This resource provides an excellent set of data, complete with reams of graphs and charts, about the many ways humanities majors thrive both in college and after.
Networking
Love it or hate it, LinkedIn provides a wealth of information for humanities majors who would like to learn about and connect with UP humanities alumni. You can search by major, career industry, location, and number of years since graduation. You’ll need to create a LinkedIn account if you don’t have one already and then join two groups–the Pilots Guiding Pilots LinkedIn page and the official UP Alumni LinkedIn page–which will allow you to message alumni directly from the site. Use this handy tip sheet for navigating the sometimes byzantine world of LinkedIn.
Career Exploration Tool
This incredibly thorough tool from UC-Berkeley allows you to select a major from an exhaustive list and then explore the types of industries those majors go on to work in along with specific strategies for building sought-after skills in those fields while you’re still in college.
What Can I Do With This Major?
Utilizing the Humanities Mindset
In popular culture the humanities are often framed as at best, disconnected from, and at worst, antithetical to, developing a successful career. This article from Columbia University flips that script and instead provides concrete methods and examples for how your humanities education in fact provides excellent tools for your personal and professional development.
How To Apply Humanities Mindsets to Your Career Development
Displaying Your Skills
Sometimes what you really need is simply to see examples of how other humanities majors frame their coursework and experiences in their own materials. Check out these examples from UP and UC-Irvine.
Going UP?
Go farther and dream bigger than you ever thought possible. Join a community that's on a mission to change the world for the better. New experiences are waiting.