Whether you’re a science whiz heading off to college to study geotechnical engineering or a budding sociologist declaring your major in Women’s Studies, by now the idea that strong math and science skills are signs of intelligence while other skills aren’t as valuable has probably already long taken root in your mind. If you’re one of the thousands of students planning on getting a degree in something that starts with “Creative," “Liberal," “Classic," “Cultural," or “Interdisciplinary," then you bet there will be high school counselors raising their eyebrows at your intended major, or everyone always asking if “you want to be a teacher," or politicians saying things about you like that “it isn’t a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists."
In fact, it appears that many politicians seem to voice sentiments similar to Florida governor Rick Scott's rag at anthropology majors. Traditionally, most proponents of government subsidies in education that exclude the liberal arts and humanities have been conservative Republicans, but the criticism has proven more widespread than that. Even the Democratic and usually left-leaning liberal President Obama once commented that “folks could make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.”
That particular example may have a slightly different context considering the fact that Pres. Obama wasn’t endorsing what we traditionally consider to be a STEM field, but was rather promoting trade schools and crafts (such as carpenter or plumbing school, for example). However, the pattern represented here is the view that the potential financial value of education is the primary thing that students should be considering when thinking about their education and career choices. The idea that a field of study is not worth going into solely because it’s unlikely to bring in money is one of the most common criticisms I hear about studying something like art history or anthropology, not only in the media and in political rhetoric, but also from my own family members and friends. With titles such as “Where the Jobs Are, and the College Grads Aren’t”, articles that complain of “too many liberal arts graduates and not enough science and engineering students” seem to blame students who are passionate about other fields or possess skills in non-STEM related areas for having difficulty finding a job in a highly competitive market.
Indeed, it’s no secret that the main reason we tend to devalue liberal arts and humanities education is because it is simply not profitable. Politicians don’t want to fund it because they feel that they won’t get anything out of it. In their eyes, the economy will benefit most from engineers, doctors, scientists, manufacturers, lawyers, and other professionals with relatively high incomes who can contribute directly to the nation’s infrastructure. It’s very clear where people’s values lie when it comes to this kind of rhetoric: money and productivity over personal autonomy and well-being. This mode of thinking doesn’t see education as the opportunity to pursue higher education in a field that one is interested in, but simply as training to contribute to society as a primed, well-oiled part of America’s churning economy. None of this is new of course: it’s a simple and classic capitalist ideal that goes farther back than the Industrial Revolution. But how does it make sense? Why is it that we are still forced to feel obligated to be “productive members of society” and sacrifice our own happiness in order to attain some fabricated standard of financial success? Why is it that we are thought of as entitled or selfish because we’d rather prioritize ourselves rather than a system that was designed to profit of off our backs? The amount of capital that we produce or have the potential to produce doesn’t indicate anything about our worth as people, and by extension, the worth of our “useless” degrees.
Not only that but the stigma against liberal arts and humanities education ignores the many barriers that prevent huge numbers of students from pursuing majors in STEM fields. The gender gap in the engineering, math, and technology fields is a well-documented and controversial phenomenon, and a number of methods from scholarship programs to ad campaigns have been established to encourage more women to enter STEM fields. Though women earn over half of the bachelor’s degrees given in biological sciences, other areas of study in the STEM fields are heavily male-dominated with only 19% of engineering degrees and 18% of computer science degrees received by women. These statistics don’t take into account the intersectional effect that misogyny and racism has on women of color, of which only 11.2% of science and engineering degrees are awarded to. It’s not that women aren’t interested in STEM or aren’t good enough at math and science---the exclusion of women from science and math has roots in a long history of misogynistic cultural perceptions. Studies have shown that women show an aptitude for STEM-related studies at roughly the same average as men, but are less likely to pursue these areas because of the discouraging effect of sexist stereotypes.
What’s interesting is the fact that this isn’t the first time men have taken over a profitable career field. History has had a trend of devaluing careers dominated by women and over-valuing careers dominated by men. Take computer programming, for example. During the Space Race of the 1950s and early 60s, hundreds of “keypunch girls” worked in the control systems beneath NASA to launch men into space. As computer science grew in commercial value, droves of women began to leave their “keypunch” jobs and went straight for programming and systems analysis positions. It wasn’t long before computer programming was established as “women’s work”, while hardware engineering was perceived as a masculine job. That's not all: most of these early computer programming majors were housed with liberal arts majors. While it was still a woman-dominated field, computer science was not considered a “hard” science and was instead lumped in with the same majors that we now consider to be the polar opposite of engineering and technology.
Considering the fact that many of the degree programs that are currently dominated by women, such as English and education, are included in liberal arts and humanities curricula, it’s no coincidence that our concept of what is a “valuable” field is also skewed by gender bias. Many of the careers and areas of study that are considered part of the liberal arts are fields that are traditionally viewed as feminine; in other words, they tend to have a focus on communicating with others and helping individuals, such as teaching, therapy, and social work, or are associated with creativity and the arts, like writing and literature. Historically, these traditionally feminine qualities have been devalued by a Eurocentric male perspective that considers the ability to acquire resources, increase power, and expand civilization to be the most valuable and prioritized skills.
Even the arguments that STEM fields are more challenging and result in more lucrative career fields are questionable at best. Though there’s no arguing that the skills needed to succeed in math, science, and technology programs are usually highly technical, the skills represented in liberal arts and humanities majors are not any less impressive, it’s just that they are often less specific and accessible to more people. Not only that, but part of society’s push to create more STEM graduates is the implementation of more and more advanced math and science classes early on in high school. Though the difficulty of high school curricula has increased for all subjects over the past several decades, math and sciences classes have changed the most in response to a still increasing demand for engineers and scientists. This has left classes such as English and history lagging behind in terms of challenging content. So while undergraduate STEM programs are designing their curricula for students who are already well-versed in advanced math and science courses, most incoming freshman pursuing a liberal arts or humanities-related major have only been able to receive the most basic education in writing, history, and social sciences. So perhaps the curriculum really is easier for some people---because it has been encouraged that way.
In addition, the truth about our job prospects is actually much less discouraging than what you may have been led to believe. Contrary to what most critics may say, many employers are actually seeking the kind of broad and interdisciplinary education that a liberal arts or humanities-related degree can provide. Skills such as communicating effectively, writing and researching well, and creativity are all flexible abilities that can be applied to a number of careers and positions. In fact, having a degree with broad applications can can allow one to pursue multiple different career opportunities throughout one’s life, while a highly specialized education may not. Yet still, when the topic of school arises and I’m forced to answer the inevitable question, “So what are you majoring in?” It always becomes painfully clear to me that in spite of the passion I have for what I’m studying and the work I put into it, there will always be people who consider my majors an easy A at best or as a frivolous luxury at worst. We can't all be doctors and engineers I guess (sorry Mom, I know you wanted me to be your perfect Korean daughter), but I can't wait to spend the next several years of my life studying something that I genuinely love. Whether or not it's going to get me a fat paycheck or help my governor rake in taxes or contribute to technology and industry in the U.S is completely irrelevant to me. My obligation to learn and grow is an obligation to nobody but myself.
