The debate over whether arts degrees are worth it or not has been a longstanding one. Is the lack of job opportunities a mere misconception, and what are the practical applications of 'mickey mouse' degrees?
As an arts and humanity student in university I’ve always felt this debate very personal to me, having been subject to multiple instances of disingenuous questioning over the reason I’m studying my degree, and false smiles and pleasantries afterwards. Lots of people think that arts and humanities degrees aren’t “proper degrees” because they don’t prepare you for a particular career in the future. They are perceived as easy degrees that teach nothing of real value, and are a waste of your money and time. I get the point. You study medicine to become a doctor, engineering to become an engineer, architecture to become an architect. But what do you become if you study arts, history, english, philosophy, classics? Many fourth years will answer all you get out of them is an existential crisis when you graduate. However, I am not here to talk about that. I am here to advocate for the arts and humanities.
I think we can all agree that the art of rhetoric introduced by the Greeks has been lost in modern societies. How many times have you been lost in someone’s argument, heard them go round and round getting nowhere, then say “I’m bad at explaining things” or ask “you know what I mean, right?” It is one thing to have an argument make sense in your head, but it is an entirely different thing to get it across on paper. Everyone who has had to submit essays as part of their course knows how humbling marking comments can be. Professors are notoriously known to put question marks on whole paragraphs, with no explanation, and ask for a “cleaner” or more “polished” edit of papers all the time. As disappointing as this may be, with practice, through applying feedback from one essay to our next, we learn to develop our arguments, and express them with more eloquence. We start imagining those dreaded wobbly lines underlying our sentences as we write them, and rewrite them over and over until they are clearer. Moreover, the structure we learn when writing arguments becomes naturally integrated into our speech, developing our communication skills, and enabling us to effectively advocate personal or social issues. Additionally, written and communication skills are valuable for any job, from public relations to marketing.
We arts and humanities students love to say we are learning critical thinking skills in our courses. It sounds very formal and gives our degrees the credibility that tends to be scrutinised by others. However, it is also a very vague and ambiguous term.
Professors, infamously, (I know, I am going to stop attacking professors now) love raising questions that neither them, nor any leading thinkers in the field for that matter, can answer, and expect undergraduate students to do so. Does theatre matter? Are the arts a luxury or a necessity? Is Shakespeare progressive or colonialist? They will give you two opposing schools of thought, such as positivism vs interpretivism in sociology, or rationalism vs empiricism in philosophy, and then not say which is right or wrong. You will have to reach an informed judgement on these questions and debates by yourself, which involves reading extensively on both sides, paying attention to detail and making close comparisons and evaluations. That is how you learn critical thinking skills. You will not only have to explain your side, but be informed enough on the other side to uphold your answer. This is a hugely important skill in the era of fake news, but also for jobs such as reporting and politics.
You get so much more out of your course than you might think when you go into it, and definitely much more than others outside of your degree can imagine.
Another reason arts and humanities degrees have so much worth is how interdisciplinary they are. You get so much more out of your course than you might think when you go into it, and definitely much more than others outside of your degree can imagine. I study English and Creative Writing, and going into my course I expected to learn about the different literary genres and periods, as well as how to analyse texts. However, I have also learned about history, cultures, and religions in reading world literature, architecture in studying different theatre venues, psychology in analysing characters, art in studying text illustrations, and politics in discussing the banning of texts. This multidisciplinary aspect is not only valuable because it allows us to grow personally, but it means we can work in multiple disciplines once we graduate. There may not be a straightforward path with an arts and humanities degree once you graduate but that’s because there’s multiple. Against common misconception, teaching and academia aren’t the only options. With an English degree, you can become a writer, editor, journalist, copywriter, interpreter, translator, publisher; the list goes on.
I don’t think society would work if everyone studied arts and humanities, we need doctors, and farmers and engineers, of course. However, by the same token, I don’t believe that society would flourish without us. We need to start treating these degrees with the value they deserve. Terms like “mickey mouse degrees” have to leave our vocabulary.