In the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q, the lead character sings: "What do you do with a B.A. in English / What is my life going to be? / Four years of college and plenty of knowledge, / Have earned me this useless degree."
If you’ve been paying much attention to financial news lately, and you are—or are thinking about becoming—an English major, you may very well fear landing in this precise situation in four years! However, is an English degree really as useless as it is made out to be? What do you do with a B.A. in English?
Do English Majors Get Jobs That Don’t Involve Saying “Would You Like Fries with That"?
Yes, there really are (good) jobs out there for English majors. A bachelor's in English is a strong preparatory degree for professional programs like Law and Business school, and it opens up a wide variety of job opportunities in growing sectors of the economy.
Of course, an English degree is never going to be like an engineering degree. It is not as immediately practical—nor is it as well paying—as most “hard science” degrees. However, if the humanities are your passion, there is no reason why you can’t use a bachelor’s degree in English as a step towards a career that is both emotionally and financially fulfilling.
Consider the following statistics:
- According to a 2009 study, English majors score higher on the LSAT than political science, pre-law, and criminal justice majors. Notably, the second highest scorers on the LSAT come from another “useless” major—philosophy.
- The mid-career salary of those with only a bachelor’s degree in English is greater than those of people with only bachelor’s degrees in public relations, human resources, organizational management, psychology, sociology, education, social science, public health, social work, and elementary education according to a recent survey by PayScale.com.
- According to CNN, in 2000 the second most common occupations for people with a bachelor’s degree in English were that of “top- and mid-level managers, executives, and administrators," which accounted for 10.6% of employed English majors. The most common occupations (10.7%) were “artists, broadcasters, writers, entertainers, and public relations specialists." Secondary school teachers tied for second with 10.6%.
Unlike certain degrees—like engineering or nursing—English doesn’t tie to one particular career field. The benefit to this is that a wide variety of careers will be open to you upon graduation. The drawback is that you may have to poke around a bit to find the job that is right for you, and you’ll need to be more proactive in demonstrating to employers why you are the right man (or woman!) for the job.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an 8% growth (from 2008 to 2018) in employment of authors, writers, and editors, so the field is growing at pace with other sectors. Public relations, another field that commonly employs English majors, is expected to grow by 24% from 2008 to 2018; that's significantly faster than the national average for all other occupations. So, in short, the jobs are out there if you are willing to look for them and are equipped to promote your unique skill set to potential employers.
Can Shakespeare Get You into Med School?
Well, it's not quite that simple, but there has been a turn on the part of some medical schools towards including the humanities within a curriculum traditionally comprised of microbiology and pathology courses. According to the New York Times, Yale, Stanford, and Cornell are among the medical schools that have begun including art courses in their curriculum after a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that looking at art increased the observational abilities of med students.
The recent move towards integrating the humanities into medical education has also been prompted by attempts to increase patient empathy in future doctors. One medical program—Mt. Sinai’s Humanities and Medicine Early Acceptance Program—grants early acceptance to students who would like to devote as much of their undergraduate time as possible to exploring the humanities and social sciences. Acceptance to the program reduces the number of required pre-med science courses to allow students to take a more diverse course load. Double majoring—or simply minoring—in English alongside a science degree can help make you attractive to medical schools by setting you apart from the majority of applicants.
What About Grad School in English?
Grad school in the humanities might seem like the most logical route to take with a B.A. in English. However, the prospects for PhDs in English (and other humanities degrees) are rather dim right now with only 50% or so of graduates ever attaining a coveted tenure-track position in a four-year university. The other half end up as low-paid adjuncts with little job security or they work in positions outside of academia that may well have been open to them with just a bachelor’s or a master’s degree.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t go to grad school if becoming an English professor is truly your dream. However, you should understand the long-term employment odds before you begin. If you do decide to go to graduate school, make certain that you don’t incur student loan debt. Nearly all English PhD programs that are worth their salt will provide you with a tuition waiver and a living stipend—if they don’t, that’s usually a pretty good sign that you’re not going to be graduating with a degree that will be useful to you.
So, what do you do with a B.A. in English? The choice is up to you . . .
Charlene Kinbote - Charlene Kinbote is a doctoral student in English literature. She lives in upstate New York.
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