On Getting a “Useless” Arts Degree

“What are you studying?”
“Philosophy.”
“Oh.”

Too many of my conversations, too many of my introductions to new friends or classmates go this way. This happens all too often to a lot of students who are getting humanities or liberal-arts-focused degrees. But why?
These are things we often study because we value them in themselves, not because they will afford us a better job, make us rich, or allow us to become famous and publish several best-selling books. I’m not knocking anyone whose area of passion happens to lead to the above consequences, but if those are the only reasons you chose to study what you’re studying, you seriously need to re-evaluate your life.

Post-secondary institutions have become like businesses now, and education is more of a means to an end than an end in itself. This picture is wrong in so many ways. People should be able to study whatever they want and still make a decent amount of money in the future – not exorbitant, but decent. A baseline.
For now, universities and colleges costing so much money just leads more people to abandon their interests for the sake of paying back student loans. But that does not mean degrees without blossoming job growth should be shunned or discounted.
I want to do a bit more “writing-writing” on this blog in the future, whatever that means.