 So the reason you clicked on this video is because you want to know whether a liberal arts major or a liberal arts degree is worth it. Is it going to be worth going $40,000 in student loan debt and spending four years of your time in university? Well, you came to the right place. That's exactly what we're going to be talking about in this video. And right after you gently tap the like button, we're going to get into exactly what a liberal arts degree is all about. Well, liberal arts is a broad category that's going to cover natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. But that doesn't really help us understand what exactly liberal arts is. So let's go ahead and go to Google and type in liberal arts degree definition. All right. So we've got one here SNHU.edu. A liberal arts degree includes the study of history, literature, writing, philosophy, sociology, psychology, creative arts, and more students who earn a liberal arts degree learn to formulate effective arguments to communicate well and solve problems. Okay, so they form effective arguments, they communicate well and they solve problems. But there's a lot of different degrees that are going to teach you how to do that as well. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what liberal arts is. Best Value Schools has the definition as a liberal arts degree is an academic program that provides a comprehensive overview of humanities related classes. This general degree provides a strong background for the student to work in a variety of fields. Keep reading to learn why a liberal arts degree is one of the best academic programs. Okay, so I mentioned the word general there and it said it'll teach you skills that you can use in order to work in a variety of different fields. But at the same time, I still don't fully understand what a liberal arts degree is. Internationalstudent.com says that a bachelor's degree in liberal arts means that the courses you take will be in general areas of study such as philosophy, mathematics, literature, art history, etc. Okay, so you're basically just generally studying a bunch of different things in a bunch of different courses. So I think you guys get my point here. The definition of liberal arts is pretty difficult to define. It's almost just like you're studying a little bit of everything. Now, not only is a liberal arts degree a specific degree, but it's also a blanket term that a bunch of other degree types fall under. So for instance, liberal arts as a general degree type, there's around 43,000 people who graduate with these degrees every year here in the United States of America. And that's what a bachelor's degree specifically. And if you look at the specific degree of liberal arts, you'll see that 23,000 people graduate every year. Now, when I was looking up what career paths you might go down with these degrees, it varied greatly. I mean, you could pretty much go down any career path technically. Now, usually BLS is really good about telling you what career paths you tend to go down with which degrees, but this one was just all over the place. So they said that you can become a graphic designer, sales manager, accountant, teacher, reporter, paralegal, or a social worker. So all over the place. Now, sometimes this is a good thing when there's a lot of different career paths you can potentially go down, but it can also be an issue if the degree you get is so general that you don't learn specialized skills that are going to help a hiring manager or a business owner see how you can contribute to the business. So when it comes to salary or earning potential with this degree, you can expect to make around $42,000 a year starting out and $73,000 in mid-career pay. You can compare that to a high and low paying degree and you'll see that it is on the lower side. Now, like I mentioned before, there are so many different career paths that you could potentially go down with this degree because it's extremely general. However, when I was doing research, there were a few that popped up several times and one of them was graphic designer and they make around $52,000 a year or $25 an hour. You could also become a high school teacher and they make around $61,000 a year or you could become a reporter, correspondent or broadcast news analyst and they make around $46,000 a year or $22 an hour. Now, overall liberal arts degrees compared to all the other college majors are some of the lowest paying. You make around $2.1 million over a lifetime compared to 2.4 million for all other degrees and all other career paths. And a lot of the time you will end up working in a field that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with liberal arts. So for those reasons, I'm going to give this one a five out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about satisfaction and we go over two main things here because this is extremely subjective. So there's really only two things that you can sort of quantify a little bit and that is meaning and job satisfaction. So when it comes to meaning, you see that a liberal arts degree is going to score 53% and you can compare that to a really good one and a really bad one and you'll see that it is on the lower side. Now, meaning is basically how much you think your career positively impacts the world, whereas job satisfaction has more to do with how much you enjoy doing your job on a day to day basis. Now, let's say you became a graphic designer, for instance, the meaning score there is 34% and again, you can compare that to a good one and a bad one and you'll see that it is on the lower side. However, your job satisfaction would be 64%, which again, if you compare it, you would see that it's average or even above average. But like I said before, there are so many different career paths you can go down. So it's pretty difficult to choose a specific one and say that people are really going to enjoy that. Now, when it comes to how much people regret getting their degree, one thing that I'll mention about liberal arts degrees is it is sort of like a umbrella type of category that a bunch of other degrees fall under. So for instance, social science degrees are the fourth most regretted type. And the main reason is because they're too general and practical, hard to find a job without further studies. And that seems to be true for liberal arts degrees in general in many cases. Now, one thing I would like to mention here, and I guess this ties into some of the other areas on this list as well, is that a lot of the time people who get these liberal arts degrees end up having to go back to college to get a master's or a doctorate. Now, when you get a master's or a doctorate, of course, you're going to make more money. So it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges. But the downside is you're going to have to go into further student loan debt, and it takes quite a bit of time. So for instance, if you look at a degree like engineering, not that many people end up getting masters or doctorates. And that's because they can easily get a job with just a four years bachelor level degree. Those that do end up going back to school and achieving further degrees are probably doing it because they want to, and not because they have to. Whereas if you look at a degree like philosophy, for instance, around 57% of people who graduate with a philosophy degree end up going back to school to get a master's or a doctorate. That is insane. And on top of that, if you're going for a PhD, for instance, the time that it takes you to get that degree is going to be a lot longer if you're in a field or if you're going for a major that's saturated when it comes to masters and PhDs, which many of these liberal arts, humanities, social science degrees are. So for instance, if you get a PhD in engineering around 57% of people complete it within seven years, whereas only 29% of humanities majors complete it within seven years. That is a huge discrepancy. So not only is it more difficult for you to get a job at the bachelor's level, but on top of that, it's going to take longer cost more for you to go for a master's or a PhD in many cases. Now, of course, there can be some exceptions. A lot of the time you can get your PhD paid for if you get a stipend or you apply for different scholarships, which is great, but it's still going to take a lot of time and that's opportunity cost that you could have been working in the workforce. But with that being said, let's say you want to become a professor and you get your PhD, you get that tenured position, it is a pretty sweet gig. And if you are able to work in a lot of these different fields, chances are you're going to enjoy your job just because they're very interesting. I personally find a lot of these liberal arts degrees to be very interesting and I studied them on the side. So if you are able to get a job, which is a big if, you're probably going to enjoy it and you'll likely find it relatively meaningful. So I'm going to give this one an eight out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction. Next, we're going to be talking about demand. And this is basically how badly your skills are needed by hiring managers and business owners on the job market. So let's say you became a high school teacher, there's around a million jobs available and it's growing at 4%, which is average, meaning over the next 10 years, there's going to be 40,000 new jobs that are created. If you became a reporter, broadcaster or correspondent, there's around 52,000 jobs available. Unfortunately, it's declining at negative 11%. Now when it comes to unemployment rates, the liberal arts degrees in general tend to have some of the highest. Now, of course, things are really weird in the world right now. Hopefully things go back to normal soon. But unemployment rates, of course, right now are going to be pretty bad throughout. But with that being said, when you search monster.com for liberal arts degree, you're going to see that only a thousand job listings pop up and you can compare that to a bad one and a good one and you'll see that it's definitely on the lower side. Now a lot of the time when businesses are surveyed and they're asked what type of college degrees they're looking for, what type of majors they're looking to hire for their business, they're going to be saying, you know, business degrees and engineering degrees all the time. So for instance, in this survey, it was about 83 and 82% respectively. However, when you look at social sciences and humanities, it's only around 20% and 5%. Now, of course, this is a pretty small sample size and it's going to vary depending on the industry you're in. But in pretty much all the different surveys I've seen, it's relatively common where you see business, engineering, mathematics, technology at the very top, sometimes healthcare, if you're talking about healthcare industry, and then these types of degrees tend to be towards the bottom. So the big problem with just a general liberal arts degree is the fact that you're not really a specialist in any one thing. You're kind of learning a little bit of everything. And the truth is there's so many different free resources out there that you can use. Obviously YouTube is going to be one of them. You can even take classes at Ivy League colleges like Harvard completely free and they'll tell you what textbook they're using and they'll even give you the problems. And I'm not even kidding about that. You can pretty much take an entire curriculum at some of these Ivy League universities with free online classes. Now, of course, you're not going to get that piece of paper at the end, you're not going to get your degree. But if you just want to be a jack of all trades and kind of just have a surface level of knowledge on a bunch of different things, you can take those classes for free online. The whole purpose of college in terms of getting a job is to have specialized skills and something be a specialist in an area so that you can help a business in that particular field. And so a lot of the time business owners and hiring managers aren't going to know how your liberal arts degree is going to be able to help them in their business. That doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have any value. I think a lot of these classes are extremely interesting. And indirectly, they probably have quite a bit of value and they're going to help you in your life in general. But overall, when it comes to demand, I'm going to have to give this one a four out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about X factors. And this is anything that I think is important that didn't make it into any of the other categories. Now, if you look at liberal arts degrees over a lifetime, you're going to see that they make around $2.1 million on average. And that's below the average of 2.4 million for all degrees and all different career paths. Now, if you break it down, get a little more specific and look at different career paths you can go into, you'll see that some are going to be a lot higher than others. So for instance, if you become a manager, you can still make around 3 million over a lifetime. However, a lot of them are going to be much lower than that. So for instance, if you work in office support, you'll only make around 1.6 million. You can compare this to a degree like engineering or business where it stays relatively stable almost no matter what career path you go down. Now, if you look at liberal arts as a skill on the zip recruiter skills index, you're going to see that almost none of the things that fall under the liberal arts umbrella are going to even be listed on there. So for instance, history isn't listed on there as a skill just to give an example. So basically what they're saying is liberal arts is way too general to list it as a skill. But let's say you become a graphic designer, for instance, and this is actually one of the better ones that I found that is ranked 43 out of 100. And you can compare that to software engineering or industrial sewing. And you'll see that it's relatively mid range, maybe even below average. So this doesn't necessarily mean that liberal arts as a skill doesn't have any value. It's more of a reference to how much people are willing to pay in the workforce, aka business owners and hiring managers for people with various skills at this particular time in history. So this is basically a list of tangible skills at this particular time in history and how much people are willing to pay you for them. However, there's a lot of soft skills or intangible skills that you can learn with a liberal arts degree that will likely help you not only financially, probably indirectly, but they'll just help you in general areas of your life. So for instance, history is one of my favorite subjects. And it would be an example of a liberal arts degree. And I really enjoy studying it. And I think it has helped me in a lot of different areas of my life. Learning from the successes and the failures of the past and figuring out how to copy the successes and avoid the failures can be extremely beneficial. However, tangibly, it hasn't really helped me all that much when it comes to my career or getting a job. Now, when it comes to the likelihood of automation, many of the skills that you will learn will probably not be automated, but it really depends on what career path you go down. So for instance, if you become a paralegal, there's around a 94% chance you'll be automated according to willrobotstakemyjob.com. But again, it really depends on what career path you end up going down. But overall with this one, sure you can go into a lot of different careers, but you're not necessarily going to be able to sell yourself very well to business owners and hiring managers, just because the whole purpose of college is to teach you specialized skills. And this is so general. And it's not general necessarily in a good way, like being flexible would be general as well. Just because of the fact that, you know, degrees like engineering and business, sure, they're flexible. And you can go into a lot of different career paths. But they're also relatively well respected. And business owners and hiring managers are constantly looking for people who graduate with engineering degrees, even if it doesn't necessarily have much to do with their job. So overall, when it comes to x factors, unfortunately, I have to give this one a score of five out of 10. So when you add everything up and divide it by four, you're going to get a score of 5.5 out of 10 overall. And I have to be honest with you, it's probably not a good idea for most people in most situations to get this degree. There are many universities out there, even Ivy League universities that will offer lots of these classes for free online, where you can listen to the world's foremost experts on these different subjects completely free. They'll even tell you what books they're studying out of. And in some cases, they'll give you some of the problems that the students go over in the classes. So in many cases, it would probably be a good idea for you to just study this stuff on the side, or maybe minor in it, or in some cases, you could double major in it if you really love it. Now, if you're set on a career in liberal arts, like let's say you want to become a professor, there's only one way you can become a liberal arts professor. And that is to get a master's or a PhD in most cases. Then what you want to do is make a great plan. You want to reach out to people who are in whatever career path you're trying to get into, ask them what you should do, ask them what steps you should take, and figure out a good plan in order to, you know, achieve the goal that you set for yourself. In many cases, if you want to make money from a liberal arts degree, if you want to make a career out of it, it would probably be better for you to either just double major in it, minor in it, or study it on the side, and then start your own business. Because chances are, you're going to have to get a little bit creative in order to make money from this. So for instance, for a history degree, you would maybe want to start a podcast, a blog, a YouTube channel, something along those lines, and then eventually you would be able to make enough money to replace your full-time job's income, and it would go from being a side hustle to being your career. The truth is in many cases, getting a college degree and a lot of these different types of careers, not only is it not going to help you, but it will actually hinder you because of the fact that you're going to be so deep in the hole. You're going to be $40,000 in student loan debt, and it's not going to help you get a job all that much. Now, if you're somebody who's in the situation where they already got one of these degrees and you're wondering what you should do, there are many types of jobs out there that just require a college degree. They're not usually very high paying. They're not usually all that desirable in many cases, but they require a college degree and they don't really care what degree you got. So for instance, there's a lot of government jobs out there that require you to have a college degree, but they don't really care what degree that is for the position. And so if you apply to those jobs, there's a good chance that you might be able to get one. But that's just my two cents. You guys know I always give it to you straight. I always try to be as fair as possible when I'm evaluating these degrees. So if you want some help figuring out what college degree you should get, I have made a college degree ranker. It's going to be in my Patreon down in the description below that will make the whole process much easier for you so that you don't have to wait on me to make a video about whatever college degree you're looking into. So check that out down below. I think it'll make the whole process quite a bit easier for you and I worked really hard on it and I think it's a great resource. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button in order to defeat the YouTube algorithm. Hit that subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms that you have on the video. Share the video. That always helps quite a bit. And before you leave, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.