Valuing Liberal Arts Education in a Recession

On my way home from running errands the other day I heard an inspiring opinion piece on NPR by Michael S. Roth, , president of Wesleyan University. In his essay Roth connects his own experience as a college graduate from Wesleyan in 1978 to the current challenges that 2009 college graduates face as they enter the job market during a period of recession.

Oddly, I am not irked by this prospect since my own skill set has improved so much since I finished at the University of Redlands in 2005. My library and information science degree is much more focused than my bachelor's in English Literature and Creative Writing degree all on its own.It doesn't hurt that alongside my courses in research and information architecture I also learned a lot about practical subjects like marketing and management.

I am also older and have more real life experience under my belt in comparison to a film studies student from Wesleyan, both in the workforce and in general. The less I worry about such things, the more gigs seem to be tossed at me because I do not come across as desperate to potential employers.

The changes I feel as a twenty six year old have crept up on me gradually. For example, when I went into a few stores today looking for a couple specific clothing items for my graduation party, the girls who came up to help me were all under twenty years old. I wear similar clothes to them dress the same way as them, in the junior section, but they all seem half-formed. Every last one of them chirpy college girls, probably still under the legal drinking age, with baby fat on their cheeks. I looked more like their slightly surly tattooed manager than their primary customers. It also reminded me how much I will never take another retail job (See Also: Retail Rodeo).

Not to get into too much fashion theory here, but I am definitely in between target markets when I shop for clothes. Blame my tendency to analyze fashion on my time spent in the library of the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. One of my main vices is spending money on clothes. I feel uncomfortable if I am wearing anything that is too old or ill-fitting. I'm fussy about my appearance. Unfortunately, my tastes in clothes do not match my budget just yet. I'm not sure where my addiction came in at all since I grew up in a single parent home, in a two bedroom apartment filled with wild brothers. Nature versus nurture?

I refuse to wear mom jeans but also any jeans that look like they belong on a preteen fan of Hannah Montana. I wear accessories from Hot Topic (embarrassing) but appreciate a nice pair of business casual pants from Ann Taylor. Sometimes when I in the company of other librarians I cringe at their fashion choices. So many high-waisted pants and no-nonsense bobbed hair styles. I'm certainly not anyone's mother just yet.

Perhaps the reason I love clothes is because I did not have nice ones growing up. When I am dressed well I feel disconnected from the bohemian (and uncool Topanga Canyonesque) chaos of my childhood. There is nothing better than feeling the supple new material of new clothes on my skin. It is like heaven; yum.

I am also a visual learner: one reason that I enjoy interface design and computers in general. Arranging components on a page, whether it is in print through poetry or digital through Wordpress, the role of information architecture is soothing and brings order to the wilderness of digital data. In my experience most artistic people have an appreciation of style in general.

Back to the inspiring NPR story. So Roth tells the story of how when he graduated in 1978 there were few jobs in his chosen field of History. Consulting with his father, a furrier, he was afraid that he would not approve of Roth's decision to pursue a job that had little opportunity after graduation. However, he was surprised when he was told that he ought to take a shot with the sage advice, “If you don't try, you'll always wonder if you made the right decision.” I couldn't agree more.

I was so concerned that I would not be able to find a job after I graduated with my BA. At that point, I had never had a job longer than three months or one that paid more than minimum wage. I wanted to work in radio production or in print publishing but was so susceptible to naysayers and believed them when they said that I would never find a paying position in these fields.

I even wanted to be a librarian and enter the program at UCLA but was discouraged by an obnoxious boyfriend who thought that the field wasn't glamorous enough to suit him. The problem lay mostly in the fact that I was looking too far down the line and not at my immediate options. I didn't research the jobs that I could get immediately and only half believed that the internships I was successfully pursuing in publishing and archives alongside my coffee shop and temping gigs would ever get me hired. They did though!

I guess what I'm saying is that if the job market really is terrible for liberal arts graduates then taking half a year of internship experience is not the end of the world. It always helps if you have some money behind you from your folks but it isn't completely necessary. Yes, it is probably more difficult to get hired with an English or Film Studies degree than it is to be hired with a background in engineering, but that doesn't mean that one's personal and professional goals will not be aided in the long run.

Higher education is a profitable business. It is safe to say that most students are able to further their higher education in some way or another, even if they are just enrolled in the local city college. Admissions offices want their tuition dollars and government grant money. Teenagers who do not have good grades but who have managed to get their high school diploma have a lot more opportunities in community college to get into the four-year school of their choice. If a student is a minority or skilled in something besides academics, they have even more chances to receive scholarships and grants.

Then again, higher education is not for everyone. It is also a valid choice for a young adult to choose a skilled trade or a path uncharted. However, my ears always prick up at the slightest mention of liberal arts majors entering the workforce armed only with in-depth knowledge of Alan Ginsberg and not the faintest clue about how to pay the rent.