Future with Humanities: Benefits of Humanities Degrees

In colleges like Columbia college, students are taking fewer humanities courses as they are not aware of the benefits of humanities degrees. However, students should be informed about the job opportunities and skills which they can learn from humanities courses. They can read articles about humanities like George Anders’ “The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors” which states that technology companies are hiring more people with humanities degrees, or like Judith Hertog’s “Why We Need the Humanities”, which explains humanities' relationship with politics and how humanities not only help people to get jobs but can also develop skills to help people to become morally good citizens. Columbia College students are especially concerned about jobs. Anders’ article is more convincing because he provides more statistical data, opinions of people who have work experience, and information about the types of jobs available with humanities degrees.

Anders provides more statistical data than Hertog’s as he explains the details of jobs available for people with humanities with more statistics, and he presents a bar graph to prove the benefits of humanities degrees. Anders’ statistical data gives an overall view of the job market with numerical values. For instance, Ander writes “as LinkedIn data show, most of the migrants have created nontechnical career paths in Silicon Valley. The list starts with sales and marketing(14%) and goes on to include education(6%), consulting(5%), business development (5%), and a host of other specialties ranging from product management to real estate”. Details about job opportunities is more helpful for Columbia college students than the numerics of enrolment in humanities courses. This example shows that the demand of people with non-tech degrees has increased in tech companies. On the other hand, Hertog does not mention about any statistical data about job availability. Instead, Hertog includes numerical data about the decrease in the number of students enrolled in humanities courses: “In 2014, 6 percent of American College students majored in the humanities, according to American Academy of Arts and Science, down from 17 percent in 1967”. Moreover, Ander presents a bar graph in his article which depicts the job vacancies for people with tech and humanities degrees. The visual representation illustrates to Columbia college students that there is more job availability for people with humanities degrees. Therefore, Hertog’s article is more detailed in terms of its description of the hiring of people with humanities degrees.

Anders’ article is more persuasive in terms of expert opinion because Anders interviews the real-life experiences of people working in technology companies with humanities degrees. Anders tells about “Rache Lee, who graduated from UC, Berkeley with a communication degree in 2011; now she is an account manager at Slack”. By presenting these kinds of personal experiences of various experts in the field, Anders reassures that people with humanities degrees are getting jobs. In contrast, Hertog offers opinions from professors of the STEM field and humanities but they explain more about the skills of humanities teach. For instance, Hertog quotes “Daniel Rockmore, Professor of mathematics and computer science and director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science, has been an active supporter of digital humanities” who says “an understanding of culture and history is the key to understanding all our problems today: fundamentalism, terrorism, racism, fascism-those problems can not be solved with a technological solution”. However, people who have followed the whole path till they have got a job with a humanities degree and have more experience, and knowledge about the jobs than professors from other fields which makes Anders’ article more effective.

Ander’s provides more details about the different types of job vacancies for people with humanities degrees compared to Hertog. There are many anecdotal examples in Anders’ article which seek Columbia college students' attention. For example, Anders’ introduces Shawna Ramona: “she graduated from San Francisco State in 2002 with a degree in English literature. Now is an iPad-toting “restaurant relations manager” for OpenTable, the online diner booking service”. Then Anders describes Bess Yount who has a “bachelor’s degree” and now she is working at a “ social media company” Facebook. By illustrating these examples Anders demonstrates that people with humanities degrees are getting jobs in tech companies. Whereas, Hertog in his article explains more about “job security”. For instance, Hertog quotes Zonia Moore, who says “students are very concerned with job security and do not see a specific job that humanities degrees lead to, so they are afraid of the unknown”. Hertog explains about that students are concerned about job surety but do not tell much about job opportunities. As a result, Anders’ article is more persuasive than Hertog’s because he gave real-life examples of various people that are getting jobs with an arts degree.

In comparison with Herzog's article, is more inspirational for students of Columbia College to choose more humanities courses as it proves that humanities courses help students to have greater job opportunities.