Major Trade-Offs
The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs

An eye-opening look at the relationship between students’ majors and their entry-level jobs.
Humanities majors are used to answering the question, “So, what are you going to do with that degree?” The common misconception is that students in humanities programs don’t learn any useful skills for the real world. In Major Trade-Offs, Corey Moss-Pech argues that not only do humanities majors learn real-world skills, but they actually use them when they graduate. Despite this discrepancy, graduates with so-called practical degrees like business and engineering are much more likely to find employment, and they earn higher salaries. Why do we belittle a liberal arts education despite the valuable skills that students acquire during their studies? Major Trade-Offs addresses this question by following students from different majors as they enter the workforce. Moss-Pech conducted nearly 200 interviews with roughly ninety students from four majors at a large Midwestern university: engineering, business, English, and communications. He follows these students through their senior years, chronicling their internships and the support their universities provide in helping them pursue their career paths. Graduates from practical majors entered the labor market successfully, typically through structured internship programs. However, many ended up in entry-level jobs that were largely clerical and didn’t necessarily require a degree to perform. Liberal arts majors rarely accessed structured internships and were largely left to carve out their own paths, but used their degree skills once they secured a job. This challenges the popular myths about the “marketability” of these different majors and offers a new vision for the future of higher education. Major Trade-Offs calls on colleges and universities to advocate for liberal arts majors, leveling the playing field for students as they plan for entry-level work.