Don’t knock the economic value of majoring in the liberal arts

Can we please lighten up on knocking the value of a liberal arts education? With a recent spate of bad press for liberal arts departments on university campuses, many commentators conclude that the writing is on the wall. When it comes to economics, I argue the liberal arts still belong on college campuses: The liberal arts pay.

The concern is real…

There are many reasons to be legitimately concerned about the direction the humanities and other liberal arts have taken in recent decades. Course enrollments and declared majors have plummeted across many disciplines since the pandemic, ranging from history to foreign language. This is the continuation of a decades-old pattern: According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Project, the share of humanities degrees out of all bachelor’s degrees peaked in 1967 at 17.2% and by 2018 had fallen to 4.4%.

Research universities also continue to turn out humanities doctorates for whom job prospects are bleak. Liberal arts colleges have been at risk for decades.

Despite arguments that a liberal arts education may be exactly the right preparation for a world in which routine tasks are taken over by AI, students are apparently not yet persuaded. Thus, humanities departments in colleges face very real budget pressures, including sometimes the risk of being eliminated. Indeed, West Virginia University is eliminating all foreign language degrees, and the University of Nebraska at Kearney has also proposed cutting its theater and philosophy programs.

…but the liberal arts still pay

I suspect that part of the political push to eliminate the humanities, especially from off-campus sources, is connected to the myth that the price of college has skyrocketed. In fact, the real price of college attendance has been falling modestly in recent years. Consequently, the share of undergraduates taking out student loans and the loan values are also down slightly.

Since I’m an economist, in what follows I’m going to stick to earnings numbers. But I also recognize there is more to a career than earnings. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences reports that responses to the statement “I am deeply interested in the work I do” are about the same for majors in the arts, humanities, engineering, and social sciences, although responses were a little higher in education and the natural sciences. And for a good reminder that careers are not all there is to life, see this article by a former poet laureate of Mississippi who writes, “Students who master written and spoken communication can change the world.”

Angst notwithstanding, here are two facts that are both true:

1. Liberal arts majors typically earn considerably less than do students enrolled in other college majors, especially majors in STEM fields; and,
2. A liberal arts degree is well worth the price.

Here’s a picture that illustrates why both are true.

Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) collected between 2017 and 2021, I’ve looked at graduates falling into one of four categories: education ended with a high school diploma, education ended with an associate degree, education ended with a bachelor’s degree in a liberal arts field, and education ended with a bachelor’s degree in a field other than liberal arts. Using the categories provided in the ACS, I’ve defined “liberal arts” majors as “Area, Ethnic, and Civilization Studies,” “Linguistics and Foreign Languages,” “English Language, Literature, and Composition,” “Liberal Arts and Humanities,” “Fine Arts,” and “History.” Everything else I’m categorizing as “not liberal arts.” The figure above gives average annual wage and salary income for each kind of degree. (The latest data is for 2021, so all the figures are in 2021 dollars. The sample is for ages 23 through 65. For a similar analysis with slightly older data but a broader listing of majors, see “The College Payoff.”)

For fact number one, compare the dark blue liberal arts bachelor’s bar to the orange bar for other majors. The latter is considerably higher. On average, people with a liberal arts degree earned only $50,000 a year while those with other degrees earned $65,000. That’s a big difference. (Median earnings are lower than average earnings of course, but the gap isn’t much different—$37,000 versus $50,000.)

For fact number two, compare the dark blue liberal arts bar to the light blue bar for those earning only a high school diploma. The liberal arts bar is much higher—getting a liberal arts degree is a good investment compared to not going to college at all. On average, the liberal arts degree led to a $50,000 annual income compared to $28,000 for those stopping at the end of high school. (Median earnings are $37,000 versus $21,000 for high school only.) A $12,000 annual difference in earnings will, over a lifetime, more than pay for a college education.  Suppose one worked for 35 years after graduation. The lifetime difference would be $420,000 (ignoring inflation). That way, way more than makes up the cost of tuition plus and foregone earnings from a student not working while in college. Unsurprisingly, pay associated with an associate degree falls in between what liberal arts bachelor’s degrees earn and what one gets with a high school diploma. It’s worth noting that employment rates in the data also follow a similar pattern: strongest for non-liberal-arts bachelor’s holders (81.9%), followed by liberal arts bachelor’s holders (78.5%), then associate degree holders (77%), then high school graduates only (64.4%).

An important part of the story is that right out of college, liberal arts majors do not earn much more than high school graduates, though this understates earnings potential over the long term. Earnings for all college graduates rise rapidly after graduation and continue to rise for decades. In contrast, the age-earnings profile of high school graduates is relatively flat. One hidden advantage of majoring in non-STEM fields is that students learn general skills that last a lifetime, where the specific skills in more technical subjects often have a shorter shelf life and differences between majors eventually narrow later down the career path.

The picture above shows average earnings for holders of each credential across different survey respondents’ ages; this provides a plausible pathway for earnings over the course of one’s career (though it’s possible nobody’s career path looks exactly like this).  At age 22, the liberal arts line is not much higher than either the high school or associate degree lines. But the liberal arts bachelor’s line rises very rapidly—much more so than is true for either high school graduates or those who’ve earned an associate degree. You can also see that graduates with bachelor’s degrees outside the liberal arts do begin their careers earning noticeably more than either liberal arts majors or high school graduates, and the gap grows over time. For example, at age 50, the average earnings with a liberal arts degree are $67,000 a year. That’s not as good as a non-liberal arts degree at $81,000, but it’s quite a bit better than an associate degree at $49,000 or a high school diploma at $33,000.

One hopes that students go to college for more than just the financial value of the degree—not just for their own sake but also because society needs a citizenry equipped to think broadly. But that hope aside, liberal arts degrees do pay. They don’t pay as well as other college degrees, but they do pay and policymakers need to be clear-eyed about that before running roughshod across humanities departments. The humanities are indeed in trouble, but it’s silly to say that a liberal arts degree is not worth the price.