Employment Guide: Liberal arts majors can still find jobs

Life post-graduation is pretty bleak for liberal arts majors, who consistently fare worse than… Life post-graduation is pretty bleak for liberal arts majors, who consistently fare worse than their engineering and business counterparts in terms of salary and employment.

Pitt’s Office of Student Employment and Placement Assistance’s report on 2010 post-grads stated that 78 percent of College of Business Administration graduates were employed after graduation, compared to 64 percent of engineers and 38 percent of Arts & Sciences majors.

The discrepancies between employment statistics for the majors also exist among salaries.

SEPA reported that the average CBA graduate earns $42,000 a year. A student graduating from the School of Arts & Sciences can expect to make $33,900, and graduating engineers top the list with a median annual salary of $57,500.

All this number crunching could lead students to choose career paths that bring the biggest paycheck, a pressure that Ryan Sweeny, the assistant director at the Career Development Office,, said is common. But he stressed that focusing on the salary won’t necessarily lead to satisfaction, and certain majors don’t necessarily lead to career success.

“We generally find students want to be happy in their work, and our office can help students find that area of work that will make them happy and lead to a stable career,” he said.

Students who prepare themselves with campus involvement, multiple internships and learning experiences complemented by a strong GPA will have less difficulty finding a job, regardless of their majors. “Employers do not simply look at major, but rather focus more on preparation and finding someone that has the skills and experiences necessary to excel in the position,” Sweeny said.

Freshman Stephen Shannon said he wants to turn his musical interests into a career. A jazz performance major, Shannon has been playing piano since he was 7 years old, and he said he has been performing regularly since he turned 14.

“I’m going to try my best to make a living out of it,” he said.

Freshman Kevin Cantoran said he found his passion in business. It was the thought of working with people and being in charge of his own projects that made him pursue a business major, he said, not the median salary or employment possibilities.

But those latter qualities led junior Andrew Hain to chose business as his major. “I don’t know exactly what I want to do yet, but my degree will open a lot of doors,” Hain said, adding that it brought a “breadth of opportunities.”

Sweeny said that regardless of students’ majors, his office will help them pursue their passions.

“With the right preparation, students can truly make their passion their profession,” he said. “This is what we strive for when we work with students.”

To find jobs that will make students successful, counselors at the Career Development Office — located on the second floor of the William Pitt Union — offer tests such as the Strong Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to help students explore their interests and turn them into majors or careers. SEPA operates Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Meetings with counselors are available by appointment.