No idea. Did not know there was such a major.
Fewer and Fewer Students Earn Degrees in the Humanities
- Thread starter Hume
- Start date
Look it up.
Yakuda
Verified User
But you're the "educated" one right?
Yakuda
Verified User
Why the fuck would I do that? You know and I know and even hume, well not hume, knows you arent going to do shit with a womens studies degree.
Why wouldn't you?
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Indicators treat cultural, ethnic, and gender studies (including women’s studies and gender studies) as a humanities field.
They list it alongside English, history, philosophy, languages, and area studies, and they survey women’s/gender-studies departments in their Humanities Departmental Survey.
That is why declines in those programs show up in the “humanities bachelor’s degrees” totals.
Some campuses house it in a humanities college, others in social sciences.
There is no dedicated job title that a women’s studies BA feeds into the way nursing or accounting does. Employers almost never advertise “women’s studies required.”
The degree functions like other small interdisciplinary humanities/social-science majors: it signals writing, research, and interest in gender/equity topics, then people scatter.
Where graduates actually land
The most common destinations, in practice:
- Education — K–12 teaching (with certification), higher-ed staff, academic advising. Elementary and middle-school teaching is among the largest single occupations for the broader “cultural and gender studies” group.
- Nonprofits and social services — program coordinators, victim advocates, community outreach, case management, fundraising. This is the path departments usually highlight.
- Government and public administration — legislative aides, policy or equity offices, grants work.
- Law and related work — after a JD. Lawyers and judicial workers are a visible slice of the employed stock of cultural/gender-studies majors, which pulls average earnings up.
- Communications, HR, and “DEI”/inclusion roles — marketing, training, employee-relations work that uses the vocabulary of the major.
College Scorecard field-of-study numbers for women’s studies specifically are modest: median earnings around $33k one year out, about $46k at four years, about $53k at five years. That is in the same neighborhood as other small humanities fields, well above a high-school diploma and well below STEM or business.
Yakuda
Verified User
First i dont care enough. Second I know its a humanities field thats why I fucking mentioned it. Lastly its a waste of fucking time to get such a degree because you accumulate too much debt and you end up as a barista at starbucks selling burnt coffee
Then why participate in a discussion ask the question you did?
So you say.
Opinion.
True for most University degrees now.......even STEM which has been attacked by DEI and when corporate America brings in foreign labor rather than hire Americans.
Yakuda
Verified User
Clearly you dont know what jobs can be had with a womens studies degree
Yes I do. Good for you for paying attention
Yes it is. Another gold star for paying attention
Yakuda
Verified User
Far too many people go to college and accumulate unnecessary debt.
Eeyore’s post (#28) is:
He’s endorsing @Yakuda’s line that a women’s-studies degree is a debt trap that ends at Starbucks, then stretching that to most degrees and to STEM.
1. “True for most university degrees” / barista ending
Mostly false as a description of typical outcomes.
- A bachelor’s still beats no degree on unemployment and lifetime earnings. Recent-grad unemployment has been elevated (around 5.6% in NY Fed data for 2026) versus ~3% for older college grads, but still below young workers without a degree.
- Underemployment is real and high: NY Fed puts recent-grad underemployment near 42%. That means a large minority work in jobs that don’t require a BA. It does not mean most are baristas. Older research after the Great Recession found only a small slice of underemployed grads in low-skill service jobs; most were in other non-college occupations, some decently paid. The barista image is a meme, not the modal job.
- Outcomes vary hugely by major. Nursing and many engineering fields have low underemployment; criminal justice, fine arts, and some humanities/social-science fields have very high rates. “Most degrees” is too blunt. Women’s studies sits with the weaker humanities cluster on early earnings, not with nursing.
Debt is a real problem for many borrowers, especially at high-cost private schools, but it is not true that most bachelor’s holders end up unable to service loans in a coffee shop.
2. “Even STEM which has been attacked by DEI”
Partly a slogan, not a clean causal claim.
- STEM still pays more and has lower long-run unemployment than humanities as a group. That has not flipped.
- Recent entry-level CS/computer-engineering unemployment has been unusually high (NY Fed has had those majors near the top of recent-grad unemployment lists). Causes in the literature and reporting include the post-2022 tech hiring freeze, rate hikes, oversupply after a decade of CS boom, AI uncertainty, and remote-work effects—not a single “DEI attack.”
- DEI programs existed in corporate STEM hiring and in university pipelines. Some have been rolled back since 2023–25. There is contested research on whether DEI hiring reduced productivity; there is not solid evidence that DEI is the main reason a new CS grad can’t get a first job in 2025–26.
So: STEM is not immune, and some STEM majors currently have a rough first-job market. “Attacked by DEI” as the explanation is not established.
3. “Corporate America brings in foreign labor rather than hire Americans”
Partly true as a description of who gets hired in tech, overstated as “instead of Americans.”
- H-1B is capped at 85,000 new private-sector visas a year; most go to IT. Big tech firms are heavy users. Foreign-born workers are a large share of college-educated computer occupations (on the order of one-third). OPT/STEM-OPT lets international graduates of U.S. schools work for years at lower payroll-tax cost.
- Critics (including some labor economists) argue the programs function as wage-arbitrage and can substitute for young native grads, especially in IT. Supporters cite studies finding complementarity, more innovation, and little aggregate crowd-out. Evidence is mixed, not a slam dunk either way.
- It is accurate that employers often prefer or find it cheaper to hire international STEM graduates already in the U.S. pipeline. It is not accurate that they have broadly stopped hiring Americans, or that this is why most college degrees fail.
Bottom line
- Women’s studies / many humanities degrees: weak vocational link, modest early pay — Yakuda’s insult is crude but pointed at a real earnings gap.
- “Most university degrees” = barista + ruinous debt: false as a typical outcome.
- STEM “attacked by DEI”: not the main documented cause of current entry-level softness.
- Foreign labor in STEM: real and concentrated in IT; a plausible partial pressure on new American CS grads, not a complete substitute for “Americans aren’t hired.”
It is certification for DEI apparatchik positions such as HR.
Clearly I do, because I looked it up and posted the results.
Here they are, again:
Yakuda
Verified User
There you go
Yakuda
Verified User
Im so happy for you
I'll look at them as soon as Im interested. Wanna guess when that will be?
Yakuda
Verified User
You answered this question previously. Im here to share my opinion. Even the person who started this thread doesnt give a shit about it.
Then piss off
Yakuda
Verified User
Librtlover
Verified User
The following is a list of jobs associated with people who received a Humanities Degree:
* Writer
* Editor
* Teacher
* Public Relations Specialist, i.e like a (word salad) Kamala Harris
* Museum Conservator
* Journalist
* Librarian
* Marketing Specialist
A look at most if not all of those jobs resulting from people getting a Humanities Degree
shows that those jobs aren't exactly what's needed in America to build a better and stronger
America that the middle class construction, welding, carpentry, plumbing et al jobs will help develop our American landscape, while keeping families living in well suited-developed residences.
I suggest that young people (both men and women) should go to a 2-year or less trade-technical
school to get all they need to become highly experienced in taking care of their-our technical and trade related needs. I also suggest they get a hold of Mike Rowe to see what his organization has to help you get that degree.
Right after my military stint in the Army, I signed up for and went to a two-year college to get
my Associate Degree, because I was told that that was what was needed to go on to get a great job. My Associate Degree gave me a degree in General Studies. That's right, GENERAL STUDIES.
General Studies looks to be on the level of one getting a Humanities degree. Totally Useless!
* Writer
* Editor
* Teacher
* Public Relations Specialist, i.e like a (word salad) Kamala Harris
* Museum Conservator
* Journalist
* Librarian
* Marketing Specialist
A look at most if not all of those jobs resulting from people getting a Humanities Degree
shows that those jobs aren't exactly what's needed in America to build a better and stronger
America that the middle class construction, welding, carpentry, plumbing et al jobs will help develop our American landscape, while keeping families living in well suited-developed residences.
I suggest that young people (both men and women) should go to a 2-year or less trade-technical
school to get all they need to become highly experienced in taking care of their-our technical and trade related needs. I also suggest they get a hold of Mike Rowe to see what his organization has to help you get that degree.
Right after my military stint in the Army, I signed up for and went to a two-year college to get
my Associate Degree, because I was told that that was what was needed to go on to get a great job. My Associate Degree gave me a degree in General Studies. That's right, GENERAL STUDIES.
General Studies looks to be on the level of one getting a Humanities degree. Totally Useless!