Careers with Humanities Degrees
Imaginative Assembly Required
Sumiko Martinez
Two decades ago as an undergraduate, I switched my major from biology/pre-med to English literature. My family had some…questions. Of course, I really mean The Question: “What are you going to do with an English degree?” I know I’m not alone in this experience. As college education becomes more expensive and economic prospects feel more unstable, the central question sometimes becomes simply, “Can you get a decent job with a degree in the humanities?” (Spoiler alert: yes.)
Underlying The Question are so many worries, so much love. Will you be able to survive? To thrive? Will you be able to make a life that is satisfying and rewarding? Will this choice foreclose options or open the door to more possibilities for your future? What will your job look like? To my mostly blue-collar family, the prospect of a foggy, unclear career path seemed more daunting than a clear path littered with steep obstacles; what is unfamiliar is scary.
Twenty years ago, I did not appreciate the subtext of love, nor did I know how to respond to the sort of care that arises from fear. I merely found the question irritating, and I’m sure I had a flippant canned response: “We all have to speak and write and read. I’ll do whatever I want with it!” (I know. I’m also cringing at my 19-year-old self.)
Fortunately for me and so many others, studying the humanities opened many doors to career options. Degrees in the humanities provide an incredibly expansive set of possibilities, and although my English literature degree did not lead directly to an easily-recognizable career path, it has been an incredibly satisfying, challenging, and meaningful journey so far.
When I asked College of Humanities’ career coaches, Dan Moseson and Giovanna Percontino, for a smattering of the careers that our recent graduates have entered, here are a few that they sent me: global compliance analyst, team leader, grants and community engagement specialist, assistant communication director, audio engineer, management training specialist, video production assistant, program manager, and protocol coordinator. Graduates are working at a variety of organizations, ranging from the United Nations General Assembly to Goldman Sachs and from the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition to Sinclair Broadcasting.
Internships are a way to knock on the door
Many students are also continuing into graduate education in the U.S. and abroad, moving on to pursue law school, master’s degree, and doctoral programs in several fields.
The real challenge, as it turns out, is not simply finding a job when you graduate with a humanities degree; it’s narrowing down the vast range of options.
Test Driving Careers with Internships
The College of Humanities has invested a lot in helping students to navigate the winnowing process, starting with the way we define student success. Karen Marsh Schaeffer, director of student success in the College of Humanities, says, “Courses across campus, co-curricular experiences, and extra-curricular activities all help students integrate the skills they are learning into a toolkit for their futures. Our student success team supports students as they identify their path through school and possible trajectories after graduation.”
The college’s creation of a Student Success Hub in 2022, along with the addition of a specialized Associate Director of Internships & Career Success, has played a key role. Educating students about careers and internships through short informational videos, classroom presentations, individual appointments to discuss personalized options, and guidance from advisors and career coaches across departments has also contributed to this growth.
Employer Gray Media visits the College of Humanities to connect with students.
“The real challenge, as it turns out, is not simply finding a job when you graduate with a humanities degree; it’s narrowing down the vast range of options.”
This infrastructure has allowed College of Humanities students to experience the transformative power of internships in greater numbers than ever before. Internships, often a staple of a student’s college experience, can be uniquely memorable but inaccessible to some students due to the time commitment and unpaid work that is often expected. The College of Humanities is working to dismantle the barriers to participation in internships. During the 2024–25 academic year, 60% of humanities students participating in internships have a paid position. The college is offering targeted support in finding paid internships, knowing that paid positions make these opportunities available to a broader range of students.
Cameron Vakilian, the associate director of internships and career success in the College of Humanities, credits this increase in part to the StepUp Fund, an innovative financial support that allows the university to fill in the gap for unpaid internships. “We’ve also had stronger partnerships with internship programs like the Hinckley Institute for Politics and the Goff Strategic Leadership Institute,” says Vakilian. “Our dedicated career coaches give students more access to direct coaching, and our partnership with U Career Success helps humanities students land internship placements through a huge network of employer relationships.”
Vakilian emphasizes the value of internships, even when they don’t go as expected. “Internships are a way to knock on the door, and once you’re in, they can really help you move forward in your career,” he says. “They’re also really helpful for students to find out what you don’t like as a new professional, before you have to commit to a full-time job.”
It’s all paying off for students. Approximately half of humanities grads complete an internship during their time at the U, and this year, 272 students completed internships for credit—the most successful year so far. Students interned at a wide range of businesses and nonprofits: the Incheon Free Economic Zone Global Center in South Korea, SLUG Magazine, Broadway Media, the Disney College Program, Salt Lake Magazine, the Natural History Museum, Hill Aerospace Museum, KSL, ABC4, KUER, the Zero Fatalities Campaign, and Interfaith America.
Students are responding well to the experiences. Daphne Garcia, a communication major who interned with Ban Law Office in the fall, says her coursework helped to prepare her for success in her internship: “The soft skills necessary to be an advocate, such as people skills, have been strengthened by the hard skills I’ve learned in Public Speaking, Strategic Communication, Media Writing, Advocacy & Change, and Quantitative Communication Research.”
Employers with University of Utah student interns receive guidance to help them structure their internships in a productive and positive way. Likewise, employers overwhelmingly report having positive experiences with humanities interns.
Ultimately, the increase in internships means more undergraduates reaping the career benefits of internships during their educational experiences. “Our students develop skills through humanities courses and programs that make them valuable for employers,” says Marsh Schaeffer. “Internships are a great way for students to apply these skills, experience the workplace environment, and discover the types of careers that they can thrive in. Completing an internship can be vital to transitioning into the professional space and give students the initial boost they need to be successful.”
Launching Careers
Regardless of whether students complete an internship during their undergraduate years, humanities students take their unique educational backgrounds with them into an impressive variety of fields. “Studies show humanities majors have the kinds of critical thinking skills, writing skills, and ability to make an argument grounded in evidence that match the needs of the 21st century job market,” notes professor and former chair of the history department, Paul Reeve.
Belying the myth of the eternally broke humanities major, data from a variety of sources indicate that students with degrees in these disciplines do quite well economically throughout their careers. Data from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences shows the median salary for Utahns with undergraduate degrees in the humanities is 62% higher than the median salary for their peers with a high school diploma, and even those in the bottom quartile out-earn their high school educated peers by several thousand dollars per year. Graduates with an advanced degree in the humanities see a further 37% increase, with median earnings of $84,940.
While salary data are significant, they are far from the only relevant assessments of value. The National Humanities Alliance tracks comparisons of humanities students relative to their peers on a variety of measures such as gains in writing and critical thinking, job satisfaction for post-graduates, and civic engagement. Nearly across the board, humanities grads rank at or near the top.
Humanities graduates spend years dedicating themselves to the practice of seeing the world more deeply, weaving the skills of critical analysis and synthesis into not only their academic work, but their everyday lives. This impact of this immersive, slow transformation ripples out over the course of a lifetime—decisions made more thoughtfully, relationships handled with more care, conflicts approached with more integrity and insight, questions answered with more nuance and context. Immeasurable impacts, simultaneously mundane and profound.