Perspectives

FOR THE MONEY?

FOR THE LOVE?
Reconsidering the “Worth”
of a College Major
By Steven J. Tepper and Danielle J. Lindemann

S
tudents and their parents certainly deserve to know Which Majors Foster Resilience?
the worth of their investment in education. In defining Our global economy, while creating expanded opportu-
worth, social scientists and policymakers typically use nity for many, also produces increased anxiety and stress
economic yardsticks, evaluating the outcomes of vari- related to job insecurity. Fewer people today can aspire to
ous college majors in terms of earnings and employ- long-term careers in the same industry, let alone the same
ment rates. However, different concepts of worth better align company or organization. According to the US Bureau of
with our mission as educators, match what students want and Labor Statistics, in 2010, men and women 18 to 44 years old
graduates are satisfied with, and promote the nation’s eco- had held on average 11 jobs, and a quarter had worked at 15
nomic health. or more jobs.
There are many other, perhaps better, ways to measure the Along with job insecurity, graduates must confront global
value of a college education than employment and income. migration, demographic change, market instability, and
We could, for example, rank majors and institutions by how decreased public services. These challenges take their toll on
well they impart critical or creative thinking skills, by their students’ mental health.
production of civic leaders or entrepreneurs, by student True to Garrison Keillor’s characterization of Lake
satisfaction, by whether alumni indicate that the skills they Wobegon, where everyone is above average, freshman
learned in college are relevant to their lives, or by whether increasingly rate themselves as above average compared to
they are satisfied with their careers and whether their jobs their peers in academic skills, confidence, and leadership.
give them a sense of purpose. On this last point, recent Emotional health is the one area in which they see them-
research indicates that we might want to provide a truth-in- selves as below average, with many more students reporting
advertising label for families that are looking into the results lower levels of emotional health and much higher levels of
of each major—something like “engineers, on average, earn stress today than students of two decades ago.
more than performing artists, but performing artists, on aver- The ability to act and think creatively is necessary to
age, are happier than engineers in their work.” navigate such rough seas and to give graduates the

Steven J. Tepper ([email protected]) is associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public
Policy, associate professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, and research director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni
Project (SNAAP). Danielle J. Lindemann ([email protected]) is an assistant research professor and research director
of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. She is the author of Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in
the Dungeon (Chicago, 2012).

20 Change • March/April 2014

 surprising that more than a quarter of undergraduates in
our survey of academic majors report that they should get
refunds for classes they don’t like.
Perhaps we should ask which But this one-dimensional conception of the value of a
college education does not fit with how alumni themselves
majors help students deal with evaluate their degrees. Money is indeed one criterion they
use to think about their success. For some majors, it may
be the dominant criterion. For others, like those in the arts,
uncertainty, failure, and risk. financial considerations take a backseat to considerations
such as personal satisfaction, the chance to be creative, and
the ability to contribute to one’s community and to society.
And across all majors, according to our 2010 national sur-
confidence and efficacy to deal with ambiguity and contin- vey, graduating seniors rank creativity, leadership, personal
gency. Creativity scholar Ruth Richards finds that creative values, family, and work/life balance as more important than
people are more resilient and less anxious in the face of income when considering their futures. Given the diverse
change compared to those who score lower on creativity motivations and career aspirations of students, why do we
assessments. Others have found that creative people are also insist on focusing on employment and income data?
more politically tolerant, more accepting of diverse people Ironically, this focus may actually hurt the nation economi-
and ideas, and more comfortable with ambiguity. cally, in the long run. Research by the Federal Reserve Bank
Perhaps we should ask which majors help students deal indicates that for tasks involving creativity and problem-
with uncertainty, failure, and risk. Perhaps we should evalu- solving, performance is driven by intrinsic motivation; higher
ate majors not by who is first to get a job out of college, or financial incentives actually lead to worse performance.
who is fully employed at any one moment, or who earns the Moreover, there is considerable evidence (see Trilling &
highest wage, but rather by who is able to deal with contin- Fadel, Berman & Korsten, and Tepper in Resources) indi-
gent employment or job loss by piecing together work and cating that creativity and flexibility are what will allow the
getting back on their feet. United States to compete in the global marketplace.
Who can creatively reinvent themselves, pivot, and In fostering creativity in addition to value-driven, money-
change directions? In a 2010 national study of academic making behaviors, in short, we are preparing our students for
majors, supported by the Teagle Foundation and fielded by what is very likely to be a turbulent future. Our 2010 national
Vanderbilt University, arts and humanities graduates were survey suggests that many of today’s young people “get it.”
more than five times as likely as their science and engineer- Eighty-four of students say that thinking creatively is “impor-
ing peers to say that learning to deal with ambiguity was a tant” or “very important” (compared to 60 who say the same
routine part of their coursework. about solving quantitative problems), and 92 say that having
a career that allows to them be creative is important.
Higher Education for Sale Perhaps it is naïve to think that higher education can
Still, researchers and journalists generally fall in line somehow sidestep the market logic that dominates the rest
with the broader trend of assigning everything in life a of our lives. And even as students report that creativity is
market value. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits important to them, about 81 percent of incoming fresh-
of Markets, Michael J. Sandel illuminates the contours of a man continue to rank “being very well off financially” as
world in which pretty much everything is for sale. an “essential” or “very important” life goal. But do college
People can buy their way into carpool lanes, even if they graduates—with some time, distance, and experience—see
are driving alone; you can buy your way to the front of the
line at concerts and movies; and corporations can sponsor
homeruns in major league baseball and advertise on school
buses. Many will argue that these trends produce greater Graduating seniors rank creativity,
public utility, as people willingly exchange goods and ser-
vices at a price that is mutually advantageous to both parties.
In short, if people didn’t benefit from selling their souls, they
leadership, personal values, family,
wouldn’t do it. But these narrow metrics place profit above
purpose. and work/life balance as more
Colleges are not immune to this way of thinking. Our
values are evident in the way we pitch our campuses to important than income when
prospective students. Typical admissions tour guides “sell”
their universities to prospective students like another con- considering their futures.
sumer good—emphasizing facilities, food, services, and
local attractions. Given this consumerist mentality, it is not

www.changemag.org 21
 Even among those who are currently unemployed and
actively looking for work, 68 percent would attend the same
institution again, and 84 percent rate their overall experience
in arts school as “good” or “excellent.”
There is little relationship between the amount of money
Students do not typically enroll these graduates currently earn and their satisfaction with
their work. For example, arts alumni who currently work
in arts school with dollar signs primarily as dancers or choreographers earn the least of
any artists. Yet they are the ones who are the most likely to
in their eyes…Money is not what indicate that they are satisfied with their work: 97 percent
indicate that they are “very” or “somewhat” satisfied overall
makes artists happy. with their jobs.

Are Artists Weird?

One might argue that artists are the exceptions who prove
the rule when it comes to notions about educational worth.
Perhaps artists are particularly good at embracing their pas-
sions in the face of impending poverty. After all, numerous
the worth of their college education differently? Do they studies have shown that arts students tend to be less econom-
begin to value other important life goals? Does purpose ically oriented than their peers.
begin to elbow out profit? But it’s not just artists who value things like job satisfac-
While we cannot answer these questions for all college tion, the ability to follow their passions, and the chance to
graduates, we do have access to a unique data set of gradu- be creative in their careers. There is little evidence, in gen-
ates from arts schools and training programs. The Strategic eral, that wealth is what makes human beings happy. In a
National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) is an annual online 2012 New York Times article, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael
survey and data management system designed to improve Norton point out that people who earn $25,000 a year think
arts-school education. SNAAP is the most extensive concen- their happiness will double if they earn $55,000, but it only
trated effort ever to track the training, careers, and lives of increases 9 percent. And after $75,000, more money does
arts graduates in the United States. Since 2008, SNAAP has not make you happier.
collected information from over 100,000 arts alumni from If this is the case, why is financial success the dominant
hundreds of different educational institutions. frame we use to designate merit, not just for arts graduates
The responses of these alumni to the SNAAP survey not or graduates in general but within numerous arenas of social
only call into question how we evaluate the worth of an arts life?
education or the merits of a college degree in general—they
also challenge the metrics we use to privilege profit over pas- Yes, Money Is Important!
sion and materialism over meaning in multiple spheres of Income and employment are two crucial measures of the
social life. worth of a college degree. We do not have visions of some
utopian society in which artists are able to eat paint and
Art ≠ Money (and Arts Students Know This) breathe passion. Money is important!
Students do not typically enroll in arts school with dollar And while our SNAAP results reveal that the overall
signs in their eyes. While this point may be obvious to any- picture of arts’ graduates employment is not all doom and
one who has majored in an arts field or known anyone who gloom—for instance, their unemployment rate is lower
has, this seemingly simple assertion cuts at the heart of long- than that of the overall population—we join multiple other
standing assumptions about schooling and success. researchers in finding that arts graduates do not earn as
In fact, we find striking evidence that, despite their rela- much as their peers with equivalent degrees.
tively low median earnings, these graduates are satisfied Many professional artists are underfunded, underpaid,
with their artistic training and their current work. Money is underemployed, and exploited. These difficulties are exac-
not what makes artists happy. erbated for different subgroups of graduates such as racial
and ethnic minorities, women, those who live in certain
Among SNAAP respondents: geographic locations, and those without personal contacts
• 76 percent would go back and attend their degree-grant- within the arts. As we argue in a recent report (Lindemann &
ing institutions again. Tepper, 2012), there is an onus on arts schools to better pre-
• 90 percent say their overall experience in arts school pare their students for navigating both the opportunities and
was either “good” or “excellent.” challenges of the creative economy.
• 87 percent are satisfied with their current jobs. But we have a vision of a cultural context that does not
• 82 percent are satisfied with their ability to be creative privilege earnings for earnings’ sake. It is important to take
in their current primary jobs. into account whether our nation’s graduates are happy, are

22 Change • March/April 2014

finding meaning in life, and are resilient and creatively pro- have higher-than-average rates of volunteering, civic partici-
ductive—particularly in today’s economy, which increasingly pation, teaching, and charitable contributions. In short, they
values creative solutions and requires graduates to be flex- find work and happiness, and they give back to their com-
ible and prepared to deal with ambiguity. munities.
Arts alumni may or may not be “successful” based on So what is a college degree worth? If SNAAP tells us any-
the measures traditionally used to define achievement and thing, it is that some of our nation’s lowest-earning college
contribution. However, they express high levels of overall graduates are not miserable and may, in fact, be uniquely
satisfaction with their education and with their jobs, and they well prepared for today’s economic realities. C

Resources
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