At the start of my sophomore year when I was considering applying to UW’s School of Journalism, I met with an adviser in Bascom Hall. After a long discussion about majors and finding jobs, he assured me “You’re not going to be hired for your major, you’re going to be hired for getting a great liberal arts degree.”
To an extent, he’s right. Parents, students and employers have all begun to understand that if you graduate from an educational institution as good as UW-Madison, you’ll be qualified for an array of diverse, well-paying jobs, even if your major is something like sociology or political science.
This development has been the result of three things: Open-minded employers, a talented entry-level workforce and universities getting better at promoting their liberal arts programs.
But for somebody majoring in communication arts, last week’s Career Fair sure made it seem like the respect liberal arts degrees have gained in recent years was for naught.
The fair was held at the Kohl Center and co-sponsored by the College of Letters & Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Human Ecology, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Wisconsin Alumni Association. It boasted an impressive 232 employers, from global giants like General Electric, Ford and Altria, to small, local corporations and non-profits.
It’s the biggest career fair on campus, and as a result, most students talk themselves into going. This would be fine if they all had realistic expectations going in, but many end up totally demoralized when no real opportunities materialize for them as a result of the fair.
“I’m not qualified for any of these jobs,” a friend of mine said when I ran into him on the second floor of the Kohl Center. It’s likely he’s not alone.
As a legal studies and geography major, it’s understandable why he’d feel that way, since so many of the employers at the fair were only hiring accounting, finance and computing positions. It was a pervasive feeling that day for those without a specialized major; that is, the entire student body of the College of Letters and Science.
“Liberal arts students really identify themselves a lot by their major,” says Leslie Kohlberg, director of career services for L&S. “One of the reasons [so many] have this terrible experience at the career fair is that they have this feeling of a worthless degree.”
The Career Fair exacerbates that feeling. But in my experiences, too many people who have Career Fair horror stories give up on UW’s career services after that, something they really ought to reconsider.
For starters, while the Career Fair itself may not cater to liberal arts students, it brings in an enormous amount of revenue to L&S Career Services, which help them run smaller career sessions for those students focused on the public and nonprofit sectors.
The office also offers mock interviews and resume consulting, and can suggest fields you might be interested in exploring. Perhaps most importantly, the advice and reassurance they can offer is invaluable in keeping your morale up during what Kohlberg correctly calls a “very lonely time.”
Career Services at L&S is by no means perfect. It could use quadruple the funding it has, more staff and a new office ?- one that isn’t tucked away in an obscure part of Linden Drive. It could also grow on its own by expanding its outreach programs, which would in turn improve student usage of the office, bettering their case for more funding.
However, they can still be of help, and I encourage my fellow L&S seniors to check out Career Services before giving up on entry-level employment and going to grad school. There is more to life than a six-figure salary anyways.
Kevin Bargnes ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and history.
