Choosing a major? The humanities may be more practical than you think.
By Luisa de Vogel | Mar. 1, 2018When Rebekah Paré was studying jazz piano in college, she didn’t imagine the skills she was learning in her music theory classes would someday be directly applicable to a career outside of piano performance. Today the improvisation skills Paré learned in her piano classes inform her everyday work as the associate dean for the College of Letters and Science career initiative at UW-Madison. Students are often pressured into science, technology, engineering, mathematics or pre-professional majors due to a myth that students who study the humanities are unable to compete in the job market without a graduate degree, according to Paré. “Our humanities students, as well as our social science and natural sciences are graduating with a really fantastic set of skills that are in high demand,” Paré said.
