July 24, 2019, by Ross Wilson

What to do with a Liberal Arts degree

With graduation just finished for this year, we can think about what people go on to do after university and specifically what you can do with a Liberal Arts degree.

As a Liberal Arts student, you work across a range of subjects. This prepares you to take advantage of a variety of career opportunities. Your degree is about adaptation and innovation and these skills are highly valued in every job sector. Find out more at the Careers and Employability Service.

 

All the modules you have studied and the experiences you have gained from your degree enables you to use describe your interdisciplinary approach in application forms and interviews. You may have studied history, politics, psychology or sociology, and this has enabled you to think about process, power, people and society. Remember, the strength of a Liberal Arts degree is the broad knowledge that you have obtained by studying across subjects.

 

What skills have I got?

The skills gained from studying Liberal Arts are numerous. You can think about how your degree has provided you with skills in the following areas:

Interdisciplinary thinking / making connections

Applied knowledge

Research skills

Data analysis

Planning for opportunities and challenges

Adaptability

Challenging conventional wisdom

Working with others

Lifelong learning skills

Digital content production / digital communication

Reflection / continual improvement

What makes these skills important is that they are transferable to a wide range of areas. This means that graduates can enter a diverse range of roles and job sectors after university.

 

Using your degree

From business and finance, advertising, teaching, research, management, law, marketing, journalism, non-profit and public sector work, a Liberal Arts degree is a way of demonstrating your value to leading change and innovation across a range of fields.

Employers can ask for graduates who have a broad knowledge as well as being adaptable and creative. As a Liberal Arts student, you can meet this demand by drawing upon your interdisciplinary education to work for banks, charities, newspapers, schools and the civil service, because you can think differently and create significant value for organisations.

This is also great preparation for a career in research and teaching, too. You are well-placed to pursue further qualifications in a specific career or to study at a postgraduate level because of your interdisciplinary skills. Liberal Arts is about thinking differently.

Keep in mind that you can also shift your focus, too. You may want to move jobs, change careers, learn new skills and adapt to shifts in the economy. Having a degree subject that allows you to develop this adaptation and flexibility is key for this.

In short, the answer to what do you do with a Liberal Arts degree is anything you want to do. Focus on your interests and what you want to achieve and use your Liberal Arts degree to prepare yourself for that role.

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