Limitless possibilities for interesting jobs
Recent media stories have reported on the high demand for applicants with the skills of liberal arts graduates. The creative thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills that liberal arts graduates excel in are being sought by employers and by professional graduate programs. And in the long term, liberal arts majors do very well in career earnings and in a changing job environment, and so are better set up for life. The idea that other kinds of majors lead to better job prospects is simply wrong. "The [most recent] data show that humanities majors aren’t largely unemployed and their earnings are comparable to or better than the salaries of workers who majored in most non-humanities fields" (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
Recent surveys of first destinations of Illinois graduates bears this out—majors in foreign languages and literatures have successfully found jobs with good compensation (see the results for “Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics” graduates in this report on the past three years in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences).
Slavic Studies majors have gone on to an endless variety of jobs and careers, not limited at all by their liberal arts training. Some of the more common paths are the following, but any field you can imagine is potentially open:
- Publishing, writing, editing, and media
- Government service, international NGOs
- International or domestic law
- Work with international cultural foundations or organizations
- Teaching, grad school in literature, linguistics, area studies
- International business
Forge your own path to a career through Slavic Studies. Learn what others have done in this National Humanities Alliance podcast.