Study: Liberal Arts Graduates Will Get Better Jobs

By
Karen Joseph
January 6, 2006, 1:19 AM ET
2 min read

D E T R O I T, Dec. 1, 2000 -- Job prospects haven’t been this good for liberal

arts graduates in years.

Liberal arts graduates can expect to be more fervently soughtafter this year and to be offered better salaries, according to the30th annual recruiting trends survey conducted by the CollegiateEmployment Research Institute at Michigan State University.

Among the reasons: The earlier-than-predicted retirements of theoldest baby boomers have created job openings of all kinds.

Also, with the high-tech industry booming, Terri LaMarco,associate director for employer relations at the University ofMichigan, said employers in recent years have changed theirattitudes about liberal arts majors.

“I think what they are seeing is that liberal arts majors canfill some of the positions that used to be considered technical,”LaMarco said. For example, they can be trained to do programming,she said.

Labor Market Expands

A total of 380 employers, primarily in the manufacturing andprofessional services sectors, responded to the survey, releasedtoday.

Continuing a four-year period of frenzied growth, the job marketfor students receiving undergraduate or advanced degrees of anykind in 2001 will expand 6 percent to 10 percent compared with theyear before, the survey found. It gave no breakdown for those withliberal arts degrees.

Much of the expansion will take place at mega-companies — thosewith 3,500-plus employees. Those corporations are expected toexpand hiring by 66 percent, an increase that will cross all degreelevels. Last year, large companies reported that they planned toexpand hiring 21 percent.

Engineering and computer science graduates, who have had it goodfor several years, will continue to have it good, according to thesurvey.

They will still land at the top of the pay scale with theirstarting salaries, earning between $45,000 and $50,000. Programmerswill be in particular demand: Their starting salaries are expectedto increase 5 percent this year to $43,700.

Graduates at the more modest end of the hiring pay scale, suchas liberal arts majors, will see their average starting salariespush into the lower $30,000 range.