The Humanities and a University education
#1
In the Canterbury Tales, the Clerk of Oxford is highly praised as a learned man who's always seen with his Aristotle, but he's a poor man.
The proliferation of finance and white collar service jobs meant over the last 50 years meant that you could study for a humanities degree and get a job in consulting if you were intelligent. This was particularly the case in Britain and Europe more generally, but also to a lesser extent in America.

What is the future of non-STEM fields? It's a duller world without them

https://www.businessinsider.com/recent-c...job-2026-3
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#2
(03-11-2026, 02:46 AM)busker Wrote:  In the Canterbury Tales, the Clerk of Oxford is highly praised as a learned man who's always seen with his Aristotle, but he's a poor man.
The proliferation of finance and white collar service jobs meant over the last 50 years meant that you could study for a humanities degree and get a job in consulting if you were intelligent. This was particularly the case in Britain and Europe more generally, but also to a lesser extent in America.

What is the future of non-STEM fields? It's a duller world without them

https://www.businessinsider.com/recent-c...job-2026-3

Yes, I'm sure it's harder to reason and write for a living but I know someone who took a BA in graphic arts and managed to get a first job at double my salary and in the past 10 years has leap frogged a bit into double that. I know someone else who turned a BA in psychology into a career with an independent agency that identifies and prosecutes insurance fraud, which she loves. And both for the last 5 years have been largely working from home. Kids these days lol.

So what I'm saying is the first job isn't necessarily what you might have had in mind but it's the person who molds their life, with effort.
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#3
(03-11-2026, 02:46 AM)busker Wrote:  In the Canterbury Tales, the Clerk of Oxford is highly praised as a learned man who's always seen with his Aristotle, but he's a poor man.
The proliferation of finance and white collar service jobs meant over the last 50 years meant that you could study for a humanities degree and get a job in consulting if you were intelligent. This was particularly the case in Britain and Europe more generally, but also to a lesser extent in America.

What is the future of non-STEM fields? It's a duller world without them

https://www.businessinsider.com/recent-c...job-2026-3

Intelligent thinkers will always find a way to thrive regardless of their degrees.  I read the part of the article that was free and, if I am reading it correctly, a young man got a history degree and is now concerned that he will have a difficult time monetizing it because there isn't a huge demand for history degrees.  No surprise there.

Also, I wouldn't conflate his situation with non-Stem fields drying up, there is plenty of thinking and research being done in non-stem fields.
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