My mother’s dream was to be a writer.
Yet, in an immigrant household, her acceptance to NYU for English was eclipsed by the glaring pressure to pursue the medical field. She went to the University of Akron for a seven-year medical program instead.
I imagine that my mother always wondered what her life could have been if she had been given the option to pursue her dream career. I wonder if she resented this lack of autonomy. Growing up, nobody ever told me that my dreams would be incompatible with achieving success. However, after my first year at Harvard, I can’t help but acknowledge that this isn’t how I feel anymore.
When I think of my childhood, it looks like strawberry milk and Dr. Seuss books, stories from my diary sprawled across the kitchen counter, and ripped-out articles of personal stories and interviews from Teen Vogue and Tiger Beat clinging to my bedroom wall. While others were athletic superstars or computer science whizzes, I’ve always preferred the reserved solace of a good book and a pen and paper. As I’ve grown up, though, I’ve come to understand that not everyone puts those who live and breathe the humanities on the same pedestal as other passions and focus fields.
It’s been hard for me to grapple with the growing pressures in the world of higher education to use my time here, especially at a university like Harvard, in a “meaningful” way. As I’ve begun to seriously consider concentrating in English or other fields within the humanities, I’ve had conversations with fellow Harvard peers and even friends who deemed my potential field of study as something that they would “look at me differently for” or that “should be paired with something more serious.” Even though they know that I am a smart, capable student who earned my way into this school off of merit, what I love to do and am good at does not sustain their definition of success. But concentrating in the humanities does not mean that I am wasting the tuition and prestige here.
It’s no secret that the humanities are, in a very real way, dying. In 2022, a survey conducted by The Crimson found that only seven percent of Harvard freshmen planned to major in the humanities, down from twenty percent in 2012, and nearly thirty percent during the 1970s. This aversion to humanities concentrators may make sense considering that more than sixty percent of the members of the Class of 2020 planning to enter the workforce were going into tech, finance, or consulting.
In the humanities, it’s easy to feel like you’re not really going anywhere, which is undeniably scary. But the constructed idea that concentrating in English or the humanities will make you “poor” is deeply flawed. Just because studying the humanities may not be viewed as central at this school doesn’t make it any less valuable.
Graduates of humanities degrees can often find high-paying jobs that closely align with their major. According to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, despite differences in graduates’ typical earnings, the vast majority of bachelor’s degree holders in every academic field expressed satisfaction with their job. In 2019, the rate of satisfaction for undergraduate humanities majors (who may also have one or more advanced degrees in the humanities or another field) was 87%. The rate for bachelor’s degree holders generally was 90%.
Communications director, technical writer, instructional designer, and content marketing manager are just a few of the highest-paying jobs for graduates of humanities undergraduate programs. However, humanities concentrators develop a strong set of transferable skills that are valuable across all different careers and can be seen as advantageous in some situations including critical thinking and problem-solving, effective communication, and creativity and innovation.
Over the past few years, an ever-widening gap has emerged between the values and focuses of contemporary America (the Real World) and those on college campuses (the Ivory Tower). Universities around the U.S. have begun to be critiqued for their focus solely on theoretical pursuits, potentially neglecting real-world concerns and practical applications. “Ivory Tower” institutions often prioritize academic prestige and research, which can be associated with highly specialized and well-funded fields, often leading to high-paying careers. This focus creates an environment where other valuable career paths, even those with positive societal impact, receive less attention and prestige.
The culture at Harvard and similar “Ivory Tower” institutions have shifted to push students towards “high-paying” careers. The skills nurtured by the humanities can actually be a powerful tool to critique this culture. Humanities graduates can use their critical thinking and communication skills to promote a more balanced perspective on success, one that values intellectual pursuits, social impact, and personal fulfillment alongside financial goals. Humanities studies often ignite a passion for lifelong learning and a desire to understand the human experience. This intrinsic motivation can lead to careers that are personally fulfilling, even if they don’t offer the highest salaries.
The realm of the humanities isn’t just people trying to learn something to get a job, which is exciting and magical and scary. And without sounding too broken-record-liberal-artsy, there’s a true cultivation of the mind that exists within a humanities education.
In my application to Harvard, I wrote that I hope to harness my Harvard education to learn and grow as a writer further. While I don’t know quite yet if that’s the path I’ll go down at this school, that’s okay. I believe in the wild joy that exists within the walls of writing workshops and humanities seminars. And now, at this moment in time more than any other, when the idea of the “Ivory Tower” is slowly becoming detangled and deconstructed, there needs to be a force that continues to conjure the contemplation of critique, identity, culture, history, and language.
Rania Jones ’27 (rjones@college.harvard.edu)’s celebrity crush is Joan Didion.