Are art degrees useless?

Art degrees draw a lot of tongue-wagging. And it’s easy to see why: a career in this field comes with a bagful of both blessings and curses. For one, it’s well-documented that studying art in college (or getting an arts degree) can feed your soul. It helps us appreciate some of the fascinating aspects of the human psyche. We’re talking about everything beautiful about our endeavor as humans – from culture to technology and anything in between.

If you’re looking for an education option that nudges you to think outside the box and promotes raw creativity, you can’t do better than an art degree. But as a means to put food on the table and money in the bank, art degrees are widely seen as a gamble.

Put side by side with degrees in technology, engineering, or business, art degrees don’t usually cut it when it comes to making money. Nonetheless, recent surveys indicate that most art-degree graduates can make their degrees work.

However you look at it, art degrees are a mixed bag – but are they still up to scratch? That’s why we put together this article. We’ll take an unbiased stock of art degrees – their benefits, drawbacks, potential career paths, and much more.

The benefits – Why pursue an art degree or career?

Art degrees boast high job satisfaction

We dare you to ask older graduates about their job satisfaction. You’ll first notice that art degree holders will tell you mostly positive things about what they do and where they work. A survey carried out by folks at Indiana University’s Strategic National Arts Alumni Project confirmed the same thing. And we can’t help but be happy with the numbers.

According to the report Making It Work: The Education of Recent Arts Graduates¹, recent graduates with arts degrees are pretty content with their jobs, with a satisfaction rate of 75 percent. Interestingly, this figure is only slightly lower than the job satisfaction rate of graduates who have been out of school for longer, which stands at 82 percent.

t’s not a coincidence that those who have pursued arts degrees are happy with their jobs. They often end up working in fields that benefit your overall well-being. Museums, film, performance art, architecture – you name it. These types of jobs have the potential to nourish your soul and speak to your innermost and basest desires. That, of course, can remove a little sting from not earning a lot of money.

Art degrees provide a wide choice of career paths

If you get a medical degree, your chances of working outside of the medical industry are slim, if not zero. The same goes for a degree in engineering, science, and technology. But arts degrees are a breath of fresh air.

Art degrees open you to a wide range of career paths. That’s partly thanks to the fact that liberal arts degrees cover a wide array of areas, topics, and subjects. You’ll come out of college with versatile skills and a well-rounded education.

This is a double-edged sword but in a good way. On the one hand, you don’t have a well-defined career path right out of college. However, this can be a big advantage – arts degree holders are highly versatile and adapt quickly to the evolving job market.

Without putting it in many words, arts degrees prepare you for various job descriptions. If that doesn’t sound convincing enough, just note that a recent report compiled by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) showed that arts graduates appeal to 15+ professions. You sign up to be anything, from an art gallery curator to a sales rep.

For a good example, recent art degree graduates fit well into the media and communication industry. If you snap up a position as a technical writer, translator, or editor, an average take-home of $61,310 sounds appetizing enough. If teaching is more your calling, you’ll be even more glad to teach, as the average paycheck is between $62,780 and $80,790.

Holders of art degrees can also pursue a profession as a politician, counselor, social worker, manager, lawyer, or even an accountant. The career opportunities for people with arts degrees are simply endless.

Getting art degrees promotes open & lateral thinking

We all know the benefits of thinking outside the box. It’s not just something that motivational speakers like to say. When you think outside the box, you become more innovative, adaptable, and competitive, which can mean the world in an industry where competition is cutthroat.

Thankfully, an arts degree helps encourage people to think openly, critically, and creatively. Unlike other degrees like science or engineering that box you into thinking within your discipline, arts degrees open your mind. After all, you need lateral thinking and creativity to succeed in the world of arts.

Art degree graduates are an asset in the workplace, thanks to these skills. They’re more creative, flexible, and able to solve complex problems. What more could an employer ask for? That means, as an art degree holder, you won’t have trouble retaining your job. After all, critical thinking makes you open to new approaches, ideas, and innovations.

Art degrees are more Immune to automation & AI

The global non-profit World Economic Forum (WEF) says that automation will be responsible for more tasks than humans by 2025, and it’s only going to get worse. Seventy-five million jobs will go puff thanks to automation and AI. But art degree holders have a reason to smile amidst these bleak reports.

Arts degrees give you the skill set to remain relevant in an increasingly automated workforce. That’s because machines and AI-powered technologies will continue behaving more like humans. Getting an art degree will teach you skills that will help you develop and run AI solutions.

Well, let’s put it this way – robots and AI might be taking over some jobs, but don’t worry, art degrees aren’t going anywhere. In fact, as machines become more advanced, they’ll need us even more. So, if you’re considering pursuing an art degree, go for it. You’ll be equipped with the most humanistic skills, which are exactly what these machines and AI lack.

Art degrees build confidence

Encouraging greater confidence to take on future challenges and endeavors is something that arts degrees can help with. Writing fiction or experimenting with a different art form motivates you to step outside your comfort zone (remember, thinking outside the box?) and enables you to continue developing while tracking your growth.

Studying for an art degree encourages you to embrace risk-taking that will improve your behavior and academic performance. Through determination, arts teach you a lot about yourself. It can be extremely challenging to master design principles, comprehend literary themes, or dissect philosophical concepts, but the rewards are worth it.

Art degrees promote collaboration

If you go into an art school, you will rarely find one student studying alone in the corner of a library. They’re always debating, collaborating, and socializing. That’s the beauty of arts degrees – they teach you how to collaborate with like-minded people.

Arts degrees encourage students to develop collaborative skills through group assignments. Even at arts-geared workplaces like museums, you will be able to work with other creative and strong-willed people to find answers. You won’t be working alone on a computer all day long.

Sharing responsibilities and finding creative ways to compromise with other students to achieve a common goal is something that you’ll benefit from in the workforce for years to come.

This sort of collaborative environment is a breeding ground for success in future endeavors. In pretty much any role, you will be required to work with others and develop solutions that benefit multiple parties.

Art degrees impart transferrable skills

You’ve probably heard that more and more companies are looking for soft skills. As the name suggests, these are adaptable or flexible skills. Think clay – it’s soft and can be molded into whatever you want. That’s exactly the kind of skills that arts degrees give you.

We’re not saying technical skills are unimportant. If you have them, that’s good and dandy. However, if you don’t have soft, transferable skills, you might as well be a machine or robot. Soft skills are not specific to a job or field – they can be transferred from one job to the next. Here, think of skills like integrity, a positive attitude, passion, and superb communication.

As you pursue an art degree, you’ll learn how to put these soft skills into practice. Once you graduate into the real world, they will be set up for success as a profession. They help birth other skills like emotional judgment, innovative thinking, and problem-solving. And who can say no to someone with great self-management skills?

An art degree helps you build a professional network

As mentioned, getting an art degree is rarely a solo effort. You don’t earn your degree by pounding alone on the books. You must collaborate with other students and share ideas across the class. In fact, during your college years as an art degree student, you will likely come across people from all walks of life.

Because arts degrees prepare students for a variety of professions and career paths, this will help you cast your net wide. In other words, you will have more opportunities to build a strong, reliable professional network. For example, your contact list will include museum directors, high school teachers, film producers, artists, and much more.

This will come in especially handy as you look for your next job. The same can be said when you’re looking to take your career to the next level. You can simply reach out to your classmates or alumni.

Art degree holders earn decent money in the long haul

If you’re thinking about money in the long run, you can never go wrong with an art degree. It’s true that holders of this degree tend to earn lower than their science or engineering counterparts. This is especially true during the first few years after leaving college.

But that won’t last a lifetime.

While starting wages and salaries for art degree holders are lower, the lifetime earnings are far higher than those of non-art graduates. People who graduate with an arts degree catch up with those in engineering, science, and other sectors mostly during their mid-careers.

The drawbacks of pursuing an art degree or career

No career path is without downsides, and art degrees have their fair share.

Perceived low salaries

We must admit that the question of money is a big reason why people say arts degrees are useless. They say that arts careers don’t pay nearly as much as other courses, particularly STEM degrees. That, of course, is not true in every sense of the word.

Let’s look at the numbers. An art degree holder in the US takes home an average of $50,533 (we took this from Payscale and salary.com) each year. If you crunch the numbers, that translates to about $24 of wage money per hour. Of course, the average salary for people with arts degrees can vary greatly from under $22,000 all the way up to a whopping $250,000 per year.

Compared to STEM graduates who earn an average annual salary of $62,335 in the US, people with arts degrees seemingly get the short end of the stick. It’s not easy for graduates with art degrees to eke out a living from their education. That’s especially true at the beginning of their careers.

However, we must make one thing crystal clear. Arts graduates make the same, if not more money over the long term. Although your specific career path will do the most talking, an art degree can earn you a lifetime income of around $3.4 million, according to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. That’s pretty impressive considering that it’s level with what STEM graduates earn (about $3.7 million) in a lifetime.

High financial investment

Getting an arts degree is not a cheap affair. In the US, non-state-sponsored students can expect to cough up an average of $27,020 in tuition for an art degree. That’s quite expensive, all the more so that you won’t get a high-paying job right out of college.

We must note that other degrees, including STEM, also attract high tuition fees. The question we should be asking is whether the degree is worth the return on investment. With that in mind, STEM graduates are likely to see instant returns from their degrees compared to new art degree holders. That’s perhaps one of the biggest downsides.

You may not become an artist

If you’re after a career as an artist, an arts degree might not do the trick. In one discoursing study, the investigators found that 9 out of 10 art degree holders in America eventually don’t make money primarily from art. To put it in another way, only 10% of graduates with arts degrees are going to become artists, while the rest will have to choose other career paths.

The good news is that other industries and fields readily welcome art degree graduates. But the bad news for would-be artists is that only 16% of working artists are art degree holders. That means 84% of highly successful artists didn’t even bother to pursue an art degree. If you flip the argument, you could say that arts degrees help only 1 in 5 artists to succeed. So, is it even necessary?

Potential career paths for art degree holders

One of the most powerful arguments for arts degrees is that graduates can choose from a dizzying range of career paths. If you want to hit the real bone of the art arena, you can simply pursue traditional artistic career paths – you can become a painter, sculptor, actor, and so on.

Meanwhile, emerging fields have created a bountiful of opportunities for art degree graduates. Talk about graphic design, digital media, and AI. Another traditional way to make the most of your art degree is to focus your career on art curation and education – become an art professor, museum curator, and so forth.

Management and entrepreneurship are other career paths for holders of art degrees. You can become a museum director or own your art gallery. Freelancing can also work for some art degree graduates.

To paint a clearer picture, here are some notable industries (and their expected salaries) that appeal the most to art degree graduates:

Education/Teaching

Earning an art degree can prepare you for a teaching role at just about every level, from elementary to post-graduate. If becoming a high school art teacher sounds like your dream, you can expect to earn an average of $62,870 per year. Post-graduate art teachers earn more, with Ph.D. holders taking home an average of $80,790.

Mass Communication

Media and communication industry is the biggest employer of people with arts degrees. They fill a variety of roles, from technical writers to interpreters. An average salary of $61,310 will help sweeten the deal.

Marketing and Advertising

If you want to earn top dollar with your arts degree, look no further than the marketing, advertising, or promotions industry. The expected take-home is an eye-watering $133,460.

The verdict – Are art degrees useless?

The answer is a resounding no. Art education will not only make you a critical thinker and appreciate the beautiful things in life, but it can also set you up for various career paths.