Exploring the Return on Investment of a Liberal Arts Degree: Perceived Connections Between Education and Work

The value of a liberal arts degree has been placed under scrutiny (Pyle, 2013; Smith, 2012) due to the lower average earnings (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2012) and higher unemployment rates (Flaherty, 2012) experienced by liberal arts graduates. The current study explored student and hiring professionals' perceptions about the return on investment, both financial and non-financial, of a liberal arts degree. Interviews were conducted with 17 liberal arts students and 14 hiring professionals about their perceptions of the return on investment of a liberal arts degree, and 79 liberal arts students completed a survey with four open-ended questions about their college attendance and major selection. Interview transcripts and survey responses were analyzed using the process of open and axial coding (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Students viewed four aspects of the return on investment of their liberal arts degree: the credential of a college degree, the expectation of financial security, the expectation of (career) success, and the college experience itself. Students viewed their liberal arts major as preparation for a particular career field, while hiring professionals described a student's major as playing a minor role in their organization's hiring decisions. Hiring professionals described college graduates as prepared with workplace skills and the motivation to succeed, and emphasized the importance of work and leadership experience. Student accounts provide evidence for a master narrative of college, which described college attendance as their expected next step and that college leads to a meaningful career. However, results demonstrated that neither students nor hiring professionals reported important differences between a liberal arts degree and other college degrees. Many respondents portrayed a college degree as a gateway to professional work as a whole rather than emphasizing specific characteristics of a liberal arts degree. Theoretically, this study adds to literature on anticipatory socialization and meaningful work, by demonstrating the implicit nature of messages about the expectation of college attendance and that college is viewed as the route to a meaningful career. This study extends problematic integration theory by demonstrating how the theory applies in the context of the transition from college to career, and how students manage uncertainty about their future by relying on the master narrative, which reassures them that college will lead to a meaningful and financially stable career