For students in highly specialized academic fields, the professional path that begins after graduation is often clear-cut. Individuals who earn an accounting degree, for example, generally go on to become accountants. Other students, however, prefer a broader academic focus that spans several disciplines, making them a natural fit for studying humanities. Since the term humanities refers not to a profession but rather a broad range of social and cultural studies, the value of a degree in this subject may not be immediately clear. Let’s look now at what we mean by humanities, the essential skills a degree in humanities helps you develop, and the professions for which a humanities degree is most valuable.
The Meaning of Humanities
Humanities encompass a range of disciplines including language, philosophy, history, literature, music, and other arts. One purpose of a humanities degree is to equip students with a well-rounded knowledge of human culture that will enable them to better understand the world around them. A humanities degree also enables students to enjoy greater personal enrichment and build the skills needed to experience a more rewarding career.
The Degree Helps You Build Broadly Applicable Skills
Let’s discuss those skills for a moment. A humanities degree instills students with what are commonly called “soft skills,” which major companies and the U.S. Department of Labor agree are among the skills nearly all employers are seeking in job candidates—not just for entry-level jobs, but for leadership positions as well. These skills include:
- Communication: The ability to fully understand information conveyed by others as well as express yourself in a clear and intelligent manner, whether spoken or written.
- Critical thinking: The ability to analyze a problem or situation and devise a new, creative way to solve it, either on your own or in collaboration with others.
- Cooperation: The ability to work with others toward the achievement of a shared goal. Cooperation requires you to welcome, understand, and incorporate diverse perspectives. In the workplace, this is what’s meant by “teamwork.”
- Empirical and quantitative reasoning: The ability to understand and apply numerical data to devise and produce informed decisions.
- Personal responsibility: The ability to understand and take accountability for the effects that your choices have on others, as well as to adequately explain your rationale for making such choices.
- Social responsibility: The ability to see how your choices affect society as a whole and to use that knowledge as the basis of ethical decisions.
Clearly, these skills—soft or not—can benefit nearly everyone, both personally and professionally. Through a carefully designed curriculum, a humanities degree can help students develop a broad set of these irreplaceable abilities.
The Degree Prepares You for Many Rewarding Careers
By developing a skillset so broadly applicable and marketable, humanities degree-holders are primed to pursue a variety of careers, including:
- Advertising sales agent
- Artist
- Attorney
- Clergy member
- Counselor
- Educator
- Event coordinator
- Military service member
- Public relations professional
- Travel agent
- Writer
The Value of an Online Humanities Degree From UTPB
When you choose The University of Texas Permian Basin for your online Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, you’ll explore and consider some of the world’s most significant cultural works as you build the key skills that modern employers are seeking.
Our innovative online humanities degree program enables you to gear your studies toward the academic areas that most closely align with your passions. Rather than follow a fixed curriculum, you’ll work together with one of our faculty advisors to design an individualized study plan centered around a multidisciplinary theme, era, set of problems, specialization, or viewpoint. This is a unique configuration that you can’t experience by simply pursuing a major and a minor simultaneously. You’ll pick two to four areas of concentration from a list that includes art, English, Spanish, music, history, and communication, among others, for a total of 24 credit hours of specialized coursework.
In addition to this custom curriculum, our BA in humanities also offers a flexible learning experience through an asynchronous, fully online format that empowers you to complete coursework on your own schedule from virtually any location in the world. It’s the ideal way to earn a bachelor’s degree while fulfilling your professional and personal responsibilities. Need additional flexibility? You can begin your program at any of six annual start times. Once you begin, you’ll learn from the same renowned faculty who teach at the UT Permian Basin campus. When you graduate, you’ll receive the same respected degree as any campus-based student, with no indication that the program was completed online.
Can you see the value that our online Bachelor of Arts in Humanities program offers? Apply here or get more details about the program now.