When I left school in 2002 with a master's degree in international affairs, I was set on having a career at the United Nations. By then I had already once changed career by dropping out of a clinical psychology program. Ten years later, I have the experience of both working for and leaving the U.N.
In my undergraduate and graduate studies, I found pure joy in learning history and philosophy; studying the requirements, including statistics and economics, was less joyful. What I learned in both types of courses, though, was equally useless when I made my way as a working adult.
What was useful was the fact that I had a diploma in a relevant field, even though my mastery of the content mattered very little. It was useful that I was enthusiastic and willing to work long hours. On the other hand, I lacked the constitution to thrive in a hierarchical organization such as the U.N. But school couldn't have taught me that. The rest of what I needed, I learned on the job.
For generations, higher education has been associated with better career prospects. And certain degrees, parents believed, represented more marketable skills. There is no paucity of researchers, policymakers and business leaders who insist that producing more highly trained engineers and scientists is the key to reviving the economy.
The hard truth is no degree guarantees a clear-cut, secure professional trajectory anymore.
A foreign language works like a passport. Critical thinking helps put complex situations into perspective. Emotional acuity serves as a compass when navigating office politics. And these are skills that training in the humanities can enhance.
Higher education is more than vocational or technical training. The essential purpose of it has never been primarily about “usefulness” in a narrow sense of acquiring a specific, practical tool to make oneself marketable.
In the words of my late college professor (of philosophy) — the purpose of higher education is to become broadly acquainted with cultural traditions and deeply appreciate them so that it may help us become responsible citizens and good people in general.
As for me, there was no way of knowing which major or degree was going to be “useful.” And since then, everything around me has been constantly changing — and I with it. Priorities shift and my heart no longer desires what it once did.
I have long forgotten the details of what I absorbed in classrooms and libraries. I did, however, learn how to think for myself. And that is invaluable in the workplace and outside it.
Katrin Park lives in London, where she works at an intergovernmental organization.
