Get the Best Return on Investment for Your Liberal Arts Degree

After Shannon McNay graduated in 2006 with an English degree from Northern Kentucky University, she worked as a waitress, bank teller and an office manager on Wall Street.

But none of those jobs used the writing skills she'd honed during college.

Eventually she took a gamble on pursuing her passion for writing, accepting a freelance gig at ReadyForZero, which offers online tools for managing debt and protecting credit, before becoming an intern and ascending to her current role as community manager.

She gets to write for the company's blog, as well as manage its social media feeds and do customer outreach and marketing.

"I absolutely feel like my liberal arts degree was worth it," says McNay. "At the end of the day you'll only succeed if you have some semblance of fulfillment or happiness."

[See photos of the top 20 national liberal arts colleges.]

McNay's winding career path is common for those with liberal arts majors, say experts. "People right out of college with a liberal arts degree tend to bounce around for while," says Donald Farish, president of Roger Williams University.

But they eventually find their professional footing -- and earn the paychecks to prove it. One report from the Association of American Colleges & Universities found that humanities and social science undergraduate degree holders earned on average $2,000 more annually between the ages of 56 and 60 than those who earned professional or pre-professional undergraduate degrees, such as nursing.

Patrick Kelly, senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and co-author of the report, points out that a college degree, even one in the not obviously practical liberal arts, is typically a good investment no matter the major.

"You definitely will make a lot more money with a college degree in the liberal arts field than if you don't go to college," he says. "The question is, how much do you want to pay for it?"

For students facing college costs that have risen dramatically over the past 20 years -- doubling for in-state students at four-year public schools and increasing 66 percent at private nonprofits in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the College Board -- calculating the payoff is the hard part.

[Learn about 10 tools that give you a tailored estimate of what you'll pay for college.]

But there are ways to make a liberal arts major translate more easily into a career and a paycheck. Here's how.

-- Choose a minor: Rounding out a liberal arts major with a minor is one way to make it relate to the professional world more clearly, say experts.

For example, at Roger Williams, the dance program is strong, says Farish. "But not a whole lot of folks will make a living on Broadway as a dancer," he says.

Farish recommends rounding out that major with one offered in arts management, which can help students learn to run the back office of a dance company or start their own dance studios.

-- Think about career early: At the University of Evansville in Indiana, all students have the option to meet with career services before they even enroll, stopping by the office during the campus visit as part of its Career Advantage program.

"It's not to discourage a history major," says Tom Kazee, president at the university. "But for a student to be thoughtful about what a history major would mean for them post-university."

Once they have a sense of the minors and professional experiences necessary to round out their major, "their return on investment is substantial because the likelihood of getting a job is greater," says Kazee.

-- Don't forget about the soft skills: Liberal arts students may not study coding or engineering, but they can still pick up crucial professional skills, including soft skills that employers want, such as communication and teamwork, say experts.

"We see the skills that the students bring from a liberal arts education as being directly relevant to work," says Liz Lierman, director of the career development center at Mount Holyoke College. "They'll need opportunities to practice articulating that clearly."

Mount Holyoke's The Lynk program seeks to do just that, tying the academic work involved in a liberal arts degree to practical experience. Students practice presenting their work and research experiences to an audience, connecting it back to their liberal arts education.

-- Factor in tuition: As with any major, liberal arts students should be cognizant of college costs and do what they can to chip away at them. The general rule of thumb is to borrow no more than the expected first year salary.

For an idea of what salary to expect from a variety of majors, one resource is data from PayScale, which breaks down earnings potential by field of study.

[Discover 10 tools for chipping away at the cost of college.]

For McNay, the trade-off was living with her parents. "It was awful," she says. But not doing it would have doubled her tuition costs.

In the end, studying and working in a field McNay enjoys is worth the risk. "Don't run away from what it is you love to do," says McNay. "Be practical about it."

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