ORONO, Maine - Hundreds of students across Maine will soon be embarking on life after school, armed with college degrees intended to help open doors to careers and gainful employment.
But with a growing push to develop more manufacturing and tech careers, and a nationwide focus on science, technology, engineering, and math - or STEM - what's in store for the state's newest liberal arts majors at a time when those fields of study have become the butt of jokes and targets for politicians?
It's spring on the University of Maine at Orono campus. Students are cleaning up the greens, packing up boxes, and preparing to depart for the summer. More than 1,600 of them won't be coming back. For those leaving the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the future may seem a bit less defined than for someone who has trained to be a research technician or biochemist.
Montage of voices:
Male: "I'm a philosophy and history double major."
Female: "I'm an English and anthropology double major, with a minor in folklore."
Female: "I am a studio art major with a sculpture concentration."
Male: "I'm a history major with a political science minor."
Female: "And I'm a theater and history double major."
Philosophy, history, languages, art, music, theater - these students are among hundreds who will be graduating with those kinds of degrees across the state. One of them is Taylor Cunningham, an English and anthropology major with a love for stories and folklore. She thinks there will always be a place in the world for the humanities - and jobs for people like her.
"I think in any discipline, you need creativity. You need critical thinking," Cunningham says. "And if you don't have that then there's something very severely lacking. So I think I have a lot to give in that way - yeah."
And there are many who agree, including CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who just released a book called In Defense of a Liberal Education. In it, Zakaria makes the case that America's success was built on liberal arts and a desire for knowledge rather than a need to "fill jobs."
But liberal arts majors have been the butt of jokes for years, the punch line usually something to the effect of, "You want fries with that?" North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has said that tax dollars should not support university programs such as gender studies or African languages. Florida Gov. Rick Scott posed the question of whether his state really needed more anthropologists.
And then there's the poster-child for unemployability: the art history major. "Folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree," President Barack Obama said at one event, as the crowd chuckled.
"Yes, President Obama reintroduced that into public discourse - for which I don't thank him," says Emily Haddad, dean of UMaine's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Haddad says these jokes about the impracticality - and perhaps even waning legitimacy - of a liberal arts degree have endured for a long time, but according to an American Council of Colleges and Universities study last year, there's no evidence that those degrees are employment killers. On the contrary:
"People who had graduated with liberal arts degrees during their peak earning period - so this is really in their late 50's, when you would expect folks to have the highest possible salary of their lives - those who had graduated with liberal arts degrees actually earned, on average, $2,000 a year more than people who had graduated with professional and pre-professional degrees," Haddad says.
And, according to the same study, liberal arts grads are not disproportionately represented among the ranks of the unemployed. According to Forbes magazine, about one-third of all Fortune 500 company CEOs have liberal arts degrees.
But there are other studies, such as one conducted by Georgetown University last year that found that some with bachelor's degrees in STEM-related fields were earning more than those with a liberal arts PhD. The reason is supply and demand; a documented skills gap in Maine - and elsewhere - means that jobs are going vacant because not enough students have the education to fill those positions.
So, are today's students aware of this? And why would someone choose a career in, say, philosophy, when the economy clearly demands more techies? Ciaran Coyle was leaning toward a career in the sciences, until he fell in love with studying the more abstract questions of life.
"Life is about taking risks at times," Coyle says. "And then you tell someone, 'I'd like to go and study philosophy,' and they say, 'Oh, but you were really good at math and science - you should continue to do those.' Well, it's a risk I'm willing to take because it's something that I find fulfilling."
Not a single student with whom we spoke had firm career plans or a job offer, but none expressed any fear over their prospects for employment. Most had parents who were supportive of their plans.
And a potentially modest salary or lack of job security didn't seem to be factors. All of those concrete considerations were soundly trumped by a desire to follow a path of passion - in short, to do what makes them "happy."
Now, whether that's youth or wisdom talking remains to be seen.
