A new study supports the value of a liberal arts education over time, countering some of the claims that science, math, engineering, and technology are the most lucrative career paths.
While liberal arts majors may start off with lower salaries, over time that gap closes and prospects for employment are high, according to the report, sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.
By ages 56 to 60, liberal arts majors slightly outpaced their peers in professional and preprofessional majors in terms of earnings. Helping boost those earnings is the fact that about 40 percent hold a graduate degree. If graduate-degree holders are taken out of the analysis, the humanities and social-science majors earned less than professional and preprofessional majors.
