Economic opportunity and the liberal arts (again): new studies of the usefulness in economic terms of the liberal arts (if not the humanities). From the article:

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has now released a new analysis by two economists that examines the questions of the economic payoff of a liberal arts college education. The study makes no claims that liberal arts grads outearn those in, say, engineering. But the report says the claims that a liberal arts degree isn’t worth its cost or will hurt a graduate’s career prospects prove untrue. Specifically, the report says attending a liberal arts college for most students leads to meaningful economic mobility.

“Critics claim that a liberal arts education is worth less than the alternatives, and perhaps not even worth the investment at all. They argue that increasing costs and low future earnings limit the value of a liberal arts education, especially compared to alternative options such as pre-professional programs that appear to be better rewarded in the current labor market,” says the report. “Existing evidence does not support these conclusions.”…

[Study author Catherine B.] Hill said that too many people equate liberal arts with humanities study alone, or imagine that “liberal” refers to politics. She said that one reason liberal arts graduates earn more than expected is the diversity of fields studied beyond the humanities….

Not surprisingly, the STEM-oriented institutions do quite well in terms of lifting up the economic status of graduates, and for some groups they outperform other types of colleges.

But here again, there are substantial gains for those attending liberal arts colleges, such that more than 60 percent of them are ending up in the top two quintiles of income postgraduation, even if they started out in the bottom three quintiles.

For other posts on the humanities and economic opportunity, see here.