Choosing a College Major Using 3 Paths as a Starting Point Guide (Podcast Version)

[freeloader]

I guess what I'm getting at is when do employers on places such as Indeed.com request employees have certain liberal arts degrees for certain jobs, and when do they pay a premium for those degrees?

To your first point, outside of tightly regulated professions, you can theoretically do any job with any degree (or no degree). A relevant degree just increases (at least hopefully) the likelihood that you are able to get a job in a particular field.  

I do understand where you are coming from in regards to the skills that employers are seeking.  I used to work in museums and a typical job posting for someone in a museum-y job (as opposed to the business, computer, or similar functions within a museum) might call for a degree in history, anthropology, art history, education, or a closely related field.  The goal is to hire people who can think about people in time interacting with objects and to be able to share that understanding with others.  There is not a single discipline which teaches that; indeed, given the interdisciplinary nature of public history and museum studies graduate programs, it is arguable that none of the traditional undergraduate disciplines teaches that skill set.

I suppose I would object to an employer-driven conceptualization of academic disciplines. Different disciplines typically use different methodological approaches of inquiry.  A sociologist, historian, social psychologist, anthropologist, economist, and philosopher can all look at the exact same subject and apply their own methodologies to it. They may come up with similar conclusions or they may be quite different.  The fact that an employer may view the students trained by these different academics as substantially interchangeable does not mean that the disciplines, their methodologies, or practitioners are interchangeable. 

One final thought (and a partial defense of you, LevelUP): I get the impression that most undergraduates have very little understanding of the theory and methods of the disciplines they are studying. Sure, they may have a methods class or two in their degree but could they actually do substantial research in the discipline?  No, that’s why we have graduate school.  The effect may well be that graduates in social sciences and humanities disciplines have degrees that are largely generic. Many of the core skills (read a paper, digest it, explain it, summarize it in writing, apply it as part of a broader argument) are universal and largely interchangeable.