The question of ‘what next’ is one that students often dread being asked, especially those of us who don’t face the attractively predetermined pathways that follow medics and lawyers and have been constantly fed the trope of the ‘starving artist.’ As students, we feel we will soon be sent out to forge our own paths through the battleground of internships and graduate jobs, hoping we might find somewhere to contribute and develop our unique passions and skills.
What the arts and humanities student’s unstructured path lacks in stability, is made up for in freedom. Looking at the HESA statistics for Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh, 15 months after graduation, 90 per cent of students go on to work. Of these graduates, 20 per cent became Web and Multimedia design professionals, 20 per cent were in artistic, literary and media occupations, 15 per cent were in design occupations, 5 per cent were in business and public service associate professionals, 10 per cent were in ‘elementary occupations’, 5 per cent were managers, directors and senior officials, less than 5 per cent were business, research and administrative professions, and less than 5 per cent are in STEM careers, 5 per cent in admin, 5 per cent in secretarial occupations and 5 per cent were ‘unknown.’
This wide-ranging list of categories came from a sampling pool of just 45 students. What’s more, each category is immeasurably broad, each containing litanies of job titles and positions. Only the vaguest of impressions of what came next can therefore be gathered from this information.
What we can gather though, is that arts and humanities students, who spend years developing their critical analysis, research, nuance of thought and understanding of the world through their chosen lens, have an almost boundless canon of careers to apply their skills. This might make decisions hard, but possibility, and opportunity, literally endless. These decisions shouldn’t be feared though, as Mary Smich wrote (and Baz Luhrmann iconically quoted), ‘don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life, the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t…’ The road might not be linear, but perhaps, despite how it may feel, the adaptability of an arts or humanities degree is more of a blessing than it is a curse.