I’ve often wondered what one does with a degree in African Studies.
Exactly! How many job ads have you ever seen for African Studiers, requiring a degree in African Studies?
How many job as have you seen for Women Studiers, requiring a degree in Women’s Studies?
There are some fields, which while they appeal to some people based on their interests, are completely useless in the job market.
If you are interested in Women’s Studies, go study women on your own time, not in a college course. Same with African studies and all the rest of those types of fields.
And don’t have the unrealistic expectation that employers are eager to hire graduates with such degrees. That’s a real downer for this generation, I’m sure.
Obviously, you get to work for free as an intern helping 3rd world freeloaders get welfare in the US.
I think there are three choices:
1. Nothing (at least nothing related to one’s degree)
2. Get another degree (in African studies or some real academic discipline with which African studies has a parasitic relation) and becomes a professor
or
3. Get work in Africa (probably for an NGO, but maybe for an actually productive company that has interests there, or maybe as an adviser to one of the kleptarchs that run the place).
Somehow if one is hanging around Oregon looking for work, rather than going to grad school, 2. is out by definition, and 3. seem unlikely.
Teach courses in African Studies.
I'm not being facetious. My point is that some degrees are mostly self-perpetuating -- the only need for them is to keep the subject alive.
The subject may be interesting, but it's not a marketable skill outside the academic world.
“I’ve often wondered what one does with a degree in African Studies.”
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Elementary, one studies Africans, what else?
I wouldn't think there is much of a demand for studying Africans.
What does one do with a major in “Womens’ Studies”?
Stand in the unemployment line, seems like.