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I'm confused - my sister has a doctorate in art history, she is a professor at a private university & publishes regularly, and makes more money than I do

Are these other art history majors unmotivated & lazy or something? The last time my sister switched jobs she had universities fighting over her

I'll answer your question. There are a ton of art history majors, and FEW jobs. That being said, very few want to invest more time, garner more debt, and kiss more a$$ in the slightest event that we land a professorship.

In the art field, it's not who you know. It's who you blow. Pardon the expression, but it's extremely accurate.

There are only so many professorial jobs out there. Junior colleges opened up some possibilities, but those also tend to get filled up quickly. There are also other possibilities in museums, libraries, secondary schools, etc. but after 16 or 22 years of schooling some people can lack the hustle and be in a bit of a daze. Working for low wages for a few years can be a good way of getting back in touch with realities.

Sure, anthopology or art history looks impractical and a waste of time and money, but if we all studied business, computer science, or engineering the world would be a very dull place. Perhaps at fifty or sixty today's grads in technical fields might feel that it was wasteful not to have explored other interests. And from what I hear, today's computer science grads have to hustle harder to get jobs too.

I think college is finally being dethroned now. There are plenty of other opportunities to educate oneself today, from night school to distance education, to the Internet, so the BA doesn't have the weight it once did. Also, if we wanted to, we could so "front load" education, that we could trim a few years off the end and leave kids at least as well educated at 18 or 20 as they are now with a BA or BS. We could also combine education with internship work experience as some universities already do. But I don't think we ought to aim at a narrower education more focused on vocational or technical training, to the exclusion of general learning and the transmission of a cultural heritage, for that is very important.