It is a mistake to think of an undergraduate degree in a college of liberal arts and sciences as a matter of being trained for a specific job or profession. This is just as much true of the sciences as it is of the liberal arts. The main aim of a degree in the liberal arts or in the basic sciences is the acquisition of a certain body of knowledge and the acquisition of the skills needed to extend your knowledge on your own. Many people are apt to think of going to college or the university as a matter of job preparation. In some sense it is. College   graduates earn substantially more over their lifetimes than people who have completed only a high school degree. But this is not because going to college prepares you for some specific high paying job. If that were its purpose, it would be much less valuable than it is. The benefits to your earning power are really incidental to the main purpose of a degree, which is to provide you with a broad education in central disciplines of study in advanced learning (that's the general education part) and with a more specialized training in a   particular area (that's the major part). The value of a university education lies in the prospect it opens up on the pleasures of the life of the mind, the breadth of vision it encourages, the knowledge it provides of the most important developments in our collective understanding of the world, and the sense of what is possible through sustained intellectual study of a particular subject. But it is not an accident, of course, that people with college degrees earn more over a lifetime than people without. The skills you learn in the serious study of any academic subject turn out to be quite generally applicable, and put you in a position to do things which someone who has not had that training is not in a position to do. These are primarily skills in identifying, analyzing and solving problems, skills in handling quantitative data, skills in written and verbal communication, and the ability to engage in the kind of disciplined and sustained intellectual application that is required of you for   academic success. These skills turn out to be invaluable later on, and prepare one for a   wide range of jobs and professions and careers.         So ... while the main aim of a liberal arts degree is not to get you a job (it's more   valuable than that), nonetheless, pursuing an academic degree seriously will give you a   lot of skills which will make you a valuable employee, and moreover give you the skills   that will be valuable not just in one or another specific job or enterprise, but for an almost   open-ended number of careers.         It is also important to keep in mind that while your degree will give you important   general intellectual skills, it will certainly not give you all the skills you need for any   specific job you undertake. In any job, entrepreneurial undertaking, or profession, you   will have to undertake some further training and learn additional skills. This usually takes   place on the job. This turns out to be true even for those majors in colleges which think   of themselves as primarily professional, such as the Business college and the Engineering   college. If you think about it, this is what you would expect. Unless you are entering a craft   profession (and even then to some extent), you will find that in any challenging job you will   have to be constantly learning new things and acquiring new skills as the kinds of tasks you   have to complete and the challenges you face change. One reason why the skills you   acquire now turn out to be so valuable is that they prepare you for what you will find is the   almost constant need to learn more and to acquire new skills, or to apply old skills to novel   problems and tasks.        To put it most generally, then, an undergraduate degree provides you with quite   generally applicable intellectual skills, and provides you with the ability to learn the   particular skills you will need to know for your first job, and for whatever subsequent jobs   or careers you may pursue.                   Career Handbook for Philosophy Majors