Stern students often have the impression that if they love an impractical subject, such as the history of the baroque period or studio art, their only career options are to forsake their dreams and go into accounting, or become historians and live off of packaged soups. In the shadow of the 2008 recession, this stereotype has been particularly prevalent. Students are being told to buckle-down and find more practical careers, and many colleges have been shutting down more and more ‘unnecessary’ aspects of their educational curriculums. But despite economic tough-times, a panel of Stern alumni recently featured at a Career Center event on the midtown campus showed that humanities majors can succeed.
The first woman on the panel was EY Zipris, a former English Literature major at Stern and a current manager of Program and Professional Development at the Museum of the City of New York. Ms. Zipris’ major and career path are not intuitively connected, something she regards as a rule rather than an exception for humanities majors. “I really don’t think it matters what you major in unless you have a very clear set path that you want to focus in. If you love things and you want to study them while you’re in college, take the opportunity to do so; it’s going to lead you to the path you really want to be on,” she said.
For humanities majors, that path can often bring surprises, as in the case of Miriam Gloger. For most of her childhood, Ms. Gloger wanted to be an entomologist. But when she got to college, she disliked the mathematical emphasis that the subject held. She graduated as a history major and decided to go into library science, having taken some language courses on the side. The library-world is difficult to break into, but one particular class that she took at Stern set her apart from other applicants. “I got my job because of Yiddish,” Ms. Gloger explained. “The position was advertised to do Hebrew and Yiddish cataloguing with a grant project with NYPL. The job was made for me or I was made for the job.”
Sometimes people get lucky with their job-finding, but climbing the career ladder can take a staggering amount of work. A case in point was panelist Judith Kaplan, a current senior product manager at Ralph Lauren who, in one early internship of her career, worked for six days a week, including Saturday nights, and sometimes put in 22 hours a day, though the internship was unpaid. She regards that internship as one of “the most valuable things” she’s done for her career. Ms. Kaplan’s current occupation is still demanding, but she considers it well worth it. “I found something that I was passionate about,” she said.
Stern alumni of the past have managed to enjoy a liberal arts education and dominate the job market. However, these women graduated a decade ago, and things have changed at Yeshiva University. The fact that humanities departments like French and Music are quietly disappearing or are at risk, and that languages like Yiddish are no longer offered suggests that the recession is taking a harsh toll on Yeshiva University’s liberal arts ideals.