Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 31

to find those first entry-level jobs. While that initial job hunt can
be dreary and discouraging, Okolo and other researchers say the
skills built through those experiences can help Black and Latino
students in these fields keep pace with their white counterparts
over the course of their careers.
Although it's hard to quantify, humanities grads' midcareer
salaries also may reflect their willingness to look for
greener pastures when they hit a career dead end-or a glass
ceiling. Humanities classes require students to read broadly,
think deeply, and write often-and, frequently, to stand up and
tell their classmates what they've read and written, and then
think on their feet in response to questions and criticisms. These
classroom experiences can breed resilience, creativity, and interdisciplinary
thinking, which enable graduates to capitalize on
new opportunities in the workforce that students trained in narrower
disciplines might not recognize or pursue.
It is also possible that humanities grads wind up working
for employers that are more diverse or more liberal, and therefore
less likely to discriminate. A study published last year by the
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
found that liberal arts majors are less inclined toward authoritarianism
than business or STEM majors. Those students' antipathy
toward strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal
freedoms may translate into a preference for bosses who
treat them and their coworkers fairly. It makes intuitive sense:
Individuals whose sense of justice has been honored and honed
throughout four years of thoughtful education are less likely to
sit quiet when they, or their colleagues, are expected to accept
lower wages and diminished prospects because of race or gender.
S
o what are the equity lessons that universities can-and
should-learn from their own humanities departments?
Curley and others say one good first step might be to
dump " weeder " classes, or at least create some workarounds so
students who don't make it through the gate the first time get a
fair chance (including tutoring and other supports) to try again.
These reforms should include retraining instructors to focus on
finding ways to retain students, instead of just warning entering
freshmen, " Look to your left. Look to your right. One of you
won't be here next semester. "
More broadly, departments across campus should look at
humanities models to help them create better mentoring and
advising programs for minority and first-generation students in
STEM and other high-salary disciplines. " Data do show that personally
connecting with a caring adult is really important to students'
outcomes, " says Kathryn Peltier Campbell, a senior editor/writer
and postsecondary specialist at the Georgetown University
Center on Education and the Workforce. In developing
expanded advising programs, those other departments need to
make sure that minority students have access to mentors who
look like them and understand their needs. This might be another
place where the humanities are out ahead. " We still need
to make much more progress in diversifying the nation's faculty,
but I would bet we have more diversity among advisers on all levels
in the humanities, " says Laura Perna, the vice provost for faculty
at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of
Penn's Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy.
To help minority students in business and tech develop the
kinds of soft skills that can help set humanities grads apart, universities
should create comprehensive job search preparation
programs designed specifically for minority students in highdisparity
disciplines. These programs should include intensive,
individualized guidance in writing cover (and thank-you) letters
and creating, rehearsing, and re-rehearsing their elevator
speeches. Programs also should include repeated and realistic
mock job interviews, to make sure they're ready to handle the
subtexts of tricky questions. " For a long time, we've looked at
programs that help people transition into college, " Perna notes.
" Now we're seeing more attention to programs specifically designed
for first-generation, low-income students as they transition
out of college. "
On a higher level, universities need to do a thorough review
of on-campus recruiting practices to identify the many
places where inequality is being baked into the process. That
will require tracking the demographics of the students who
are invited to participate in highly competitive recruiting
events: Are GPA cutoffs and employer requirements for " golden
ticket " courses disproportionately favoring white males?
It's also important to take a hard look at the student societies
and extracurricular activities that employers like most. There's
nothing " color-blind " about a recruitment process open to all
members of the engineering honor society if all the members
are either white or Asian.
Universities can remove another major driver of inequity
by requiring on-campus recruiters to disclose starting salary
ranges, signing bonuses, and benefit packages. In contrast
with the relative wage transparency of many education and
health care jobs, STEM and business employers generally keep
details of salary packages confidential. Minority students who
are excluded from the informal knowledge loop may have an
especially difficult time figuring out what would be considered
fair pay. When students have access to reality-based salary
data, they're much better equipped to negotiate their starting
salaries, putting them on a path to greater wage fairness
throughout their careers.
But what we most need to tackle this problem is more
research into the drivers of disparities-and equities-across
university disciplines. The University of Texas database, while
large, important, and impressive, is only a beginning. Most
colleges still do not have this type of information-by race, by
gender, by program-according to Jen Engle, director of the
Gates Foundation's Data in the United States Program. (The
Washington Monthly receives funding from both the Gates and
Lumina Foundations.) More research like UT's is desperately
needed to give a fuller picture, both of persistent inequities
and the as-yet-unrecognized solutions that might bring fairness
to post-college wages, for everyone.
Elizabeth Austin is a writer and strategic communications consultant
in Oak Park, Illinois.
Washington Monthly 31
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