My oldest child, Emma, just returned to campus after a long holiday break to finish up her last period of college. These days, friends and family have begun flooding me with one question: What is she going to do after graduation? The job market is, after all, awfully tough. Just this month the Federal Reserve Bank published a study showing that "recent graduates are increasingly working in low-paid jobs or working part-time." The bright spot, according to the study, is for students who majored  in STEM-- science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- areas in which recent graduates "have tended to do relatively well". But Emma is a student of the humanities  at a small college. She's an American Studies major with a focus on the politics and culture of food. For quite a while, I think her field of study is so fashionable right now that I'm not the least bit worried she will find a good job. Yet the more I've thought about it, the more I've decided to be honest. "I'm not sure what Emma is going to do," I now say. "But she's gotten a great education and has really found her interest. -- and I know those things will serve her well over the course of her life." Nowadays, more and more universities and colleges are being measured by the salaries of their recent graduates. In this climate, encouraging your kid to study the humanities, seems, at best, unwise or, at worst, unconcerned with earning a living. But a college is not a vocational  school. And promoting STEM subjects should not be society's only answer to helping the next generation grow in a competitive world. From the beginning, we never urged Emma to pick a college or a major with an eye on its expected return on money, as more and more families are doing. To Emma, what really matters will be something that we may not be able to measure for quite a long time: Emma's contribution to the world and how happy she is in it. Why did Emma choose a major in the humanities?
Because she is interested in it. Because her mother told her to. Because it is increasingly popular. Because she wants further education.