By Ron Marken

What can you do with an English degree in Chaucer, T. S. Eliot, or essays on the cultural effects of 18th-century poetry?  Allow me to answer that question four ways. 

Teaching

Firstly, you can teach.  My father insisted farming and teaching are the most important vocations of any in the world.  “One feeds the body and the other feeds the mind. What else is there?” 

Professions With An English Degree

Secondly, graduates with an English degree can work in any profession demanding clear and creative communication, critical thinking, and an open mind.  Former students of mine – in the hundreds – can be found in the following:

  • journalism (as writers and reporters)
  • theatre (as directors, actors, and playwrights)
  • business (as professional developers, advertising executives, human resources directors, CEOs, and venture capitalists)
  • law (because the law demands people who can think and write critically and clearly)
  • politics (where, again, the powers of persuasion using language are paramount)
  • academia (as professors and administrators)
  • publishing (as novelists, playwrights, poets, essayists, editors, and managers)
  • arts (where dancers, songwriters, painters, and architects understand and appreciate the importance of creativity in their lives and lives of a nation)
  • parents who read to their children and discuss the movies, television, books, and video games they consume

A Royal Bank Vice-President I know hires only English majors for his middle managers.  “I can teach anyone the mysteries of banking, but I want people I can trust to say what they mean in ways others can understand.”

Post-Graduate Studies

Thirdly, you can pursue post-graduate studies to deepen and broaden your understanding and appreciation of your discipline.  Master’s and Doctoral degrees require great sacrifices, and only some of the time do they result in jobs like professorships.  On the other hand, there are thousands of people who, if they had the time and opportunity, would chase down an M.A. and a Ph.D. just for the sheer joy of the achievement.  Some climb mountains, golf, learn ballet, or go to graduate school. Why not?

Non-Career Applications

Finally, whatever your chosen profession, you will not be pursuing it 24 hours a day.  Often, you will go to the movies, read books, listen to music, recommend novels, write memoirs, vote, court the man or woman of your dreams.  How much more satisfaction will these efforts award you if you know what you’re looking for, looking at, and sharing with? You could even enjoy knowing that ending sentences with prepositions like “for,” “at,” and “with” is frowned upon, and that you have been a quiet rebel by using them!

english degree person standing in bookstore
Photo by Darwin Vegher via Unsplash

Ron Marken, Professor Emeritus, Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan; Recipient of the 1987 3M National Teaching Fellowship, which recognizes exceptional contributions to teaching and learning at Canadian universities.

Students of English gain a rigorous training in the skills of critical thinking: reading and interpreting texts, analyzing complex data, making judgments, marshaling evidence and presenting arguments of their own. You’re learning to think clearly and critically and to write with grace, precision, and force. 

Basically, international organizations, governments of all kinds, professionals, large and small businesses all depend on these skills. Besides many professors and authors of English literature, we count among our alumni:

  • publishers and editors
  • radio and television producers
  • journalists
  • business executives
  • filmmakers
  • lawyers
  • judges

Unofficially, it’s certainly true that graduates with an English degree end up in these and many other rewarding careers. (A guy I did my MA with is now a spy with CSIS: I’d tell you his name, but then I’d have to kill you.)  

But no post-secondary degree is a guarantee of any job, especially today.

Besides, an undergraduate degree isn’t really about getting a better job: it’s about having a better, richer life, while you’re here and after. It’s about the books you’ll read, the ideas you’ll encounter, the friends you’ll make, both intellectually and socially. If you’re willing and able, an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts lets you join a conversation that’s bigger than here and now, and much bigger than yourself. Lastly, university graduates shouldn’t be the ones looking for work for themselves; they should be the ones who fix our broken societies to make sure there’s work, play, and justice for all.