What Can You Do With An Arts Degree?

Despite what you may have heard, an Arts degree is one of the most relevant and useful educational investments you can make today.

Here’s why:

An Arts degree doesn’t prepare you for one specific job; it gives you the foundation for hundreds of possible careers.

Studies in the Arts go far beyond the short-term gains of narrow specialization and limited career training. They provide broad-based benefits and deep grounding in the knowledge and skills needed for sustainable, meaningful employment over a lifetime.

As an Arts graduate, you will have achieved

  • strong critical reasoning, argumentation, and strategic problem-solving skills
  • communication skills, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening across diverse audiences and contexts in various situations, forms, and media;
  • a skilled and informed ability to enter into debate and dialogue;
  • flexible thinking for the integration and transfer of knowledge and cross-fertilization of ideas;
  • exposure to diverse cultures, social forces, and ethical perspectives;
  • respect for past and present challenges;
  • the development of creativity, intuition, and empathy;
  • information literacy and versatile qualitative and quantitative research skills;     
  • the ability to think and work independently and collaboratively, and
  • leadership skills.

As you think about how an Arts degree relates to your career interests, you might find it helpful to approach the question from three different angles:

1. Which careers require an Arts degree in order to enter them?

Certain professions can’t be practiced without the base-line academic credential of a BA, and may require another degree. Some examples:

  • teacher in any Arts-related fields in early childhood, elementary, secondary, or post-secondary education.
  • economists, social workers, anthropologists, and so on.

2. Which careers consider an Arts degree an advantage?

Many careers consider a specific Arts degree advantageous. Some examples:

  • law, copy editing, publishing, advertising, journalism, research, acting;
  • career counselling, immigration administration, human resources, motivational speaking, sales, business administration, psychologists;
  • translation, travel and tourism, Civil Service, policy analysis, cultural tour consulting or guiding, public policy analysis, heritage work, title research.

3. Which careers thrive on a broad-based Arts foundation?

Many jobs are open to graduates of Arts degree of all kinds and thrive on the broad-based benefits these studies bring. Some samples:

  • fundraiser, researcher, administrator, management consultant, retail management, humanitarian and NGO work.

Important Tip! To strengthen your Arts degree, it’s smart to gain additional work-related experience and skills: think about

  • relevant summer, part-time, and volunteer opportunities, both on and off campus;
  • Arts courses that offer applied learning components through experiential learning, service learning, co-ops, and internships;
  • the Work-Study program, which provides eligible UPEI students with opportunities to work on campus during the academic year;
  • volunteering to participate in faculty research projects related to your career interests;
  • broadening your educational and cultural experience through study abroad or work abroad.

What Can You Do With An Arts Degree? Anything You Want!