Career-specific skills can often be learned on the job — whereas critical thinking and problem-solving skills are invaluable benefits of a humanities education — as demonstrated by the many Wall Street executives who studied humanities in college. The proof is in the pudding: Stereotypes and statistics asides, a number of liberal arts and social sciences majors go on to have successful careers in a variety of fields, including business, tech, law and politics.

“You shouldn’t enter college worried about what you will do when you exit,” David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, said at a World Economic Forum panel discussion last week on the state of the humanities.

These words may be comforting to the thousands of humanities and social sciences undergraduates who have been told that by choosing their major, they’ve chosen a life of underemployment, debt and ramen.

Needless to say, humanities majors tend to get a bad rap. Mention of the humanities in the media is often accompanied by the word “decline,” followed by reports of bleak job prospects. Philosophy, English and History — three of the most popular humanities majors — also topped The Daily Beast’s most useless majors list in 2012. But is future earning potential really the best way to judge an area of study?

As Jordan Weissmann wrote in The Atlantic last week, money is a pretty bad way to measure the value of a college major.

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