WSJ: Languages Pay

In a globalized world, “language is the new oil,” claims Hans Fenstermacher, CEO of GALA. It stands to reason that among the liberal arts disciplines, language study, especially translation and localization (a 32 billion dollar industry), is on the rise. The WSJ captures this rise in terms of higher salaries; it’s not clear, however, that the author of the article (or, for that matter, the authors of the NACE study cited) see(s) the economic drivers pushing the pay of language majors to the top.

Excerpt:

“Parents, don’t despair. Even if your child spends four years of
college reading Hungarian poetry or delving deep into the Faulkner
oeuvre, he or she can still earn a decent salary shortly after packing
up the senior-year dorm room. So says the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which
reports that the top-paying liberal arts majors for 2014 graduates are
foreign languages and literature (average starting salary $46,900) and
English ($42,200). The results are based on job offers that students
accepted earlier this year and were reported by employers in February
2014 primarily through a variety of government surveys.”

read here: http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/05/15/the-liberal-arts-majors-that-pay-the-most/