Hey, Liberal Arts Graduates: If You Can’t Score a Job at Disney, There’s Always the State Department

All you liberal arts students out there, take heart: There are employers out there who want to hire you, and none has more to offer humanities students than the Walt Disney Company, according to survey data released by Universum and highlighted by Forbes last week. But if that gig at Disney doesn’t work out, the ...

By , a former deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy.
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

All you liberal arts students out there, take heart: There are employers out there who want to hire you, and none has more to offer humanities students than the Walt Disney Company, according to survey data released by Universum and highlighted by Forbes last week.

All you liberal arts students out there, take heart: There are employers out there who want to hire you, and none has more to offer humanities students than the Walt Disney Company, according to survey data released by Universum and highlighted by Forbes last week.

But if that gig at Disney doesn’t work out, the State Department would like you to know that it finished third in the ranking, just behind the United Nations (and barely ahead of Google). Here’s State’s press release today:

As reported by Forbes magazine, the Department of State has ranked in the top three ideal employers in a poll of undergraduates with a humanities, liberal arts, or education background. Universum Communications announced its 2013 "Most Ideal Undergraduate Employer" survey results that are based on the responses of nearly 18,000 undergraduates in the United States. Liberal arts undergraduates saw the Department of State as an ideal employer for the opportunities to do challenging work with a good amount of responsibility. The U.S. Department of State is listed just behind first-ranked Disney and second-ranked United Nations.

Sure, Nicholas Kralev may have argued that professional development for American diplomats is "still largely nonexistent" and that "entry-level officers are being sent out ill-prepared for their new assignments" in an article for Foreign Policy earlier this year.

But let’s save those critiques for another day. For now, we’ll let Foggy Bottom revel in the good news: It’s competing head-to-head with the Magic Kingdom and Mountain View — and it placed six spots ahead of the National Security Agency

Uri Friedman is a former deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @UriLF

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