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Every geography professor has been asked a hundred times, "What can I do with a major in geography?" Well, it's not always easy to answer this question. Accounting majors get jobs as accountants. Physical therapy majors get jobs as physical therapists. But geographers rarely get jobs as "geographers". You probably won't find a job description that says, "Wanted. Undergraduate geography major for high-paying geography job." But, that does not mean that geography majors don't get good jobs. Because geography is such a broad discipline, covering both physical and human environments, it's hard to pin down what a geography major does. Some specialize in the physical world, some in human issues, and others in technologies like GIS or computer cartography.
So what does this mean for a graduating geography major? You need to look for jobs in your area of interest. If you took several courses in urban geography, you might look for jobs at a research center that studies urban issues. They'll probably advertise for an "analyst," meaning someone who knows something about urban issues. They might be happy with an historian, a political scientist, a sociologist, or a geographer. So look for jobs at companies, organizations, and institutions that do what you want to do.
What can you do to help your cause? Specialize! If you decide that you're interested in population issues, don't just take the one population geography course in your department. Take a demography course in another department, or a statistics course that will help you analyze data. It helps to have a couple of "skills" courses under your belt as well, like GIS, statistics, or foreign languages. Once you've decided on an area or two of geography that you like, find related topics in other courses. For example, if you think you want to be a geomorphologist focused on the Desert Southwest, but your school requires that you take several history courses, try to focus one of your history term papers on how 19th century Americans reacted to the first large scale explorations of the American West. By looking at the same subject from several perspectives, you'll bring more to job interviews.
The sites below offer more information about the types of jobs geographers seek. Although the information and job lists are by no means exhaustive, they should help you get a start.
http://www.aag.org/Careers/Intro.html 2. U.S. Government Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos054.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos040.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos050.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos057.htm 3. GIS Jobs Clearinghouse http://www.gjc.org 4. University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/geography/careers.html 5. Oklahoma State University http://www.geog.okstate.edu/careers.htm 6. University of Manitoba http://www.umanitoba.ca/student/counselling/WhatCanIDo/geography.html 7. Portland State University http://www.career.pdx.edu/majorgeography.htm#InternetSitesWithCareer-RelatedInformationforGeographyMajors |