Grad School vs. Law School

juillet
Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:35:12 +0000

To be frank, there are many ways that you can learn about cultural and ethnic groups. You can read books, attend seminars at local universities, search the Internet, live in ethnic enclaves, even take classes as a non-degree student. You don’t have to go to graduate school to do that. As polarscribe said, grad school is a means to an end.

There are some jobs that will allow you to work with minority ethnic group literature and cultural arts. Librarians would do the analyzing and cataloging, and museum staff often curate collections that may include books (but will more likely include artifacts). But really, people who analyze literature are going to be English literature scholars. They are mostly professors, and English literature (especially American literature, although ethnic studies would give it a little spin) is a very competitive field to secure an academic position within.

If you want to study cultural/ethnic groups in the US and are willing to use methods other than literature, there are many jobs for that. Many government agencies (federal, state, and local) as well as private foundations and think tanks do that kind of research.

You said you are interested in human rights and immigration. There are a lot of people interested in, and working in, that who don’t want to be lawyers and aren’t necessarily interested in defending those cases. You could do work with an NGO or government agency assisting immigrants or conducting research. You could pass the civil service exam and work in the foreign service as a consular officer or in another role.