The 2025-26 result season is winding down, with entrance exam season gathering momentum. For recent school graduates, this phase marks a rite-of-passage moment, confronted with a question deeply embedded in modern Indian society: “What next, medicine or engineering?” There are moments in life when the future narrows into a funnel. The brief period between the end of school and the beginning of college is often the earliest significant one.
Students rarely choose arts courses outright. More often, they arrive there after moving through a prestige-driven hierarchy that begins with engineering, medicine, gap years, commerce, and only then, as a last resort, arts. Most parents do not celebrate a BA admission the way they celebrate an MBBS seat. Teachers rarely beam with pride when their brightest students choose English Literature over Computer Science.
Somewhere within the architecture of academic aspiration, after years of systematic devaluation, the arts and humanities have turned into fallback options for those unable to crack the “real” courses.
Dr John J Kennedy, former Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Christ University, rejects this framing. “I’m uncomfortable with the very phrase ‘fallback option’ because it already assumes that STEM education occupies a superior position,” he says. “The problem is not that arts education lacks relevance. The problem is that we have failed to argue for its importance properly. We have equated education with employability and return on investment.”
Yet the perception persists because, unlike mainstream options, the arts lack a clear marketable promise. STEM degrees are framed as pathways to stability and upward mobility. The humanities, meanwhile, are treated as abstract, unstable, or economically impractical. In a country shaped heavily by middle-class anxieties and competitive exam culture, education often becomes detached from the pursuit of knowledge.
At the same time, stories of corporate burnout and dissatisfaction are now common among young professionals who followed conventional ideas of career stability. High salaries and prestigious titles have, in many cases, failed to produce a sense of meaning or satisfaction.
“Skills can be acquired later in life, but what young people need immediately after school is emotional grounding,” he added. “A creative path is neither a luxury nor an elitist indulgence. At a time when anxiety, exhaustion, and emotional fatigue are deeply woven into modern life, an arts education can offer students equanimity.”
Ground realities
The ambiguity surrounding arts education and fulfillment takes concrete shape in individual lives. Mrittika, a theatre-maker and actor, says that coming from a middle-class family, the arts were always encouraged as a hobby and rarely imagined as a viable career. “You are told to secure your bread and butter first, and only then pursue art. Art itself cannot become your bread and butter,” she says. “The hardest part initially was not even the financial instability, but the feeling that nobody around you fully understood what you were trying to do. There is this assumption that choosing the arts is irresponsible or financially reckless, as though you are doing something wrong.”
This narrative is echoed by many in the art space. “As a first-generation graduate, that too in engineering, leaving a cushy IT job for the arts was probably the hardest and least supported decision I have ever made,” says Shajan Kavitha. “But what is life if not lived in pursuit of something meaningful?”
One of the least acknowledged advantages of an arts education is the breadth it confers. Unlike more specialised degrees that train students for a defined role within a defined industry, the humanities and creative disciplines cultivate transferable capabilities that travel across disciplines. Arts graduates, as a result, often move with unusual fluidity between fields.
“The art space is vast, with new roles constantly emerging and evolving. In the years since entering the field, I have transitioned through multiple roles: illustrator, reporter, creative director, assistant director, even a non-fiction author,” added Kavitha. “The interdisciplinary nature of the arts made it possible for me to build a career across multiple domains.”
Regardless of how one enters the arts field, surviving within it ultimately depends on persistence and constant learning. Prateek Naganatham, a Hyderabad-based musician, began his journey at 12 and later went on to study at AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory. Today, he works in films, independent music projects, and live performances.
Looking back, he rejects the idea that artistic careers must necessarily be synonymous with suffering. “A lot of people think art automatically means struggle,” he says. “No job is easy or comes with guaranteed results. That is true across the board. In the arts, building a career requires willingness to adapt, persevere, and understand the space you are entering.”
Way forward
A story currently circulating across Silicon Valley is that of Mrinank Sharma, former Head of AI Safety at Anthropic, who recently announced his departure. In his farewell letter, Sharma wrote, “The world is in peril. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world.” He concluded by saying he would spend time pursuing a poetry degree.
He is not alone. At the precise moment artificial intelligence is accelerating humanity’s technical capabilities at an unprecedented scale, many people building these systems are turning toward the humanities in search of perspective. The irony is difficult to ignore.
This is perhaps the strongest argument for the arts today: far more than a fallback option, they remain a foundational education in ethics, morality, critical thought, and the capacity to live with intention.