home economics degree

Home Economics Degree: Career Options for Graduates with a Degree in Home Economics

Published Sep 11, 2009

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Each day fashion designers, dieticians, concierges, interior designers, child development professionals and teachers utilize Home Economic degrees. This degree is also referred to as family and consumer science. Depending on whether one holds an associate's, bachelor's or master's degree, Home Economic professionals are open to a wide range of careers in a number of industries.

Associate's Degree in Home Economics Career Summary

Individuals who have an associate's degree in Home Economics may find entry-level employment in a number of different industries, such as fashion design, hospitality, nutrition, human development and family studies. Graduates hold positions as junior fashion designers, assistant food service directors or dieticians. An associate's degree offers a solid foundation for Home Economic professionals looking to gain practical experience before furthering their education.

Bachelor's Degree in Home Economics Career Summary

A bachelor's degree in Home Economics or family and consumer science offers similar career options as an associate's degree. However, professionals with a bachelor's degree have better opportunity for future career advancement.

Fashion design, family studies, hospitality and education are all viable avenues for employment for someone with a bachelor's degree in Home Economics. For example, restaurants, institutions and schools need food service directors to plan menus, supervise staff, balance budgets and order supplies. In addition, schools need Home Economics teachers to teach related curriculum to students. Government offices and hospitals need Home Economic professionals, such as a human studies counselor, who specialize in family studies and child development.

Master's Degree in Home Economics Career Summary

Master's degree programs in Home Economics are geared toward working professionals in pursuit of career advancement as well as students pursuing doctoral degrees in family and consumer science. Home Economic master's degree programs specialize in child development, fashion design, hospitality, tourism, family studies, food and nutrition.

For example, a master's degree in Home Economics with a specialty in apparel studies prepares senior designers to better understand consumer trends and forecast buyer demands. A master's degree program in hospitality, food and nutrition, child development or Home Economics education prepares professionals to enter academia as professors. It may also enable one to secure a top-management position at a large, tourism-focused resort.

Contemporary Issues in Home Economics

ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Contemporary Issues in Home Economics

Saturday 12th May 2007 9.30am – 4.00pm
West Park Conference Centre
319 Perth Road
Dundee

Home Economics

‘Provides opportunities for pupils to understand and shape solutions to a range of challenges in their lives, whether personal, community, family, and/or work roles.

Home economics teachers develop and implement learning experiences that enable pupils to learn how to:

• Take control of their health promoting behaviours.
• Make informed, responsible, environmental and ethical consumer decisions.
• Prepare nutritious foods and develop hygienic and safe food behaviours.
• Choose nutritious foods in a growing market place.
• Develop an understanding of how social influences such as technology, media and government policies impact on lifestyles and assess this.
• Design, evaluate and make decisions related to textiles and food materials, goods and services.
• Effectively evaluate and employ technology which is relevant to individual needs, families and households.
• Develop academic and vocational related knowledge and skills connected to health, nutrition, food technology, childcare, the design and textile industries and hospitality.
• Contribute to developing effective and diverse family relationships.
• Develop knowledge and skills to promote and enhance human growth and development.’

definition of home economics

What Was Home Economics?

Canning peaches. Sewing a dress. Making perfect gravy. These are familiar images of home economics, but do they tell the whole story? So often home economics has been cast as a "conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen," an interpretation that has overlooked its impressive and diverse contributions. New scholarship in American women's history suggests that home economics was a progressive field that brought science to the farm home and women into higher education and leadership positions in public education, academia, government and industry.

At the turn of the 20th century, home economics was a critical pathway into higher education for American women, largely associated with co-educational land grant institutions such as Cornell. From its inception, collegiate home economics was multidisciplinary and integrative with an emphasis on science applied to the real world of the home, families and communities.

In the early decades of the 20th century, home economists had links to the revitalization of agriculture and rural communities, but also to Progressive Era programs in cities. By the 1920s, home economists at Cornell were best known for research in human nutrition and child development, but their work in fields such as fiber science, design and consumer economics made them central to the growth of the consumer economy as well. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, collegiate programs prepared thousands of women for public school teaching but many also had careers in the extension service, state and federal governments, industry, hospitals, restaurants and hotels. But by the late 1950s and the early 1960s, broad changes in American women's economics and social roles made collegiate education in home economics seem "old fashioned," an image that did not do justice to its rich history.

In celebration of the New York State College of Human Ecology's Centennial, this exhibition will emphasize how home economics at Cornell University, served as a critical bridge from domesticity in the 19th century to modernity in the 20th century and will attempt to answer the question: What was home economics?