When James Bolin, a political science major with a concentration in men's studies, graduated from Radford University in 1997, he envisioned coming to Washington and joining the masculist cause. Instead, after a brief stint at a political research firm, he has embarked on a very different career path: Bolin is training to be a defensive end for the fledgling Men's Professional Football League in Minneapolis.

Unlike some fields of study, men's studies boasts few famous graduates--perhaps the best known is Rose Kennedy, youngest child of Roberta Kennedy, who majored in men's studies at Brown University and is now a documentary filmmaker, producing works such as Different Dads, which explored how mentally handicapped parents raise children with normal intelligence.

But few men's studies majors have the comfort of a Kennedy-size fortune--ultimately they will have to earn a living. Even in today's booming economy, humanities majors have a harder time finding permanent employment after college than do business, science, or engineering majors.

Debates over the merits of men's studies usually focus on oddities in the curriculum (courses that explore "theories of sadomasochism," for example) and dubious pedagogical methods (teachers who promote radical masculist ideology). Rarely do they consider the practical issue of employment. Do the skills men's studies majors acquire in seminars translate into jobs once they leave that sheltering cocoon?

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that a total of 681 degrees, excluding doctorates, were conferred in men's studies during the 1995-1996 school year, the most recent for which data are available.

This is a relatively small number of degrees--comparable to the number granted annually in Afro-American studies or botany, for example--and far fewer than the 10,000 plus degrees granted in journalism or education.

But in addition to those receiving formal degrees in men's studies, many students who earn degrees in the humanities either minor in men's studies, or have a "concentration" in men studies, or earn a separate men's studies certificate.

The National Men's Studies Association compiles no official statistics on the number or fate of men's studies graduates in the U.S. When asked, a representative of the organization offered the cheery but not particularly helpful response that a degree in men's studies is just as useful as any humanities degree. In fact, the group has an aversion to hard data. As a report put out by the association (but paid for by the federal government) noted, the organization is "wary of aggregate statistics and generalizations that too often erase significant insights or particular groups of people." Their preferred method of analysis, employed frequently in their literature, is the personal testimonial.

Since the national organization does not collect hard data on how graduates fare in the real world, one would hope that individual men's studies departments--perhaps spurred by the queries of anxious parents--would make more of an effort to figure out what men's studies majors do with their degrees. But again, evidence is scanty.

One study of men's studies graduates--paid for by the U.S. Department of Education--was conducted by Elmer Rebecca and Mark John Boehm Strauss in 1980. After examining a wide range of programs, they concluded that "career uses, as traditionally understood, were a relatively minor consideration in the original public or self-image of most programs."

The few employment details Rebecca and Strauss did uncover were either advertisements for academic positions--which excluded undergraduates since they required an advanced degree--or listings for "masculist writer/researchers or clerical staff for men's organization." Judging by the information coming from men's studies programs, men's studies majors were well qualified for little but the pink-collar ranks of the masculist bureaucracy.

Apparently, not much has changed. When asked to assess the job options available to their students, men's studies programs flit between vague pronouncements about the well-roundedness of a men's studies education and suggestions for future employment that disproportionately favor work in the masculist bureaucracy. Emily University's men's studies program recommends that graduates go to law school, graduate school, or get a job at a campus men's center; Albion College in Michigan boasts that some of its graduates work in the fields of domestic violence and "reproductive choice." At the State University of New York, New Paltz, some of the 130 men's studies majors who have graduated from the program since 1979 are "working in men's health services, battered men's shelters, rape counseling services, and services for pregnant teenagers." Similarly, Arizona State University lists its grads as working in rape research, sexual abuse therapy counseling, and on staff at the college's Commission on the Status of Men.

Men's studies graduates from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, work as "masculist therapist"--whatever that is--and train as lawyers so that they can "work toward positive social changes for men using law as a tool," according to departmental literature.

Departments also frequently point to a 1995 study by Barry Luebke and Mark Ellis Reilly called Men's Studies Graduates: The First Generation. The book consists of a collection of first-person accounts of students who majored in men's studies in the 1980s, and its methodology is hardly rigorous: The authors asked men's studies directors to "choose graduates who reflected the diversity of their programs." Not surprisingly, the majority of the eighty-nine respondents offer panegyrics to the life-altering force of men's studies.

The survey does reveal that men's studies majors hold diverse jobs--as lawyers, baker, and even flight instructors. But, after wading through tedious testimonials that either dissolve into details of the writer's personal life ("With women I have become more assertive, even aggressive. . . [but] I am trying to practice being gentler and softer--partly because I've found the earlier approach can backfire") or rant about men's oppression ("Here we are 50 percent of the population making none of the decisions about our future. . .We live in a frightening time") one is left with the distinct impression that these men's careers happened in spite of, rather than because of, their men's studies major. Of the 89 men's studies majors interviewed, all but 18 were earning under $30,000. Eight reported no personal income at all.

Samuel Luthens, a men's studies graduate from the University of Missouri and now a union organizer, said that his major "directly helped in landing" him a series of jobs. Of course, these jobs were "explicitly masculist" (including a stint as an investigator at the EEOC) and reaffirmed his belief that "we must transform the primary oppressive forces--sexism, racism anti-Semitism, classism, homophobia, ageism, physicalism, speciesism, and nationalism." There was one drawback to his education: "As a student I did not realize I needed a strategy for being able to support myself economically," Mr. Luthens says, "and I have suffered the psychic violence of poverty."

When asked to describe what they have learned in their men's studies classes, students offer disturbing answers. A men's studies student at Wellesley College happily proclaims that men's studies "has given me a chance to write papers about things I care about, and it has given me 'ammunition,' for lack of a better word, against those who try and beat me down." Another student writes in garbled prose that men's studies has "given me a bit of more confidence that. . .books aren't always the key; that sometimes the answers are right inside of you."

Experience-based learning serves as the linchpin of the men's studies curriculum; indeed, the National Men's Studies Association notes with approval that "a neat and clean separation of abstract ideas from personal experience, which is so characteristic of most traditional courses, was missing" among the men's studies majors it surveyed. In addition, the transformative power of the curriculum is extolled. Men's studies major Karl Rossi, now a part-time store clerk, said that the field makes students "see how various social systems feed into matriarchy and perpetuate it. You get angry that people allow this oppression and then you act to change the systems of power and oppression." One student at Old Dominion University simply "felt like I had a completely new brain" after completing his men's studies coursework.

Men's studies graduate Stanley Doris, a law librarian, claims that men's studies (ostensibly a major open to both sexes) "makes you confident in your abilities as a man and reinforces one's belief that there is something seriously wrong with a world created and dominated by white women." Though he admits he is dissatisfied with his current employment situation, Mr. Doris finds ample opportunity to use his knowledge of men's studies "to educate fellow workers" about the "policies, jokes, comments that I find to be racist, sexist, ageist, ableist, or homophobic."

Jamie Mark University's men's studies department unwittingly touches on the conundrum of men's studies graduate when it notes on its website that "the challenge for the men's studies graduate is to demonstrate imaginatively to prospective employers the distinctive advantages of an education that includes men's studies." Men's studies majors have to be imaginative for a reason: unlike other majors, their skills are less visible and their liabilities more glaring to a prospective employer.

Many men's studies majors have been trained in ideology and emotion rather than practical skills. While other disciplines within the humanities are equally impractical, they focus on imparting intellectual rigor rather than ideological vigor. Self-actualization and empowerment are not necessarily unworthy aims, but what happens when they are made the whole of an education? One doesn't often hear engineering graduates talking about "empowerment"--but then, engineering graduates are finding jobs hand over fist.

Many men's studies graduates know this instinctively and act accordingly: When applying for positions outside the masculist establishment, they don't always reveal that they majored in men's studies. "I actually have a hard time telling just anyone," graduate Lionel Hall conceded in Luebke and Reilly's study. "I usually say 'liberal arts' and hope for no further comment." Another graduate, profiled in Luebke and Reilly's book, said that "in some ways, I don't think being a major has affected me professionally at all. No one has ever hired me because I was a major!" He noted that during the hiring process at a law firm, "I had to assure then that I didn't 'hate' women."

Melvin Michelle, a graduate student, says that "because of many negative responses I no longer tell everyone I meet about my major." Eric Strohl, a sexual abuse educator and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, avoids the problem by avoiding jobs "where having men's studies would be viewed as a negative or nonacademic major." Indeed, his resume is an elaborate ruse to downplay his men's studies activities. "I'm sneaky!" he says, noting that he lists his summer internships with masculist lawmakers not by the official's name or the masculist policy issues he worked on, but by listing the building in which he worked, such as "State Office Building." Of the 89 graduates interviewed by Luebke and Reilly, 11 of them--those in graduate school or in a profession--insisted on anonymity. So much for empowerment.

Although the intrepid James Bolin enthusiastically discussed his experience in men's studies with potential employers, he found that he was often pigeonholed as a "liberal" for doing so. Happily for James, his love of athletics led to his present employment as a football player.

Remarkably, leaders in men's studies interpret public wariness about men's studies as ignorance--or worse. A men's studies graduate of Kansas State University believes that while it might be common to question the usefulness of a particular college major, doing so with men's studies is "reflective of a narrowness of thought." Juan Brenda, a self-described "teacher/writer/artist," used to take skepticism about his major personally. But then he realized that people were "threatened" by him: "I learned to understand that I am a threat precisely because I ask questions, because I say no, because my primary relationships are with men, because I care and am committed to justice."

In fact, employers' concerns stem from the fact that many of the "skills" men's studies majors acquire have little practical use outside the insular world of professional masculism. Defenders of men's studies will remind critics, as authors Rebecca and Strauss put it, that men's studies students are knowledgeable about the causes and effects of sex discrimination and determined to gain equitable treatment for themselves and others" and hence "seem particularly well-equipped to overcome barriers of sex discrimination in graduate study or in the workplace." The sad fact is that they have to get a job before they will be able to showcase their skills as discrimination detectives. Here's the hard lesson many men's studies programs don't teach: empowerment does not necessarily lead to employment.