Job opportunities are generally forged by the individual, not by the program which one follows in college.

The best college programs recommend that undergraduates take a well-rounded course of study, combined with practical career-skill courses interwoven in her or his overall program. Anthropology provides a good counterpoint to business courses, foreign language study, technical training, fine arts, and so forth. In addition to imparting invaluable core knowledge about the human animal and its cultural and biological history, anthropology lends itself flexibly as a tool to refine whatever other interests one brings to the higher-educational process. A double major is often recommended.

Anthropological study provides training particularly well suited to the twenty-first century. The economy will be increasingly international; workforces and markets, increasingly diverse; participatory management and decision making, increasingly important; communication skills, increasingly in demand. Anthropology is the only contemporary discipline that approaches human questions from historical, biological, linguistic, and cultural perspectives. The intellectual excitement and relevance of the wide range of information presented in anthropology assures that students are engaged and challenged. Moreover, it complements other scientific and liberal arts courses by helping students understand the interconnectivity of knowledge about people and their cultures. Increasingly, undergraduate and master's students are coming to understand that the issues affecting their futures and the information they will need to prosper cannot be found in narrow programs of study.

Ambitious anthropology majors often seek and acquire complimentary skills in the course of their undergraduate studies. Especially useful ones might include proficiency in probability and statistics, geosciences, human anatomy and physiology, fluency in foreign languages (especially Spanish), and computer techniques. The most successful students don't follow the path of least resistance.

The undergraduate anthropology major will be exposed to archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. They learn how to study people and how communities and organizations work. The master's degree candidate receives additional training in how to combine these perspectives and skills to solve problems. Many undergraduates have difficulty selecting their major, changing their minds several times as they search for a course of study which interests them and can lead to post-college employment. That search sometimes results in costly extra years of study. The undergraduates choosing to major in anthropology can be comfortable that their choice is both exciting and practical. Even when interests change, many students find that their new courses can be accommodated within the anthropology major, thus saving them semesters that would otherwise be spent changing majors.