Does it really take this long to get a "Master's in Humanities?" It only takes 3 years to get a law degree.
FWIW, my sister has what effectively has a "master's in humanities." It took her 18 months and she makes 6 figs working at some sort of think tank in DC, so I think the individual matters a lot more than the degree...
Most M.A.s in humanities disciplines take two years, although many students stretch it to three; PhDs take somewhere between five and ten. Ten is the median for English PhDs and many others these days, according to Louis Menand in The Marketplace of Ideas (http://www.amazon.com/Marketplace-Ideas-Resistance-American-...):
"People who received their PhDs in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of ten years. A third of them took more than eleven years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion [BREAK] was thirty-five. By 1995, 53 percent of those with PhDs that had been awarded ten to fifteen years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two fifths of English PhDs were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood (146).
He goes on:
"It was plain that [by the 1980s] the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life" (147), at least as far as PhDs are concerned.
The point about careers in "humanities" are well taken.
I think the OP's sister has taken a really unusual route.
"I think the OP's sister has taken a really unusual route."
Maybe that's true, but for positions like the one she's in, the educational background tends towards the humanities, not towards STEM degrees.
Also, I always assumed that English PhDs take forever because people do it part-time, which is usually not an option with STEM degrees (although is often an option in CS).
They evaluate it and... then they are all supposed to pick another subject, because of... money? Well, I hope you are happy: I certainly wouldn't have been if those were my most important criteria for choosing my education.
