How to Become a Meeting and Event Planner With a General Studies Degree (2026)

What Does a Meeting and Event Planner Do?

A meeting and event planner arranges all aspects of events and professional gatherings, and the handbook's list of duties reads like a project plan, because that's what the job is. You plan the scope of the event, including its time, location and cost. You solicit bids from venues and service providers and choose among them. You coordinate the services the event needs, meaning the rooms, the transportation and the food. And when it's over, you review the event bills and approve the payments.

The planning is the visible half. The invisible half is negotiation, because the handbook says a meeting and event planner must be able to secure quality products and services at reasonable prices for their clients. Every bid you solicit is a conversation about what the venue will include and what it'll charge, and the cost you set in the scope stage is the number you'll be held to when the bills arrive.

Corporate planners are one branch of the job. They organize internal business meetings and meetings between businesses. The event side runs toward personal events like weddings, which the handbook expects to keep demand for event planners' services up. Whichever side you land on, the handbook's description of the working conditions is the honest one: a meeting and event planner must multitask, pay attention to details and meet tight deadlines, all at once, and the deadline is a date on a calendar that doesn't move.

If the money side of a charity dinner interests you more than the logistics, the fundraiser guide covers the job on the other side of the same evening. A meeting and event planner makes the room work. The fundraiser decides what happens in it.

Where Do Meeting and Event Planners Work?

Meeting and event planners work for the organizations that hold meetings, and the largest single employer is religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations, at 14 percent of the roughly 172,100 jobs the handbook counted in 2025. That's the association that runs an annual conference, the foundation with a donor event, the professional society with a convention. The rest are spread across the businesses that hold internal meetings, which the handbook describes under corporate planners, and the other employers that put on events.

The schedule is the thing to understand before you choose this job. Most meeting and event planners work full time, and many work more than 40 hours per week. The handbook says planners may travel regularly to attend the events they organize and to visit meeting sites, so the long weeks often happen away from home. An event doesn't run on business hours, and the week before it doesn't either.

What that means for you: ask two questions of any employer. How many events a year the role owns, and how much of the year is travel. The handbook gives the shape of the job, more than 40 hours and regular travel, and the employer sets the size. A general studies student who's been coordinating campus events already knows what an event week feels like, and the handbook counts that coordinating as useful experience, so a year of it is a fair test of whether you want the schedule full time.

How Do You Become a Meeting and Event Planner With a General Studies Degree?

You become a meeting and event planner with a general studies degree by finishing the bachelor's, which the handbook lists as the entry education, and building event experience into the years you spend on it. The handbook says some colleges offer programs in meeting and event management, and that other common fields of degree include business, communications, and social science, so a general studies degree with an emphasis in one of those is a recognized route in. The catch is in the next sentence of the handbook: planners who studied meeting and event management or hospitality management may start out with greater responsibilities than those from other disciplines. A general studies graduate starts a step behind on the org chart and closes that gap with experience.

The experience the handbook counts is specific and available to a student: coordinating university or volunteer events and shadowing professionals. The steps below take you from the emphasis choice through that experience to the voluntary certifications, which the handbook says aren't required. Start the events in your first year, because by graduation you want a list of them, not a plan to get one.

Is a General Studies Degree Enough to Become a Meeting and Event Planner?

A general studies degree is enough to get you to the door as a meeting and event planner, and experience is what gets you through it, because the handbook says meeting, convention and event planners need a bachelor's degree and lists business, communications and social science as common fields alongside the dedicated event management programs. But the handbook also says planners who studied meeting and event management or hospitality management may start out with greater responsibilities than those from other academic disciplines. So a general studies graduate is qualified to apply, and should expect the first job to be a smaller one.

Match the emphasis to the work. Business for the budgeting and the bids, communications for the client and vendor side, and a social science block if the program has one, since the handbook names all three. Ask the program whether any of its courses or its capstone involve running a real event with a real budget, and whether it has a hospitality or event management minor you could attach, because that's the coursework the handbook says gets graduates greater responsibilities at the start.

Then add what the handbook counts as experience: coordinating university or volunteer events, and shadowing professionals. Both fit around a degree, and both produce a record you can show. The voluntary certifications come later and aren't required. If you're picking a program now, the bachelor's in general studies rankings compare programs on federal graduation and cost figures, and the online bachelor's rankings list the programs you could finish while working events on the side.

How Much Does a Meeting and Event Planner Make in 2026?

A meeting and event planner makes a median of $61,160 a year , and most earn between $36,830 to $101,700, the 10th and 90th percentiles, in the May 2025 federal wage survey , which counts 142,860 people in the job. The middle half earn between $46,970 and $78,790, so the median is a midpoint and not an offer.

Pay by state runs from $76,970 in District of Columbia down to $35,760 in West Virginia. The bars below list every state with a published median, highest first, with the number employed there beside each.

Pay for meeting and event planners by metro area and by industry, with government against private pay, is in the meeting and event planner salary guide.

What Is the Job Outlook for Meeting and Event Planners?

The job outlook for meeting and event planners is 6 percent projected growth from 2025 to 2035, which the handbook rates faster than the average for all occupations. On the event side, the handbook expects demand from people who want help organizing personal events, such as weddings. The corporate side, internal business meetings and meetings between businesses, is the other half of the occupation the handbook describes, and a general studies graduate with business coursework has a route into it.

About 16,800 openings are projected each year on average over the decade, against 10,000 net new jobs across the whole period, so most openings are replacements for planners who leave. A projection is a projection, and events depend on organizations and people deciding to hold them, so the figure can move. For someone entering now, 6 percent is a working market rather than a boom. The graduates who fill those openings will be the ones with events on their record, and a general studies student who starts in the first year can have several by graduation.