2018: How the “Year of Liberal Arts” Will Shatter Grads’ Expectations

Last year, in an interview with Business Insider, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban spoke about a changing job market and a burgeoning demand for liberal arts graduates to meet workforce needs for the next decade or more.

Unfortunately, a liberal arts education is still derided by many well-intentioned career and guidance counselors, echoing a long-peddled canard: a liberal arts degree is a flight of fancy that yields few job prospects.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner would beg to differ. Each of these renowned business leaders earned undergraduate degrees in liberal arts disciplines.

Today’s job market offers innumerable opportunities for liberal arts graduates to establish meaningful careers in a variety of fields, many that are not considered “traditional” roles for liberal arts degree-holders. From the high-tech firms of Silicon Valley to the trading floors of Wall Street, liberal arts grads are ushering in a new era of innovation, growth and opportunity across many different industries.

Yet, student expectations for success are still tempered by prevalent myths about liberal arts degrees. For years, critics have argued that a liberal arts education is neither practical nor useful, with little opportunity for upward earning potential. A study from Richard Detweiler, founder of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, shows that this simply isn’t true.

Detweiler’s research – a survey of 1,000 liberal arts graduates – showed that any disadvantage to a liberal arts major in terms of salary or job prospects is short-term and easily overcome with on-the-job experience. Over time, liberal arts majors out-earn their technically trained counterparts by an average of more than $2,000 per year in annual salary.

Why are liberal arts grads so highly valued by employers, and why does the myth of the “useless” liberal arts degree still persist today? The idea that higher education serves only to prepare students for a specific, specialized job is representative of past generations’ perceptions of the value of learning, defined by the labor needs of the post-war U.S. economy.

Today, we are a long way from 1945; both higher education and the workforce have changed considerably since the post-war boom. However, even as we move forward in the 21st century, the liberal arts field is still saddled with the last generation’s antiquated thinking about the value of a college degree. At the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts, we are working tirelessly to change misperceptions and shatter expectations about what students can achieve with a liberal arts degree.

Liberal arts grads are shaping the future because they never stop discovering. The quality of education, diversity of thought, and hands-on experiences students get from a liberal arts foundation prepares them for careers and advanced degrees that demand and reward ongoing curiosity and intellectual rigor.

Rather than being limited by their degrees, liberal arts graduates are trading their in-demand skills for lucrative career opportunities in industries that may surprise the naysayers. History graduates go on to become lawyers, authors, and journalists. Music majors make excellent accountants and financial analysts. Sociology and anthropology students are adept at business, entrepreneurship, and marketing. The breadth of career options for liberal arts grads is limited only by a student’s drive and ambition.

Liberal arts grads possess a highly-tuned set of transferable skills that employers demand, including leadership, problem-solving, communication and teamwork. A 2017 study from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) listed 20 skills that employers desire in new hires, and only two (technical and computer skills) fall outside of the traditional “soft skills” set cultivated by liberal arts majors. In addition, Detweiler’s 2016 study found that liberal arts graduates are more likely to be leaders and more civically engaged than those without a similar “breadth and range of education.”

This shift among employers is most prevalent in the booming technology industry, where the most prescient companies are recruiting liberal arts graduates at a rapid clip. As far back as 2015, this trend has been building, when Forbes first highlighted the need for technology innovators to fill positions in sales and marketing, business development and product management. Writing for Fast Company in 2017, Vidyard CEO Michael Litt also stresses the utility of a liberal arts education in the technology world. “Curriculums that encompass arts and sciences in equal parts may better equip students with the skills to reimagine and reshape a technological world,” Litt says in his article titled ‘Why This Tech CEO Keeps Hiring Humanities Majors.’

Liberal arts is not some new-age, fluffy, “feel good” pursuit: it’s a tradition that began in the crucible of learning, inspired by ancient pedagogical traditions that challenge modern notions of teaching and learning. A liberal education is at the heart of business innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and professional adaptability. As Detweiler concluded in his 2016 study, “(The) liberal arts truly is a route to a successful future (that) does pay off with a more viable future than these graduates might have had if they specialized more.”

The tide is turning and 2018 is poised to be the year of the liberal arts grad. In order to fulfill the needs of today’s labor market, engage in life-changing research, and harness the power of American business ingenuity, it’s essential for us to shatter the expectations and dispel the myths that limit our collective pursuit of a more just, equal, and educated world.

It’s a tall order for a “useless” pursuit, but the stakes are too high to ignore the value of a liberal arts degree in the 21st century economy.