That Ã¢âëœuselessã¢ââ¢ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Techs Hottest Ticket by George Anders

The Value of a Liberal Arts Education

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, from nationwide surveys to iconic CEOs, employers say they want to hire grads who can call back critically, communicate clearly and solve circuitous bug.

They agree these skills, provided by a liberal arts education, matter more what students choose as their undergraduate major.

Learn more than at www.liberalartspower.org, or check out the executives' opinions and studies below.

How These Humanities Graduates are Finding Jobs in Silicon Valley
The Hereafter of Work series explores why students with "soft skills" are critical for innovating and helping organizations run effectively.
Writer Makes Case for "Surprising Power" of Liberal Arts Pedagogy
In his volumeYous Can Do Anything, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts teaching – and the ways it can open up the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week.
Business Insider: Hedge Fund Manager Reveals Why He Loves Hiring Liberal Arts Majors
"Students of history and literature are more trained to understand the beingness of multiple perspectives and to engage with them, and and then tin often more than accurately understand the homo dynamics that drive stock market flows," said Daniel Rasmussen, founder of Verdad Fund Advisors. This is why he exclusively hires liberal arts majors for his undergraduate internship programme.
Liberal Arts Education Tin Lead to Career Success
Knoxville News Sentinel:According to the Department of Labor, professionals volition have more than than 10 jobs before they are 40 years old. So success is more than just getting a job; information technology's having the tools to build a lasting career over a lifetime. Regardless of their major, liberal arts graduates have the diverse skill set that today's employers seek.
Scientific American: STEM Pedagogy Is Vital—Only Not at the Expense of the Humanities
The demand to teach both music theory and string theory is a necessity for the U.S. economy to continue as the preeminent leader in technological innovation... Apple's Steve Jobs once alleged: "It'southward in Apple's Deoxyribonucleic acid that technology alone is not enough—that information technology'southward technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."
Wall Street Periodical:Why I Was Wrong About Liberal Arts Majors
Wall Street JournalSmall Business organisation Expert David Kalt says his experience has proven a liberal arts education produces the sharpest, best-performing software developers and technology leaders: "A disquisitional thinker is a cocky-learning motorcar."
The Atlantic:Why America'southward Business Majors Are in Desperate Demand of a Liberal Arts Education
Students are clamoring for degrees that volition help them secure jobs in a shifting economic system, but to succeed in the long term, they'll require an teaching that allows them to grow, accommodate, and to build successful careers: They demand a liberal arts foundation.
U.S. News University Directory: Study Links Liberal Arts to Success in Life
A study released this twelvemonth showed adults with a liberal arts background had a xxx-100% increased run a risk of having positions of leadership. It also establish a higher likelihood of satisfaction and happiness among those who equally undergraduates discussed issues with those who disagreed with them and had in-course discussions on varied viewpoints – all hallmarks of a liberal arts education.
Will a Liberal Arts Education Pay Off?
College graduates earn $i one thousand thousand more over their lifetimes than those with simply a loftier schoolhouse diploma. And in its first-ever college ranking, The Economist named Illinois Wesleyan graduates equally top earners – with $54,600 median annual earnings compared to the boilerplate college graduate's $42,751.
Academy Parent: Now (nonetheless) hiring: Job prospects for liberal arts majors
Liberal arts programs readily develop core competencies that leaders in the high-tech work force virtually want.
The Washington Mail service: Enough with trashing the liberal arts. Stop beingness stupid
For years now, business leaders accept been maxim loudly that the skills learned in liberal arts teaching are exactly what they are looking for in employees.
Forbes: Why Tech'southward Most Valuable Teacher Is A Classics Major
Business savvy was folded into a liberal arts education for Tim O'Reilly, who has congenital a formidable grooming institution for software engineers. "More broadly, all it takes is a quick scan through the task ads to run across how useful a liberal-arts education can be — fifty-fifty in our tech-hungry club."
Fast Visitor: Why Superlative Tech CEOs Want Employees With Liberal Arts Degrees
The liberal arts train students to synthesize multiple perspectives, to remember differently about bigger questions, to translate complex information into clear language – and to adapt to changing circumstances, tech CEOs say.
Forbes: That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Caste Has Become Tech'southward Hottest Ticket
Software companies are discovering that liberal arts thinking makes them stronger. Just ask philosophy major Stewart Butterfield, cofounder and CEO of Slack Technologies. And he's far from solitary, as Forbes reports.
What Yous've Been Told About Picking a College Major is Probably Incorrect
Expert advice: "Just pursue your passion. Employers prefer to hire people who take decision-making, organizational and planning, problem-solving, writing and advice skills" – skills best learned in liberal arts programs. "Major in what interests you most and what y'all are best at." Also: There are "dramatic differences between the 'sticker price' and the tuition and fees families actually pay."
Washington Post: Tech companies are hiring more liberal arts majors than you think
Liberal arts graduates joined the ranks of tech companies at a faster clip in the past few years than their engineering and computer-science counterparts, according an analysis by LinkedIn, which concluded, "These results reveal that the philosophy behind liberal arts, which encourages multifariousness of skills and flexible critical thinking, transfers to the workplace in diverse forms."
"Congrats Liberal Arts Majors, Yous're the Most Desirable Employees"
A star-studded panel of entrepreneurial leaders said liberal arts institutions produce graduates who bring the freshest ideas as employees.
Does Alma Mater Actually Affair? Where MacArthur 'Genius' Fellows Went to College
Many factors explicate why liberal arts colleges take produced a disproportionate share of MacArthur Fellows, valued as "self-directed original thinkers" who create groundbreaking work. Illinois Wesleyan boasts ii MacArthur Fellows, 1982 grad and the get-go vocal artist to win the accolade, 5-time Grammy winner Dawn Upshaw, and Chicago-based community leader Juan Salgado '91.
The New York Times: Starving for Wisdom
The humanities enrich us, in wisdom, understanding, and our pocketbooks. "A broad liberal arts teaching is a cardinal pathway to success in the 21st-century economy.... The economic return to pure technical skills has flattened, and the highest render now goes to those who combine soft skills — excellence at communicating and working with people — with technical skills."
Washington Post:What the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts' actually means
Information technology's liberal, not as opposed to conservative, just as in free, in contrast to imprisoned, constrained or subjugated. "A liberal education is designed to provide students with the cognition and abilities to become successful, productive members of a costless guild."
Washington Mail service: We don't need more Stalk majors. Nosotros need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.
If American scientific discipline, technology, engineering and math grads are going lead the globe in innovation, then their science education cannot be divorced from the liberal arts.
Weighing the Toll of Public vs. Private Colleges
A loftier schoolhouse guidance counselor advises families to await past the sticker shock of private schools and consider their more generous financial assistance packages and the much greater likelihood of graduating inside iv years.
I Volition Rent You for Your "Useless" Degree, If...
In the interests of hiring managers who want their companies to thrive, how y'all recall is more important than what you know. A and then-called "useless" degree can teach you lot to observe and empathise patterns and be forward thinking.
Fourth dimension: Critics of the Liberal Arts Are Incorrect
Yes, science and tech are important, but a congressional study shows that employers prize a more broadly-based education that has taught them to write well, retrieve critically, enquiry creatively and communicate easily.
Forbes: Employees Who Stand up Out
The power to think, to conceptualize and to come upwards with creative ideas separates top performers in their careers, co-ordinate to CEO Steve Sadove. These traits are hallmarks of a liberal arts education.
More than than a Major: What Employers Want
In a national survey, 80 percent of employers agree that – regardless of their major – all higher students should larn broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences.
Fast Visitor:Why Acme Tech CEOs Want Employees With Liberal Arts Degrees
Tech CEOs across the country concord that liberal arts training – with its emphasis on inventiveness and critical thinking – is vital to the success of their business.
Business concern Insider: Why Every Tech Company Needs An English Major
A former Twitter and Google executive told The Wall Street Journal he was looking for good storytellers at his startup company – illustrating how businesses depend on "liberal arts-centric communicators."
When the Toll of College Stops Going Up
Hamilton Place Strategies set out to determine when the cost of a college education is no longer worth the investment. Their answer: not until the year 2086, if tuition reaches $181,000 per yr. Up to that signal, a higher degree brings a solid return.
New York Times: Many of Wall Street's Height Executives Studied the Humanities
The co-chairman of Carlyle Group, a individual disinterestedness house, said that the reasoning skills that come with a well-rounded education result in higher-paying jobs over time.
Are the Liberal Arts Worth It?
A new report documents that liberal arts graduates reach college earnings and savour long-term professional person success.
In a "chArts & Sciences" infographic, Phi Beta Kappa has compiled quick stats to illustrate why America must conﬁrm the life-long value of a broad-based education, which expands opportunity and drives ingenuity and innovation.
CEO Advice: "Go a Liberal Arts Degree"
Edgar 1000. Bronfman, the former CEO of Seagram Company, Ltd., believes the work place of the future requires adaptable minds. "In that location is aught that makes the mind more elastic and expandable than discovering how the world works," he writes.
Poll: Employers Favor Those With Well-Rounded Teaching
A recent public poll institute that American adults and employers favor graduates who can communicate and think critically and creatively, rather than receive narrow training and manufacture-specific skills. Also reported past Inside Higher Ed .
Why a Liberal Arts Educational activity Creates Not bad Entrepreneurs
John Dearborn, president of venture development business firm JumpStart Inc., joins the tardily Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his view that great innovations spring from the liberal arts.
Numbers Don't Lie – A Price/Value Analysis of a Liberal Arts Caste
Non only is a liberal arts education non as expensive as news stories lead usa to believe, but there may be no improve investment in America today.
Employers Demand Higher Learning Levels, More Liberal Educational activity Outcomes
In a survey commissioned by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, employers said today'southward workers need a broader range of skills and knowledge.
Best Teaching Not Closely Tied to One Job
A rigorous education will ensure that students are prepared non but for their kickoff jobs, but besides for their second jobs, and especially for those kinds of jobs that practise not yet be.
Forbes: A Liberal Arts Degree Is More Valuable Than Learning Any Trade
The head of a billion-dollar software company argues that the skills necessary to succeed today are best fostered in a liberal arts environment.
Forbes:Major in What You Enjoy Nearly and Practice All-time
It'due south truthful: Liberal arts graduates earn well above the median income, excel in their careers and find great satisfaction in them.
Christian Science Monitor: Why a liberal arts teaching is the best task preparation
Students today can hands find information. The challenge is making connections, dealing with complexity.
U.s.a. Today: Liberal Arts Grads Better Prepared, More than Satisfied
A national survey found that alumni of liberal arts colleges such equally Illinois Wesleyan are improve prepared for their careers and more satisfied with their instruction than graduates of other institutions.