The Revenge of the Liberal Arts Major

[caden]

www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2012/05/14/survey-on-millennial-hiring-highlights-power-of-liberal-arts

If you're in college, or happen to be about to graduate, and you've been mocked for getting a liberal arts degree, here's a piece of welcome news: You're actually in more demand than those who are getting finance and accounting degrees. That's one of the findings of a new survey of 225 employers issued today by Millennial Branding and Experience Inc.

The main takeaway of the survey, at least according to the press release that went out with it, was that there's a disconnect taking place with regard to internships. While 91 percent of employers think students should have one or two of the temporary, professionally focused positions before they graduate, 50 percent haven't actually hired any interns in the last six months. Somehow, we don't think this is going to change either the crush of students looking for internships or the stated desire of employers to hire those who have internships under their belts.

More interesting, at least for those of us who got some parental grief over our college choice, was the apparent love being shown for liberal arts majors. Thirty percent of surveyed employers said they were recruiting liberal arts types, second only to the 34 percent who said they were going after engineering and computer information systems majors. Trailing were finance and accounting majors, as only 18 percent of employers said they were recruiting targets.

"The No. 1 skill that employers are looking for are communication skills and liberal arts students who take classes in writing and speaking," said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding and an expert on Generation Y. "They need to become good communicators in order to graduate with a liberal arts degree. Companies are looking for soft skills over hard skills now because hard skills can be learned, while soft skills need to be developed."

One other finding from the survey to emphasize: 29 percent of employers said they were looking for graduates with entrepreneurial experience. That's far behind the 69 percent who think relevant courses are an important factor to someone's candidacy, or the 65 percent who say a referral from a boss or professor is significant, or the 50 percent who like to see a leadership position in a campus organization.

But at least it's a recognition that an entrepreneurial spirit or go-getter attitude can be a clear plus.

"Employers are looking for entrepreneurship experience now because they have more pressure to innovate from within," Schawbel said in an email exchange with Portfolio.com, predicting this number would rise. "Entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is defined as 'personal accountability.' You don't need to own a company to be an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial attitude is cherished because they are goal-oriented, have sales skills, and have good business sense."

Read more: www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2012/05/14/survey-on-millennial-hiring-highlights-power-of-liberal-arts#ixzz1uxuUqRu0

[mx27]

really? this is probably a regional thing.

my husband has a liberal arts undergrad degree and had the hardest time getting a job. he finally landed a great opportunity after he earned his mba (finance/accounting emphasis).

it just seems like the market is flooded with liberal arts types and the highly sought after skills are IT, finance/accounting, computer science, etc.

[stephiehun]

"The No. 1 skill that employers are looking for are communication skills and liberal arts students who take classes in writing and speaking," said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding and an expert on Generation Y. "They need to become good communicators in order to graduate with a liberal arts degree. Companies are looking for soft skills over hard skills now because hard skills can be learned, while soft skills need to be developed."

This was why I majored in English in 1998. I figured if nothing else, I'd have great writing and speaking skills, and spend 4 years studying something I loved. I may not have any practical life skills, but I'm awesome at cocktail parties and I can talk my way into or out of just about anything.

[emilyj]

May 15, 2012 13:46:00 GMT -5 caden said:

"The No. 1 skill that employers are looking for are communication skills and liberal arts students who take classes in writing and speaking," said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding and an expert on Generation Y. "They need to become good communicators in order to graduate with a liberal arts degree. Companies are looking for soft skills over hard skills now because hard skills can be learned, while soft skills need to be developed."

Does this mean my 3 comm degrees are finally going to be worth dick? And that I'm not going to have to explain what they are??

[Deleted]

I majored in a science and still love this article.

liberal arts

[marie427]

Linguistics major checking in. It's only helped my career, not hurt it. But then again, I graduated in 2004, not in 2011.

I love the liberal arts. I am not thrilled with the shift towards the more "lucrative" majors due to economic woes. I mean, I understand why it's happening but it's really not the case that everyone who majors in a "useless" liberal arts/humanities field is fucked career-wise.

[wrathofkuus]

I'm curious about what kinds of jobs they're talking about here, because you KNOW no one is going to hire a liberal arts major for a programming position and assume that they'll learn how to write code from scratch on the job.

[Deleted]

I majored in English and would say that my writing and speaking skills didn't really develop until I went through law school. Undergrad was about reading and fudging my way through writing reports on what I read.

[Deleted]

May 16, 2012 10:10:43 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

May 16, 2012 8:26:24 GMT -5 @redbellpeppers said:

I feel like the sciences are the close cousins of liberal arts because thinks like biology, chemistry, physics... those are traditional majors that aren't "career driven."

ITA, but majors in the sciences tend to be a little more career-driven than majors in the humanities.

I tell my students that the study of chemistry is a great foundation for a liberal arts background, whether or not they will continue their studies in the sciences.

[DownToEarth]

I read this yesterday and was surprised also, but I also graduated in a science field from a liberal arts college and loved my ethics, poetry, German lit, and pottery classes as much as my major.

So do you think this is b/c the field is saturated with business and other degrees that a liberal arts degree is standing out now or are a large group of hiring managers really looking for liberal arts majors?

[DownToEarth]

May 16, 2012 10:39:22 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

I think the problem with the vocational degrees (for lack of a better word) is that they aren't really "thinking" degrees. They're just training. It's like if doctors didn't have to do the first two years of med school that are all didactic, with anatomy, and microbiology and all that - they just went straight to clinical work and learned the application of those things. It's one thing to essentially memorize, it's another thing to learn and liberal arts majors (and sciences) require you to learn. You have to reach your own conclusions, you have to build your own arguments, you have to develop a context for what you're learning by learning other things. You have to have knowledge and understanding about other topic in order to understand your own. So something like poetry, if you're going to really be able to form a critical analysis of a poem, you're going to have to know history, religion (probably world religions), philosophy...

Basically, you have to be able to fuse several different topics together, and reach a conclusion that you the effectively communicate with a third party. Even the whole idea of topic papers: a thesis, with support, analysis, and a conclusion, is something that I don't think a lot of "human resources" majors are learning (and I apologize if someone is an actual HR major, I don't even know if that major exists. I just tried to come up with something that is basically just a career.)

So my hope is that what employers are realizing is that it is valuable to have people on your staff whose brains work like this. And that the data in data out majors are really one-dimensional.

So I think I don't really know anyone from undergrad (or know them well) who graduated with something other than a science or liberal-arts type degree (liberal arts, english, anthropology, ethics, etc.)

Don't the business people have to do senior projects and thesis-type work also? Do you get an MBA without a thesis or dissertation type business project or analysis?

[ringstrue]

Vocational degrees are great and at a shortage right now for populations of people who really aren't college material and shouldn't be expected to attain true success in the sciences or speaking and writing.

WRITING, imo, is huge. You have web content writing, blogging, social media tactics, kindle book writing, etc., and they are all separate skills than traditional paper/press release writing. Having someone with both youth and these skills is an asset to pretty much every entity out there right now.

[rupertpenny]

This makes my history major self very happy. My BIL is a junior in college right now and insists on majoring in business because he thinks that's the only way to get a job, but he doesn't make awesome grades. My H keeps telling him to try German instead because he's good at it and it will stand out more. I just sent this to my H so hopefully he will send it to BIL.

[meshaliuknits]

May 16, 2012 10:15:38 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I'm curious about what kinds of jobs they're talking about here, because you KNOW no one is going to hire a liberal arts major for a programming position and assume that they'll learn how to write code from scratch on the job.

I have a friend who majored in Japanese and Linguistics who works as a programmer. She's not starting from scratch, but she didn't start with a huge knowledge base either. She picked some stuff up at her previous gig where she was doing a lot of data entry and was hired at her new gig as a programmer. She's taking some CS classes at night to boost her abilities.

[whitewolf]

I read this to my AP students (who are all aspiring business majors and doctors), and they were PISSED OFF. lol.
sbp, bitch, please. I finished my first MA in 1999. Old old old.

[Deleted]

May 16, 2012 10:15:38 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I'm curious about what kinds of jobs they're talking about here, because you KNOW no one is going to hire a liberal arts major for a programming position and assume that they'll learn how to write code from scratch on the job.

I agree this is true for entry-level/right out of college corporate jobs, but as a hiring manager (with a Comp Sci degree) I would be thrilled to see someone with programming experience and a liberal arts degree. I know a decent number of self-taught coders that prove themselves via freelance work out of college and frankly I have a much more difficult time finding people with the right communication skills than the right technical skills. Really I care less about what your degree is in and more about what you have done and want to do with your career. One of the best developers I know has a degree in Philosophy.

There is a lot of art in science. And I personally feel that a person should go to school to learn the things they don't already know.

[eightangryreindeer]

Hopeful holla from the soon-to-be-unemployed Vassar girl who majored in Cultural Anthropology and Women's Studies.
lol

sbp, while I agree with you, I think the key is in a clever mix and balance of both types of people.

Some folks are just not into deep, critical thinking, nor do they need to be (when I say some folks I mean just that, not focusing on whether you had a career-oriented major or not). There are plenty of idiot HR specialists and liberal arts majors alike.

[MrsAxilla]

May 16, 2012 10:39:22 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

So my hope is that what employers are realizing is that it is valuable to have people on your staff whose brains work like this. And that the data in data out majors are really one-dimensional.

I thought it was interesting that the article used the word "developed" for the skills you learn in liberal arts. I can easily learn any technical task I have to do. It's taken YEARS to develop good skills related to problem solving and managing people, and each new problem develops me more.

[wrathofkuus]

May 16, 2012 10:59:55 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

May 16, 2012 10:15:38 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I'm curious about what kinds of jobs they're talking about here, because you KNOW no one is going to hire a liberal arts major for a programming position and assume that they'll learn how to write code from scratch on the job.

I have a friend who majored in Japanese and Linguistics who works as a programmer. She's not starting from scratch, but she didn't start with a huge knowledge base either. She picked some stuff up at her previous gig where she was doing a lot of data entry and was hired at her new gig as a programmer. She's taking some CS classes at night to boost her abilities.

This is really, really weird. Around here, companies hiring programmers have them write some mock code during the interview and vet them that way.

[5thofjuly]

This, in part, is why I'm leaving my current university and will be working at a liberal arts school starting in the fall. The legislature in this state keeps pushing to eliminate liberal arts and gen ed course requirements at 4 year colleges and universities (which are now 5-6 year colleges and universities since so many students need remedial work before they can begin their credited classes.) They want to turn our state univerisities into vo-tech schools with awesome football teams.

While there's nothing wrong with vo-tech, it's a totally different thing. Part of a university education IS that generalist focus which allows you to learn how to think, write, and speak by at least being heavily exposed to liberal arts, even if you choose not to major in one.

[pixy0stix]

Once the website is built, someone has to write the content.

[2curlydogs]

May 16, 2012 11:19:26 GMT -5 @mairzydoats said:

May 16, 2012 10:15:38 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I'm curious about what kinds of jobs they're talking about here, because you KNOW no one is going to hire a liberal arts major for a programming position and assume that they'll learn how to write code from scratch on the job.

I agree this is true for entry-level/right out of college corporate jobs, but as a hiring manager (with a Comp Sci degree) I would be thrilled to see someone with programming experience and a liberal arts degree. I know a decent number of self-taught coders that prove themselves via freelance work out of college and frankly I have a much more difficult time finding people with the right communication skills than the right technical skills. Really I care less about what your degree is in and more about what you have done and want to do with your career. One of the best developers I know has a degree in Philosophy.

There is a lot of art in science. And I personally feel that a person should go to school to learn the things they don't already know.

I'll ditto this almost to the letter. I need not only a person who can code but someone who can communicate effectively with a wide variety of constituencies (faculty, staff, students, alumni, press, media...) and can write/create quality content for web, social media. Someone who can write an RFP without me having to do basic editing to make it sound like it was written by a human being....

[meshaliuknits]

May 16, 2012 11:30:20 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

May 16, 2012 10:59:55 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

I have a friend who majored in Japanese and Linguistics who works as a programmer. She's not starting from scratch, but she didn't start with a huge knowledge base either. She picked some stuff up at her previous gig where she was doing a lot of data entry and was hired at her new gig as a programmer. She's taking some CS classes at night to boost her abilities.

This is really, really weird. Around here, companies hiring programmers have them write some mock code during the interview and vet them that way.

I imagine it doesn't happen a lot. But it's (apparently) not impossible.

[2curlydogs]

May 16, 2012 11:39:47 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Once the website is built, someone has to write the content.

This is true. However, these days those are generally two different people.

[MrsAxilla]

May 16, 2012 11:44:06 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Not to take this in a totally different direction, but my parents are starting to see the effects of all the standardized testing. Everyone wants to know "is this going to be on the test." And it's code for "Do I need to be listening to you right now?" The teaching to the test stuff going on in high school is divorcing kids from even the concept of education. They don't even know what the process of learning looks like anymore.

So true. Kids in med school are asking the same question. They don't understand that whether it's on the test is irrelevant. They need to know everything.

[terpsfan]

May 16, 2012 11:42:00 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

May 16, 2012 11:19:26 GMT -5 @mairzydoats said:

I agree this is true for entry-level/right out of college corporate jobs, but as a hiring manager (with a Comp Sci degree) I would be thrilled to see someone with programming experience and a liberal arts degree. I know a decent number of self-taught coders that prove themselves via freelance work out of college and frankly I have a much more difficult time finding people with the right communication skills than the right technical skills. Really I care less about what your degree is in and more about what you have done and want to do with your career. One of the best developers I know has a degree in Philosophy.

There is a lot of art in science. And I personally feel that a person should go to school to learn the things they don't already know.

I'll ditto this almost to the letter. I need not only a person who can code but someone who can communicate effectively with a wide variety of constituencies (faculty, staff, students, alumni, press, media...) and can write/create quality content for web, social media. Someone who can write an RFP without me having to do basic editing to make it sound like it was written by a human being....

Ditto, someone needs to be able to write technical requirements and test case scenarios that people can understand!

I'm torn on this issue personally. I nabbed my senior year summer internship with a former big 5 consultancy basically out of luck. They were only recruiting IT/comp sci majors and I happened to get my name in the pool despite not being in that bucket (I was business but wasn't "technical" think supply chain mgmt). Someone basically took a chance on me, so I can see taking that chance with a non-conventional major. BUT, now as part of the hiring/operations team, I hate new college hires that are so general that I literally have nothing I can do with them. Companies can invest only so much on on the job training...

[pescalita]

May 16, 2012 10:10:43 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

May 16, 2012 8:26:24 GMT -5 @redbellpeppers said:

I majored in a science and still love this article.

liberal arts

I feel like the sciences are the close cousins of liberal arts because thinks like biology, chemistry, physics... those are traditional majors that aren't "career driven." It's not like people who are now majoring in "museum archiving" instead of "art history" because "museum archiving" seems to have a defined career path and "art history" isn't a real major.

It makes me sad that majors like Philosophy, History, Literature, and even Biology ("You're pre-med, right?" "No, I just like science."), are being criticized these days as "worthless" majors. These are things that have been worth studying in every civilized culture over the past 7,000 years. Until now. That should give us pause.

More articles like this, please.

:Y: I'm on the sbp train here.

I spent a good number of years bemoaning my BS in Biology as useless, but now that I've finally figured out what I want to do when I grow up, I realize it was perfect. I didn't have to decide what I wanted to do at 17, but I did gain the useful critical thinking skills I'm using in accounting today. I'm the third biology major in my dept.

There's definitely something to be learned in my field in school, and I may yet go back and learn it, but on the job training has also been valuable.

Mr.P has a BS in Business Administration, and I think he'd tell you he's learned much more from experience than school. Of course, he hates school

[2curlydogs]

May 16, 2012 11:51:36 GMT -5 terpsfan said:

May 16, 2012 11:42:00 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

I'll ditto this almost to the letter. I need not only a person who can code but someone who can communicate effectively with a wide variety of constituencies (faculty, staff, students, alumni, press, media...) and can write/create quality content for web, social media. Someone who can write an RFP without me having to do basic editing to make it sound like it was written by a human being....

Ditto, someone needs to be able to write technical requirements and test case scenarios that people can understand!

I'm torn on this issue personally. I nabbed my senior year summer internship with a former big 5 consultancy basically out of luck. They were only recruiting IT/comp sci majors and I happened to get my name in the pool despite not being in that bucket (I was business but wasn't "technical" think supply chain mgmt). Someone basically took a chance on me, so I can see taking that chance with a non-conventional major. BUT, now as part of the hiring/operations team, I hate new college hires that are so general that I literally have nothing I can do with them. Companies can invest only so much on on the job training...

I think there needs to be balance. The history major can't spend their whole day researching Tudor England and think they'll get a job because they have made research skills. Yeah, that's nice, but so does the student who did the same research AND took a class in web development.

The whole POINT of a liberal arts education is exposure to a wide variety of topics.

[DownToEarth]

May 16, 2012 11:15:13 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

An MBA is not an undergraduate degree. I don't know anyone with a bachelors in marketing who wrote a thesis or even had a senior project that involved extensive research and writing.

There were a few of these career-track degrees when I was in college. One of them was called like Public and Corporate Communications and it was this weird hybrid between the Communications degree and a PR degree. But my understanding is that there is a push to have MORE degrees like this now. My mom is an English professor and every time she turns around they're trying to throw some other major into the handbook that is essentially like majoring in coverletter-writing, or CEO-ing, or some shit.

Yeah, I guess since so many people are going directly from undergrad to graduate degrees like MBAs I was wondering if they also do thesis/dissertation type work.

I'm surprised that the business-type majors aren't well-spoken or communicate well in writing. After getting an MS at a technical college in engineering and being a TA for senior-level classes, I would think a business major would have to be better at communication than a technical-school engineer. I think I'll always encourage my kids to go to a liberal arts-type college even for a degree like engineering or medical field or business.

Then again, I'm not sure if the engineers are having as hard of a time getting jobs right out of undergrad.

[2curlydogs]

May 16, 2012 11:15:13 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

There were a few of these career-track degrees when I was in college. One of them was called like Public and Corporate Communications and it was this weird hybrid between the Communications degree and a PR degree. But my understanding is that there is a push to have MORE degrees like this now. My mom is an English professor and every time she turns around they're trying to throw some other major into the handbook that is essentially like majoring in coverletter-writing, or CEO-ing, or some shit.

This is happening here too, though it's faculty who are driving a lot of it. And I just DO.NOT.GET.IT. I mean, if you want to offer an concentration in, say, game design, then that makes sense. But to make it it's own major? That's just stupid. Fortunately our deans are smart enough to shoot down that nonsense.