Andrea Gabor blows up the myth that the path to success in business requires a major in business or that there is a “skills gap” in STEM subjects.
If you want to succeed in business, she writes, major in the liberal arts.
The combatants in the U.S. education wars don’t agree on much, but there’s at least one concern that most reformers and educators across the political spectrum seem to share: fear that universities aren’t producing enough science, technology, engineering and math majors. But just as statesand school districts add new technology requirements and open STEM-oriented schools, leading technology companies are heading in the opposite direction, forming partnerships with liberal-arts colleges and seeking to hire their graduates.
It’s a welcome development. Recent research suggests that contrary to the popular idea that majoring in art or literature is a route to personal penury and a contributor to industrial decline, there are actually plenty of science majors, except among low-income students. Moreover, while newly minted graduates with science and technical degrees enjoy a salary premium over their classmates in the humanities, that premium fades over time, in part because technological skills become obsolete faster. Liberal arts majors, by contrast, trained to be creative communicators and critical thinkers, are more adaptable.
Corporations have good business reasons to embrace history, philosophy and English majors. Companies need well-rounded employees conversant in both digital and creative skills. With some additional training and investments by the government, companies can leverage both the liberal arts and digital know-how that is needed for increasingly complex technological systems.
To understand the limitations of a business degree, consider the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!
Go ahead and major in art history or philosophy or history or comparative literature. You may end up as CEO.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On the other hand, you may also end up with absolutely crushing student loan debt and, like most people with liberal arts degrees, not end up as CEO.
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This is where young people are today. It’s obscene. Here, the numbers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/#45aadfe1133f
1.6 trillion. That’s quite a load that our young people are carrying.
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It is absolutely obscene. I have a daughter looking at college now, and I’m incapable of having any serious discussion about it without succumbing to a full-blown panic attack. It’s not fair to her, but the numbers are what they are. It’s sad.
And to the very non-trivial extent that college costs are borne by “middle-class families” rather than through student loans, it also destroys the ability of many families to pass on wealth to their children. (The assisted living/nursing care industry too often sucks out whatever family wealth is left at the end.)
Yes, this is a drum I bang.
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I graduated from Indiana University with my BA in 1978. I had a grand total of $2,700 in student debt, and at the time, I considered this an enormous burden. I lived for a while in an apartment whose furnishings included one futon mattress, a Japanese lantern, a cooking pot, a cooking skillet, two plates, two classes, and some cheap silverware. It took a year to pay off the student loan. Now, I have a young friend with a master’s degree in Anthropology and 100K in student debt. I can’t imagine trying to make that work. Insane.
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I was lucky enough to graduate with no undergrad debt in the early 90s (I later acquired a hefty load in graduate school and law school), but tuition was about $3,000 a year then.
Proposed solutions can get really wonky once you get into the details, with lots of unintended consequences. I don’t pretend to understand the nuances, and I don’t pretend that there’s an easy fix. But it’s one the core areas where I feel “something must be done.”
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In 1973, I carried $7k in student debt out of college after taking 5 years to earn a BA in Journalism. Four the first four years, I had the GI Bill and then that ran out. I also worked part-time jobs. A few years out of college during my early teaching years, I took a night and weekend job for three years working 30 hours a week while teaching full time. I got by on about three to four hours of sleep a night. Once I paid off the student debts, I quit the 2nd job.
But there are other ways to get a college education and degree and come out the other end debt-free. Join one of the U.S. military branches, buy a laptop and find a credited, prestigious university that offers a long-distance degree and earn that degree using your laptop no matter where you are stationed in the world.
That was the advice I gave the high school students I taught and a few of them did it. I told them to go in the Navy or Air Force and AVoid the Marines and Army so they had a better chance to stay alive and keep all their body prts.
One girl came back after serving in the AirForce for six years and told me she had about a year to go to get her Bachelors’s degree in electrical engineering from a state college in California. She served on a Patriot Battery in Isreal during the 1st Gulf War and was stationed in Japan for another tour, and she was taking classes from a state college in California all that time.
Then there is another benefit in California for children with at least one parent that served or was still serving in the US Military. State college tuition was waved.
“Educational Benefits for Dependents of Veterans” It’s called the CalVet Fee Waiver
If you are the spouse or son or daughter (whether natural or adopted) of someone who served honorably in any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, you may be eligible for these options to help pay for your education at the CSU
CalVet Fee Waiver
The College Tuition Fee Waiver for the Dependents of Veterans — sometimes called the CalVet Fee Waiver — is a state benefit that provides a tuition-free education at the CSU and the other state public post-secondary colleges and universities.
https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/student-services/troops-to-college/educational-benefits-for-military-connected-students/Pages/dependents-of-veterans.aspx
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Start looking at grant and scholarship money. There is a lot of it out there. I know it’s not much comfort. After four kids, my husband and I are still paying off loans over a decade after the last one graduated. All but one of them has finished paying off their loans. That one chose lifestyle over income, so it has taken longer. I don’t think my husband will ever retire.
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My retirement plan is a dive off the Staten Island ferry.
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I would torture myself by trying to swim. I think I will pick a more pedestrian method…
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Bob,
I agree that is a huge load of debt, but some of that is the problem that because of college marketing, students are paying far more for college than they should be. The for-profit marketing is terrible, but the non-profit marketing can be just as bad. Students go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for a private university instead of attending a perfectly good state or city university. Or perhaps turning down a merit scholarship to one university so they can attend a higher ranked and supposedly “better” university where they will be paying much more.
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It’s also important to note that often the biggest cost of attending college isn’t the tuition. It is the room and board.
I was looking at the sticker price to attend CUNY, the NYC public college system. NYC residents can attend a 4 year CUNY college for less than $7,000 a year full price tuition (financial aid covers much of that for low-income students). Starting at a 2 year college has an even lower cost of $4,800.
However – and this is a big however! — CUNY informs students that even if they are living at home or with relatives, they should budget nearly $10,000 for living and other expenses (like books and supplies @ $1,300)
For those not living at home, the budget is $22,000 in non-tuition costs for 9 months!
I remember when Andrew Cuomo offered his own version of “free college”. It was helpful to only a small number of students because it was only tuition (which poor students already had financial aid to cover). The flagship SUNY, Binghamton University, has “tuition” costs as only $7,000, plus another $3,000 plus in “fees”. But the Cost of Attendance is another $18,000 because of living expenses. It was nearly $30,000 to attend, even though tuition was only around $7,000.
I remember decades ago that England famously gave students fairly generous “grants” to cover living expenses as well as free college. All that changed, but I don’t know if the type of free college plans offered by the candidates address the expenses incurred because the student isn’t working full time and needs to pay for a place to eat, sleep and live.
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FLERP!,
You might look at highly ranked public universities. Unlike the Ivies, these schools give “merit” scholarships. These scholarships are actually price reductions given to attract students who might otherwise attend private/ivy schools but will go to the public universities honors program because of the much reduced tuition. My institution’s out of state cost of attendance is about $40,000 annually without any financial aid. Compare that to NYU where commuter cost of attendance is almost $60,000 and if a student lives on campus it is over $76,000 a year.
The best deal i know of is to move to Michigan. The in state cost of attendance at the University of Michigan is a bit under $30,000 without any financial aid (out of state is comparable to NYU)
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$30,000 to $40,000 per year is still pretty insane for most people with multiple children. But yes, in-state public universities are the best option. Unfortunately, New York is not a great state for top-flight public universities. Yes, there is some snobbism at work there, and New York has some fine public schools. But it is not Michigan (or Wisconsin, or Indiana, or Texas, or California, or Virginia, or North Carolina, or . . . you get the idea).
If I could move to Michigan, I would. Very difficult to relocate a career at my age.
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NYCPSP – I’m not sure the public vs. private issue matters that much. My stepdaughter is going through the process this year. From what I’m seeing, the sticker prices on the private colleges she’s looking at are way more than our state school, but the state university is offering pretty much no scholarships/aid, whereas the private schools are offering enough to bring tuition down to about the same as the state school. In either case, she’ll graduate with about $100,00 to $125,000 in debt.
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We found the same thing over a decade ago. The private colleges with large endowments were able to offer scholarships state schools couldn’t, and, depending on the major, the state schools could not guarantee that a student could get all the courses for their major in four years!
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FLERP you nutshelled it at post 2:04pm: “And to the very non-trivial extent that college costs are borne by “middle-class families” rather than through student loans, it also destroys the ability of many families to pass on wealth to their children. (The assisted living/nursing care industry too often sucks out whatever family wealth is left at the end.)” There’s yer hollowed-out middle class right there.
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dienne77,
Yes, the situation you describe is one that parents I know experience, too. Private colleges are an excellent bargain for two types of students — those whose family income makes them qualified for a significant amount of financial aid or those students who receive a significant amount of merit scholarships. Those merit scholarships are also available for some state universities as well.
Private colleges are an excellent option if your kid qualifies via financial aid or merit aid that makes the costs more manageable.
If you ever look at the breakdown in family income of the students’ at the most selective private universities and colleges that offer only need-based aid, you will see what appears to be a huge donut hole. There are a hugely disproportionate number of students from families who earn well over $600,000 — those parents can afford to pay $70,000 full freight and some of them have paid over $40,000/year for 13 years of K-12 private school so 4 years at a bit more is not prohibitive. Then you see many lower-income students who benefit from those colleges extremely generous need-based financial aid.
But the donut hole are students whose families are in the lower end of affluence where paying over $70,000 year after taxes can be a stretch if they have not been able to put away a few hundred thousand dollars in their kids’ college accounts. If you talk to students in state university honors programs or in private colleges that offer significant merit aid to affluent students who don’t qualify for financial aid, many of those students may have turned down other colleges that would have required them to pay full freight and the cost very much affected their decision.
The big difference that I see is that for private colleges, the tuition costs twice as much as the room and board, and for public colleges, the room and board costs twice as much as the tuition. What portion of those various costs are covered can impact how much any individual student pays.
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^^^Also, dienne77, I’m wondering if there are public universities and colleges in your state that your stepdaughter is not looking at where her costs might be less. The colleges that are less popular will often offer a lot of financial support to students who are at or above the academic record of the top 25% of students who enroll.
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Bob (re: 5:32 post): the tuition benefits for children of military in CA reminds me of something.
In the recent post about Harvard admissions case, we were all very quick to lump “professors’ children” in w/ legacies, athletes, & children of the wealthy as “people with connections.” But professors in the main are hardly wealthy. They usually have to pony up too much dough to live close to their jobs in inflated-priced collegetown areas, & most are paid well under what hrs worked & expertise & advanced ed might earn them in industry. In that sense they are performing a needed public service. Like K-12 teachers, they should be getting perqs like childrens’ tuition (if they qualify for adm). It’s something the U can provide them at cost, to help right that balance.
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There is a real snobbishness about SUNY that does astonish me. If you are looking for a rah rah root for the nationally ranked football/basketball team, then that is true. But the SUNY flagship @ Binghamton has a significantly higher achieving undergrad population than Indiana and is quite similar to Wisconsin. Many good students get turned down from Bing.
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There are many outstanding SUNY campuses. Purchase and Stonybrook, for example.
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Do most of those students majoring in philosophy or history who became CEOs go back and spend a small fortune to attend business or law or some other graduate school?
I do wonder if there is some privilege involved. Are those corporations doing partnerships with “liberal arts graduates” who are attending public universities, or are they doing partnerships with the selective liberal arts colleges where the majority of students come from the top 1%?
I think Brett Kavanaugh was a history major at Yale, and graduated “cum laude” when half of Yale students did. Despite not being summa or even magna cum laude, he was handed a route directly to Yale Law School at a time when it is likely that many other students who had better academic records did not. And I suspect the same is true for some other privileged history and english grads at other elite colleges who see their way to the top made easier than any average middle class or poor student would.
From what I see, the students who are STEM or pre-med majors work much harder and get much lower grades. I am a huge fan of liberal arts, but getting a passing grade in a college level history or english class is different than getting a passing grade in a STEM class.
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For one thing, this appears to be a relatively new switch in approach, untested by time. Maybe even just a passing whim at techie firms. There’s no list of CEO’s w/lib-arts majors here. Only 3 are mentioned, & only 1 of them is a current CEO.
Plus, the article only addresses sw-sys firms. Software systems are approachable from a number of angles besides coding & engrg/ math. Many such companies were started up in ‘80’s/’90’s by a pretty motley crew. And I met a number of people in early ‘90’s who acquired coding skills [not a grad degree] supplementing their field (maybe ½ math people, ½ non-STEM) & jumped onboard such firms at a good salary. A lot of what sw-sys cos do is dream up & bet on new/ improved applications, which requires a broad set of skills. Of course that has to be coupled w/basic understanding of the biz, but that is mostly acquired through working in it.
Still your point is well taken. Just in 25-30 yrs, that field has exploded, & as the article says, during that time many K-12 & colleges have interpreted as a need for xyz degrees. That quickly becomes self-fulfilling, creating bunches of expensively-trained xyz degree-holders who may or may not be what the industry needs, crowding out less-obvious but creative idea-people w/non-xyz degrees.
Back in my day there were (a)a lot more non-global corporations, (b)a lot more career paths w/n those corporations for non-techies [now automated away], & perhaps most importantly, (c)promotion from within via on-the-job training, plus corp-reimbursed grad degrees. In today’s global-corp world it’s dog-eat-dog & you’re on your own, which automatically means those w/the most $$ win.
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Brett Kavanaugh majored in beer. He was privileged.
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He majored in beer, with a minor in sexual abuse. Or was it the other way around?
Anyhow, I hear those are the most popular majors at Georgetown Prep and Yale.
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My mother made the same argument to my brother and me many years ago. My brother majored in history, and I majored in French. My mother’s argument was that companies want those that can think and retrain if necessary. That advice worked for us over forty years ago when a college degree was a prized possession. I am not so sure it works today when people can get MBAs while riding on LIRR, and bachelors degree is common place. Since college pays off for fewer people today, the small independent schools are in danger of closing. The current generation of young people is less willing to accumulate an enormous college debt with good reason. There are no guarantees, particularly for the children of the working class in the current economic climate.
Teaching used to be a stable career for women. The disruptors eagerly undermine and attempt to deprofessionalize a career that has provided security for working women for many decades. Stability is a luxury in the rigged, oligarchical gig economy regardless of major in college.
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You’re making a distinction not between STEM & humanities majors today, but between ca. ’70’s competition between the then-new hordes of BA’s/ BS’s (any field) & non-degreed but experienced [mostly male] tech workers.
Corps like the one I joined in ’73 considered it a gamble to promote an Ivy-League-educated female humanities major to a tech position, even tho not a truly “tech” position [i.e., overhead business dept, not engrg], even w/3 yrs’ working in the dept as a sec’y under her belt [absolutely the only way in for a female to worm into “tech”in those days]. I had the dubious pleasure of training both highly-experienced non-college-grads & brand-new male humanities majors– while still sitting at a typewriter in the 1/2-clerical, 1/2-tech position created just cuz… affirmative action.
I was able to switch from teaching (switched back 20 yrs later) thanks to a Katharine Gibbs course called “Entrée”: an accelerated typing/ shorthand course specifically designed for female BA’s/BS’s who wanted other than “pink collar” work [nursing, teaching, clerical]. The only women at that time who could do it on school alone were law & medicine grads [–& MSW, but that was kinda-sorta pink collar].
Just wondering if this new interest in humanities majors by sw-sys corps has anything to do w/all that. Google’s 2018 diversity report shows men outnumber women 2:1. At MS in 2013, 26% were women– only 17% in leadership positions. Facebook 2014: 2:1 [85% males in tech positions]. Apple 2014: 70% males in leadership roles, 88% in tech jobs. And… 2017 breakdown of college grads: STEM 63% male, 37% female.
But note, STEM bachelor’s degrees are in the minority: just 22% of all grads– 15% males, 7% females.
Maybe what we’re seeing here is an effort to reach out to the 78% non-STEM grads– male or female. Maybe your mom was right!
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RE: sw-sys cos trying to even the male-female balance? It could be they’re thinking about the male-female stats on who actually buys their stuff, & thinking female perspective might pay off? Maybe. But I suspect it has more to do w/the political drift against offshoring– tightening regs/ imposing tariffs, the failure to get congressional approval to raise the cap on h1b visas. Who knows, maybe some (e.g. at InfoSys) are actually thinking ahead to the need for creative input to supplement all those STEM drones… Nah. It’s probably about roping in some of that huge majority of non-STEM grads as a hedge against future tightening on availability of cheapie imports/ offshore employees.
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My husband has a degree in civil engineering earned during one of those “We need more civil engineers!” periods. Then we decided we didn’t need to invest in infrastructure or in the too many engineers industry claimed we direly needed. I think you might be surprised by the number of engineers who are no longer employed as engineers or struggle to maintain careers in patching up what no one will truly “fix.” Crushing debt is not a “liberal arts” problem. Crushing debt is the problem of a system that allows the few to suck resources out of the system through a management system that seems to reward only the managers. Our society is being managed to death.
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As a fan of House Hunters International, I have seen a tremendous exodus of architects and engineers to Asia, the Middle East and even Africa.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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“Liberal arts majors, by contrast, trained to be creative communicators and critical thinkers, are more adaptable”
The global warming deniers and the corrupt (in all ways) corporate vampires destroying the education system in the United States are probably one and the same. Donald Trump isn’t the only corrupt, evil, money-sucking, lying human vampire in the world. He is not alone. The major difference is most of them don’t send out endless tweets revealing how horrible, ignorant and stupid they are. It takes more work to discover what they are up to.
And those corrupt, corporate vampires (that thinks sort of like Trump does) do not want a working force that can communicate, think critically and solve problems that might threaten the dystopian world they want to create where the .01 percent has it all and the 99.9 percent has to fight over the urine drops that rickles down from the high rise penthouses, yachts, jets, and mansions of the uber-wealthy like Donald Trump (fake uber wealth), Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Betsy the Brainless DeVos, the Walmart Walton family, et al.
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Advice to liberal arts majors going into the business world: learn how to read financial statements so that you know what the business folks are talking about.
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Yes, a broad liberal arts education is great preparation, but this will make a big difference to the young person seeking to move up the ranks. It helps to be able to follow the conversation about $$$.
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And seek out older business people within the organization willing to share with you what they know and develop cordial relations and work toward a situation in which those older people informally mentor you. This is as simple as asking the older person, the one who has been around, the one who knows the business, to explain this or that to you. What’s a CRM? What does agile development mean? Can you explain that to me? Don’t be afraid of looking stupid by asking questions. Yes, you will run into some jerks who will ridicule your lack of knowledge, but no pain, no gain. You will be surprised how many are quite forthcoming. People love to share/show off their expertise. Don’t think that you have to pretend to be an oak when you are still an acorn.
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Same advice applies to all you STEM majors.
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The recent research cited in the article is from 2012. People might want to look at the work of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown, especially the Five Rules: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/5rules/
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Fascinating material, TE. Don’t discount Ms. Gabor, though. She’s brilliant.
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While that might be true, it’s the wrong reason to major in liberal arts.
The whole ” business frame” for education is wrong headed and is being driven by business types (surprise)
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Here is the best source for detailed information about the economic status of people who work in the visual, perfoming, and media arts. There is plenty of detail here for anyone who wants to look for it.
In most of the arts, women are still routinely paid less than men. Most workers have at least a bachlor’s degree, except for dancers. Jobs as photographers have tanked, in part because technology. This report offers reasons why many artists say they prefer to be self-employed. It also suggests that people working at arts occupations with the highest median income were educated over thirty years ago. This is one of a long series of reports from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) on the occupational status of arts workers.
Only rarely does the NEA research on occupations in the arts include teachers of the arts in public schools. That information, rarely current, comes from agencies in the Department of Education. Only rarely does NEA report on occupations such as art historian, curators of art museum collections, people hired as art critics or aestheticians or conservators of artworks and historical sites, and the like.
If there is occupational research of that kind, it may be initiated by the National Endowment of the Humanities, College Art Association, or international agencies, including UNESCO, or private non-profits like the J. Paul Getty Trust’s Conservation Program. The income of writers (including poets) may be represented in labor/income reports from PEN or the Author’s Guild.
I think SomeDAM Poet is right. The whole business frame for thinking about college majors is out of hand. What’s worse, the Silicon Valley billionaires have figuered out how to plug preschoolers into coding computers… on computers…as a “career pathway.”
Click to access Artists_and_Other_Cultural_Workers.pdf
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I am a telecommunications engineer. I have been very fortunate in my career. I was lucky enough to take college courses in foreign languages, technical writing, and liberal arts. I was very fortunate to secure an internship as a technical editor for a telecommunications journal.
Many firms are desperate for engineers who have solid writing skills, and foreign language skills (especially Mandarin Chinese and Modern Standard Arabic). Solid presentation skills and public speaking skills are in demand. Extra-curricular activities like acting will show this on a resume.
My advice to a young person would be to take a “balance” of STEM and liberal arts, especially technical writing. If you wish to survive, you must be able to things that a computer cannot do.
As long as there is the internet, broadcast TV, cell phones, and all of “information highway”, a telecommunications engineer will have plenty of job opportunities. Additional “soft skills” like technical writing and foreign languages will help insure your employability.
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My advice to a young person would be to take a “balance” of STEM and liberal arts, especially technical writing. If you wish to survive, you must be able to things that a computer cannot do.
This is extremely good advice. Writing and presentation skills are extremely valuable in the business world. It really helps, in business, to be able to tell a simple, clear, engaging, persuasive story. And being able to explain clearly and simply how something is done–that’s invaluable.
Making a living as a creative writer or writer/journalist are other matters altogether. These fields have become much less lucrative and much harder to crack.
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cx: is another matter altogether, ofc
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I adore the Andrea Gabor article. I always advise my students to let their studies follow their interests and abilities. Do what you’re good at. It was wrong for the tech industry to make false and misleading predictions that all the jobs of the 21st century would involve coding robots. They were just marketing their wares and trying to suppress engineering salaries by flooding the labor pool with engineers. HB-1 visas are also part of that scheme. Half of today’s computer science graduates can’t find a job in computer science. There is no STEM skills gap. Students should follow their hearts and minds. David Coleman, companies actually do “give a sh** what people think.”
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Regarding “coding robots”
The irony is that in the not too distant future, most of the coding of new computer programs will be done by computers.
Things are already moving that way now.
Coding actually requires very little skill.
Design is the part of the process that requires skill — and creativity.
Unfortunately, many CS grads completrly ignore the design part and jump right into coding, which is a sure recipe for crap software ,(can you say Microslop?) I know because I have worked with many of them.
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Nice to get confirmation of this: “Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, argues that when companies talk about a “skills gap,” what they really mean is that they don’t want to invest in their own employee training. Technology companies, especially..” Are we supposed to kiss InfoSys feet because they deign to contribute to “university training partnerships”? My guess, the lion’s share of cost comes out of already-exorbitant college tuition.
Wow I actually found something good Trump has done. “Companies also have to grapple with a crackdown by the administration of President Donald Trump on H1-B white-collar work visas, which allowed companies like Infosys to bring employees to the U.S., often to replace higher-paid U.S. workers. Infosys has settled claims — most recently in 2017 — that it had abused the visa process.”
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If Trump did something good, it was an accident. He did not do it deliberately.
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When I graduated from college in 1978, I had no college debt, but did owe about 1400. Bucks on a loan I took out to buy seed and fertilizer that year. I payed that debt off working in the sewer for four dollars an hour. This old farmer never saw so much money. I saw a lot of the southeast too. Well, its more fecal portions.
The point is that none of us knows what will come around the corner. Liberal arts builds choices. Most of the computer programmers I know who revved up the computer age were liberal arts majors who got fascinated with code and turned it into a living.
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The best programmer I ever knew and worked with had a degree is philosophy, which should actually not be surprising, since philosophy is all about logic.
I spent a good part of my career developing software and the vast majority of the best programmers I worked with were not CS (computer “science” [sic]) grads. In fact, the latter were among the worst because they had a tendency to jump into coding without really thinking about what the software should do and how it should do it — in other words, without thinking about the specification and design.
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