I was sitting in my intermediate microeconomics class for the first time Tuesday morning and as people filtered in, my professor went around casually asking peoples’ names, if they were majoring or minoring in anything other than economics and why they were majoring in economics — things like that. A young lady who said she was majoring in both economics and English literature caught his attention. When he asked why she was combining the two, she simply said, “You can’t have two useless majors.” The whole class chuckled in agreement, but our professor and I exchanged confused looks with each other. English lit, a useless major? Is that really what everyone believes? It was disappointing, and frankly, completely false.
It is a common belief among members of the younger generations that those who graduate with a liberal arts degree won’t be competitive candidates in today’s job market because of the high demand for tech-heads and business minds. This leads people to pursue majors in fields like engineering, accounting and finance even if they’re not passionate about them, because they think there are more and higher-paying job opportunities in those fields. Even President Barack Obama is hell-bent on ensuring that kids are well-versed in computer and tech usage, as he’s called for more and more spending on technological and computer training in high schools. While more technical majors and backgrounds, on average, lead to higher incomes, at least early on, there is still a flourishing demand for liberal arts enthusiasts. We may be a tech-based society, but there is still plenty of room for people with more traditional, abstract, less job-specific educations.
An article written by George Anders on Aug. 17 in Forbes Magazine talks about how businesses and companies like Google and Slack have done extremely well, and that it isn’t totally thanks to their software engineers and finance backgrounds. In fact, Slack’s CEO, Stewart Butterfield, whose company is worth an estimated $300 million, has a philosophy and history of science educational background — not what most people would expect. One of his most prized and valuable employees is Anna Pickard, a woman with a degree in theater and a background in acting.
Liberal arts backgrounds are what push well-run and driven businesses and corporations to be accessible to the general public, thus maximizing their financial prosperity. In order to amplify growth and revenue, businesses need salesmen and people on board who understand at an advanced level what the consumer market wants. According to Robert Tabb, a mobile app development salesman for Phunware, who visits hospitals and medical centers for a living, “It takes us about ten meetings to close [a deal] together, and only two of those meetings are about technology.” There needs to be a solid understanding of human desire, motivation and behavior in order for a business to run as effectively as possible.
Though necessary, corporations cannot rely solely on specialized tech engineers and employees with similar backgrounds. In fact, according to Michael Chui, a partner at McKinsey Global Institute, “Narrowly defined tech jobs, by themselves, aren’t going to be the answer for long-term employment growth.” As technology advances, specialized tech jobs are operated less by people and more by machines, leaving people with room to think and create and envision for the future. Who does that better than the broad, open, creative mind of a liberal arts major?