Liberal Arts
What Can You Do with a Liberal Arts Degree?

The purpose of a liberal arts curriculum is to help students fulfill their responsibilities as citizens and grow into cultured and versatile individuals. A liberal education is concerned with the development of moral, spiritual, and aesthetic values as well as analytical abilities. Intellectually, a liberal arts education encourages students to develop their curiosity, embrace uncertainty, and explore.

Benefits of a Liberal Arts Education
What can you do with a liberal arts degree? Anything and everything! At liberal arts colleges, this is one of our favorite questions. The very act of asking such a question demonstrates one of the most exciting aspects of a liberal arts education — that you have choices. In fact, choices for liberal arts graduates continue to increase as employers shift away from hiring specialists and move to hiring generalists. A liberal arts education is not designed as training for a specific occupation. What it does do better than any other type of college or university preparation is sharpen analytical and communication skills, teach students how to learn, and provide students with a body of knowledge that can be applied to larger contexts. Thus, it is no surprise that the leaders in most career fields are liberal arts graduates whose specialized training occurred in graduate or professional school.

Employers Want Liberal Arts Graduates
A liberal arts education prepares students for a workforce that demands intelligent team players and global thinkers; indeed, life-long learners who are inquisitive, analytical and creative with excellent communication, interpersonal and leadership skills. According to a 1998 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey, these are the top characteristics that employers are seeking in job candidates. In delivering a speech, Robert Allen, the former Chairman and CEO of AT&T posed and answered the question, "What does business want? We want today what we wanted yesterday; the graduate with the mind engaged, the soul inspired. Students schooled, not only in the rigors of a specialty, but also in the social, ethical and political implications of what they do. To expect less in these times is to risk much more."

The Choice is Yours
So, what can you do with a liberal arts degree? Of course, your basic interests, both academic and occupational, are a major factor. It is important to start assessing those interests early. Trying out different academic subjects, reading, and taking a career interest inventory can contribute to defining your interests. Some students have interests confined to a specific area. Other students have interests that are quite broad. Interests also change with time.

What are Graduates Doing?
Take a look at the alumni of liberal arts colleges. You will find them editing national magazines, running worldwide advertising agencies, writing New York Times bestsellers, starting successful software companies, building manufacturing empires, teaching schoolchildren, raising families, and running for president, among other things. If you speak with alumni, their careers have often been a journey of exploring, learning, growing and changing — a journey that has not yet ended.

With a liberal arts education, your skills and knowledge will never become obsolete. It can be a little scary when you think, "What am I going to do with a philosophy major after I graduate?" Business majors don't have that problem. But our society is a moving target, and if you prepare yourself narrowly to fit in a certain slot, the whole scene may have changed by the time you get there, whereas the underlying skills are always relevant. You'll learn to size up a complex mass of new evidence and decide what is important. You learn to observe, think critically, speak and write articulately, and act on your decisions. Those skills are applicable anywhere.

A strenuous liberal arts education is more valuable today than ever before. The broad foundation of understanding that you will develop at liberal arts colleges will allow you to face the challenges of the next 50 years with confident enthusiasm.

As Robert Frost said, "I never started a poem the end of which I knew."

Editorial Provided by Leslie Braat, Associate Director of Admissions at Oberlin College.