Dr. Russ Pottle: Learning, Success Begin With Liberal Arts

By Russ Pottle, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Misericordia University

“You’re outnumbered.” The lady blinked and looked close to the area. Five of us have been developing the info hierarchy for a college’s new Internet internet site. She was a extremely sharp thinker, with a expert degree from a extremely good school. And she had just been informed that every person else in the room had been English majors.

Do not count out the liberal arts.

From an economic standpoint, it would seem simple to price reduction liberal arts majors nowadays.  A recent study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce shows that college students in undergraduate liberal arts majors may possibly see decrease commencing salaries and greater unemployment costs shortly following graduating. Investigation like this can make you wonder whether the liberal arts are worth the return on investment.

But that quick time is not the whole story. In the liberal arts, it is not the 1st work, or even the second, that is the point or the ultimate objective. Liberal arts majors put together graduates for versatile thinking, issue solving, and complicated analysis – for getting able to learn speedily and see possibilities that other individuals might not, and to do that above a lifetime of adjustments. Even the Georgetown review signifies that, as time passes, salaries in liberal arts fields commence to catch up and unemployment costs among most occupation fields tend to flatten out.

So in the liberal arts, it is more probably the third or fourth occupation that tends to make the difference. By then, if money is important, you have been able to see a occupation path that will supply what you really feel you require. If your passion is far more essential, you have been capable to build a daily life that will place you in touch with it. The results can go in surprising directions.

Harper Reed, the chief engineering officer for Barak Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, was a philosophy key. He now runs a mobile commerce organization. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate in medicine and director of the Nationwide Cancer Institute, was an English major. Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, was a communications significant who started as a Tv weatherman. Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s MoMA, majored in visual arts. Ted Turner, who began CNN and TBS and became an influential philanthropist, began as a Classics main. Ken Chenault, who runs American Express, majored in background.

Right here at Misericordia University, a communications pupil will graduate this spring and leap from an internship into a total-time job with a Net advertising and marketing firm. Her major account will be eBay. An English alumna is pursuing a graduate degree at Queen’s University in Ireland. A history graduate who worked at Misericordia as a analysis assistant is studying at George Washington University Law School. A philosophy alumnus is at Temple University Beasley College of Law. These students encounter interesting choices in the near future. But I will bet that, when they search back on their career paths in a handful of many years, they have gone in directions and attained things that nobody – including themselves – could have predicted.

This freedom and unpredictability can be exhilarating, but frightening, as well. Liberal arts college students (and their parents) need to have to get the prolonged see and hold some issues in mind:

Make your personal opportunities. Individuals do not usually have careers handed to them.  Be energetic, and get your identify out there.

Realize that options may not appear in your hometown. Bob Iger does not dwell in the identical spot he did when he was a neighborhood weatherman.

Consider graduate college. Glenn Lowry has graduate degrees in art background and is a respected and nicely paid non-revenue executive. People with superior degrees can earn thirty percent much more earnings more than a lifetime than these with only bachelor’s degrees, according to many current research. It is just a more investment in existence.

Do not be afraid. Ted Turner’s father wrote that he “almost puked” (a direct quote, sadly) when Ted declared himself a Classics major. Stand your ground.

Daily life does not peak six months or a year following university graduation, whatever preliminary work placement statistics may well say. Feel about the future, and believe about the liberal arts.  Time is on their side.

Russ Pottle, Ph.D., is the dean of the University of Arts and Sciences at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa., the 1st 4-12 months university in Luzerne County.

Dr. Russ Pottle: Learning, Success Begin With Liberal Arts