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You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education, by George Anders
NOT that long ago, an angered and disappointed father might cynically tell his child, newly graduated with a liberal arts degree, “Why don’t you go down to the anthropology factory? I hear they’re hiring!”
“In the course of this book,” author George Anders explains, “we will explore all sorts of ways your liberal arts education and society’s needs can fit together.”
Just a few decades ago, this would not have been a reasonable proposition. However, the more we automate the routine activities, the more we create digital solutions, the more essential human judgement becomes. New technology is destroying millions of predictable, task-based jobs that traditionally provided tickets into the middle class.
McKinsey researchers estimate that 45% of workplace tasks in modern society are at risk of being automated.
The curiosity, creativity, and empathy one usually develops through a liberal arts education is an advantage today. Disruptive change doesn’t reduce the value of this type of education: it can actually provide an advantage.
From May 2012 through May 2016, 541 000 new jobs were created in the computing sector in the US. In the same period compliance officers, entertainment producers and directors, event planners, fund-raisers, genetic counsellors, graphic designers, human-resources specialists, management analysts, market research analysts, marketing specialists, school administrators, technical writers, and training specialists more than triple the new-job contribution.
“Most of these new jobs have tiptoed into the U.S. economy with no fanfare whatsoever,” notes Anders. And South Africa is not far behind.
While it is true that most job opportunities today call for some technical literacy, this can be acquired in just a few months of concentrated effort. It is also worth noting that computer-related fields employ less than 3% the workforce.
Job hunting has changed a great deal since the 1970s, and even since the 1990s. Predictable career paths are rare, and the opportunities to improvise are great. Social philosopher Eric Hoffer explained: “In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
People with degrees in the humanities and social sciences have risen to the top in fields as diverse as finance, government, non-profits, and the entrepreneurial economy.
Companies such as IBM count on sociology majors to explain some of its most complex technology to customers, and leading ad agencies hire English majors, not data scientists, when they want to tell stories with numbers.
In 2016 the author surveyed the job ads at Indeed.com. He found more than 5 500 listings that offered over $100 000 annual pay for work requiring ‘critical thinking’. This skill Anders found to be shorthand for a set of competencies that includes a confident eagerness to take on areas where nobody knows the rules yet. It requires applying imagination to the job, adapting well to new situations and having well-honed analytic methods for finding insights.
On demand for high-paying work is the ability to thrive by spotting the less obvious answer. As one gains experience and rises in power, one is expected to synthesise insights and complex decisions. Additionally, candidates are expected to understand group dynamics and other peoples’ motivations in an unusually deep way. This allows them to ‘read the room’, and inspire others.
These requirements are commonplace for senior or more valued staff, and replace fact-packed heads that can’t analyse well. The internet can give everyone the facts they need, quickly.
This is where a liberal arts education adds value. To do well at the classics, being able to regurgitate knowledge in insufficient. A liberal arts education should develop useful ways of analysing situations and instil an open-minded confidence about exploring the new ideas. It should foster curiosity, the ability to connect the dots, and to filter and distil information.
This is what employers as diverse as the movie creators at Sony, the digital-storage technicians at Dropbox, and the thermostat makers at Johnson Controls are looking for - as are FedEx, McKinsey, and PayPal.
Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and one of the world’s foremost angel investors, has a masters' degree in philosophy from Oxford. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel achieved his philosophy degree from Stanford.
Regardless of whether you’re studying philosophy, English, sociology, or any of a dozen other disciplines, you’re being introduced to a wider way of engaging with the world. Payoffs arise later in all sorts of jobs.
I recall my own philosophy professor telling us that any society that doesn’t respect its plumbers and its philosophers will find that neither its pipes nor its ideas will hold water.
With the workplace evolving, and technology becoming commonplace, the value of plumbers and philosophers is replacing the value we gave to high levels of knowledge, rather than practical ability, and mental agility and critical thinking.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High --+-- Low
Practical: High ---+- Low
- Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Executive Update. Views expressed are his own.
