CEO Reveals Why Liberal Arts Degrees Are Actually The Best Degrees
“I recommend a liberal arts degree and something in the business discipline.”
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock Liberal arts degrees are often looked down upon and viewed as less practical than STEM degrees or vocational certifications. One successful CEO disagrees, however, insisting that liberal arts degrees are actually quite useful.
The CEO said that liberal arts degrees are actually the best degrees.
Content creator Denise Conroy had a successful career as an executive and now shares what she’s learned with her 170,000 followers on TikTok.
“I’m a former CEO. I was a three-time CEO,” she stated in a recent video. “I was a chief marketing officer in a Fortune 500 company. I had a 30-year career in corporate America.”
Clearly, Conroy knows what she’s talking about.
“One of the questions I get frequently is, if I had it to do all over again, would I have picked the same college major, knowing everything I know about the span of my career?” she said. “My answer is, ‘Yes, and…’”
“So, I majored in political science,” Conroy explained. “I would absolutely major in political science again. I would do a double major, though, in finance.”
Conroy suggested taking on a business-oriented major in tandem with something in the liberal arts. She considered finance to be “the most widely applicable, useful domain in any business school.”
Of liberal arts degrees, Conroy said, “The reason you want that is because it requires you to read a [expletive] ton, to write a [expletive] ton, to reason critically and also get into solving problems.”
Prostock-studio | Shutterstock
“Those are all things that are directly applicable to the business world, specifically if you wanna be an exec, if you wanna be a C-suiter or even a CEO,” she argued. “Your entire life in those roles is spent reading, synthesizing information, analyzing stuff." Plus, reading financial statements, of course.
“So, I feel like a person who has liberal arts plus finance would be absolutely, positively unstoppable,” she concluded.
Conroy also addressed the push for more trade schools.
In addition to promoting liberal arts degrees, Conroy brought up an interesting point — many think that fewer people should pursue liberal arts degrees and instead become certified in a trade. Conroy argued the opposite.
“We have way too much [expletive] discourse going on right now about how colleges should be trade schools,” she said. “I have got nothing against trade schools … We need more people with trades.”
“That said, I think college is not for that,” she continued. “College is for knowledge work. And should they teach a little bit more on how to operate within a corporate environment? Absolutely. But the most important thing about college is that critical reasoning, critical thinking.”
Despite Conroy’s advice, many still scoff at liberal arts degrees.
Although Conroy was insistent that liberal arts degrees hold an enormous amount of value, many people still eschew them in favor of fields they view as more practical or relevant, such as business or science.
Still, there is a lot you can do with a liberal arts degree. U.S. News and World Report noted that those who study the liberal arts can take on jobs as diverse as financial analyst, social worker, and technical writer.
Furthermore, director of the Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning at Amherst College, Emily Griffen told U.S. News and World Report, “A liberal arts degree is the most pragmatic degree one can pursue in a world with increasing uncertainty and volatility.”
As students decide what degree to obtain, they should follow what they are interested in and passionate about, even if it leads them to a liberal arts degree. They are surprisingly versatile and far from worthless.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.