This Fall, Coming to a University Near You: The Return of the Liberal Arts Major!

As you return to your families this break and your parents inevitably ask you, "what are you going to do with an English major?" here is an article by Jessica Stilman from Inc. Magazine that might help. As always in America, we tend to run to extremes: everyone is supposed to major in STEM majors and all schools are supposed to embrace them at the expense of everything else. However, as the world becomes more and more automated and AI becomes more and more proficient, many jobs in coding and related fields will become redundant. What we consistently cannot teach AI and cannot automate is critical thought, empathy, and imagination. We're simply the greatest invention for those skills. 

As the article states, "[Dan Schawbel] goes on to cite research showing that "while liberal arts majors have lower starting salaries, their salaries rise much quicker over the course of their lives than STEM majors" (other research supports this claim) as well as a McKinsey report that concluded liberal arts skills are the least likely to be automated. A massive Google project to crunch tons of HR data to find the most important skills for success at the company surprised everyone by determining that tech skills mattered the least and soft skills the most." 

You can read the entire article here (it's short, but has links to other articles as well): https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/2020-workplace-trends-liberal-arts-major-hiring.html?fbclid=IwAR0f0N-DA6dJB3GqsBvmYAgu_wQQjwZ-EcLaah1hjtv0UzBFXGIwVj8wwv8