The range of careers you can pursue
What happens when you want to change careers but your degree qualifies you for only one field?
How can you prepare for a future in which a majority of jobs will be radically affected by automation?
What pathway should you choose without knowing which jobs will be in high demand in 20 years?
The average Australian employee changes jobs once every 5 years and over a lifetime can expect to have 5 different careers.
These are the same sorts of question one might ask if training for the next Olympics without knowing which events will be offered. In such a scenario, the wise thing to do would be to engage in exercises that make you as flexible and adaptable as possible. (For example, balance, good footwork, muscle strength, stamina, and hand-eye coordination are useful to develop for many different sports.)
A multidisciplinary liberal arts education provides this sort of flexibility in the job market. By cultivating “transferable” skills—like critical thinking, effective communication, managing complexity, creative problem-solving, synthesising data into arguments—the liberal arts equip students to pursue a broad range of careers. Some of the most common are teaching, journalism, law, public policy, business, history, international relations, marketing, ministry, philosophy, social science, and academia.
Whereas a specialised undergraduate degree trains people for their 1st job, a liberal arts degree enables them to move into a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th job more easily.
"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing." –Steve Jobs
Employers also recognise the importance of hiring workers with sound reasoning, analytical and communication skills. Global leaders like Apple™ and Google™ have been intentional about hiring liberal arts graduates.
A liberal arts degree at the Millis Institute forms not a tool for any single career but a key to unlocking many.
