One Way to Set Up Liberal-Arts Majors for Success

Fans of the liberal arts (count this history major among them) have been conditioned to cringe when the national discourse about the value of college ends up directing job-conscious students away from programs that actually interest them and toward ones that they think will be more practical.

Now two new reports, based on the labor-market experiences of millions of college graduates, show that the cringing may be legit. The reports — one from the company Burning Glass and the other from the Strada Institute for the Future of Work — highlight the ways that majors like philosophy and communications can imbue students with the very skills that today’s employers are seeking. In many cases, these can also be a better choice of a major than business or some other occupational-seeming discipline.

But the operative word here is “can.” Without some intentional tweaks, the reports argue, such liberal-arts departments won’t necessarily equip students to avoid underemployment (the focus of the Burning Glass report), or help them navigate a work environment increasingly dominated by automation (the theme of the Strada report).