YWR: The 'Death' of Liberal Arts & the 6 C's.

Ryan was fit with nice eyes and curly brown hair. He liked cross-fit and knew how to ski. Two important things for me. And he was smart.

He would make a good son in law if it ever came to that.

I was having a beer at the student union with my daughter’s latest boyfriend.

“So Ryan… Julia says you go to Oxford. What are you studying?”

“Physics.”

“Oh wow. Physics at Oxford. That’s amazing. And what do you love about physics? How did you get into that?”

“I don’t actually like Physics. My real passion is playing the violin. I’m just taking Physics because I want to make money in Finance. And it seems like the only way to get into Finance is to study Physics. That’s what ‘they’ look for.”

Oh goodness.

According to my daughter this is common. Most of the Physics majors have no interest in particle accelerators. They don’t want to be Physicists. They want to work at Jane Street, make markets in ETF’s and earn huge salaries.

Many of the computer science majors are the same.

But whatever happened to actually loving your degree and the ‘passion for learning’?

Whatever happened to studying Russian Literature or ‘learning to learn’ as the liberal arts colleges used to tell us we should do?

But Ryan was right. Things have changed. If you want a job you need STEM skills.

Back in ‘the good old days’ if you went to a good liberal arts school, played a team sport, had decent grades and the investment banks thought you would ‘get along with the guys on the desk’, you could get a job. Back then the Finance industry was a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking up liberal arts students with useless degrees. Everyone could get a job.

But the finance industry has changed. And many other industries as well. 25 years ago companies were open minded to hiring ‘a good kid from a good school’ who would figure it out on the job.

Being a ‘good kid with good grades’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Students today feel they need to take majors with strong technical skills and a clear job track when they graduate. And you see it in the data.

I went down the rabbit hole on data from the National Centre for Education Satistics.

National Centre for Education Statistics

Over the last 10 years the fastest growing bachelors degrees are all about ‘getting a job’. The growth in Biology, medical degrees and nursing are all about getting a stable job in healthcare. Then there is the growth in engineering and computer science degrees, because employers want to see competence in math and computer programming. Business degrees are another fast growing degree.

And looking at the chart above, which degrees have not grown over the last 10 years? Which degrees have been in decline, even while the total number of degrees has been growing?

Education is the biggest loser degree. And it makes sense. I mean total disaster of a career choice. Right? Guaranteed to never make money. So nobody is studying that.

History. Another useless degree in decline. Goldman Sachs doesn’t hire history majors any more.

Liberal arts. Dead. Humanities. Dead.

Philosophy. Dead. Religion Dead.

The number of students taking those degrees is all in decline.

And when you look at the most popular degrees in 2022 (rather than the 10 year change) you see the same thing.

The most popular degrees are business (375,000 degrees), health professions (263,000), engineering and computers. Social sciences is still top 3, but as we saw in the 10 year change data, all of those degrees are in decline.

When we look at the 20 least popular degrees we see things like English literature (33,000), philosophy (11,000) religious studies (6,394), and foreign languages,

All of this makes sense. Students are following the money. Especially, when college is so expensive.

There is no room anymore for the ‘passion of learning’ when you will graduate with $200,000 in debt. You need a job immediately, to start servicing the loans. And so you chase the degrees which pay the best.

When you look at the data on average income for 25-29 year olds in 2022 based on degree it’s what you would think. Students who studied computer science, engineering, mathematics and business make the most money. Because they work at Jane Street and Google. They makes $80,000/year while the Education and Religion majors make $45,000. Who would you rather be?

Another nail in the coffin for ‘liberal arts’

Average income in 2022 for 25-29 year olds by degree.

Three more interesting charts before we get to the 6 C’s.

There is still the trend that students with Masters and Doctorate degrees earn more than Bachelors degrees and the gap is consistent. High School incomes are falling even more behind.

Men with Masters degrees still earn a lot more than women with Masters degrees, despite all the focus on this in the workplace. A woman with a Masters degree earned $80,000 in 2022 (on average) while a man earned $110,000. Why is this? Maybe men are chasing the higher paying STEM degrees. Or, it’s discrimination. Or, it’s something else. I don’t know. It just surprised me to see such a persistent difference over 20 years.

Getting to the 6 C’s

You can guess where my contrarian mind is going with this. And you can probably guess what analysis I did next.

I wanted to see the relationship between the income by degree in 2012 vs 2022 and the growth in people taking those degrees over the last 10 years. I wanted to see if perversely, there was a negative correlation. What I found was no correlation. Which is also kind of interesting. All degrees went up in income (because of inflation), but the degrees with the biggest changes in students, didn’t have the biggest change in income.

The biggest anomaly was healthcare. Healthcare related degrees were the fastest growing, but also had some of the lowest changes in average income over the last 10 years.

The chart below is the 10-year change (not absolute)in income for 25-29 year olds between 2012 and 2022 based on their degree. It is sorted top to bottom by change in students taking those degrees.

You see Biology was the fastest growing degree, but for 25-29yr olds with that degree their average income only increased by $16,000 over the 10 years. Medical and health services degrees have also been fast growing, but the average income change has only been $10,750. Finance degrees have been fast growing, but with a large increase in average income (+$27,800).

So where are we going with this?

My questions is this. Where are things going in the next 10 years?

Do you skate to where the puck is, or where it’s going?

Are all these students taking STEM and healthcare degrees they don’t even like to chase jobs which won’t even exist in 10 years?

And if everyone is chasing the same degrees, if everyone is majoring in physics to get into Jane Street is there a contrarian play to study religion?

Will the paradox of the future be that a religion major, who is super passionate about religion, is going to make more over their 40 year career than a software engineer, who would rather play the violin, but desperately wants a job at Google?

I hesitate to say this, but I think with what’s coming with AI the religion major wins out over the bored engineer on a 20-30 year view.

The 6 C’s

Maybe I’m getting old, but I’m coming around to the idea that over the marathon of life, the liberal arts nonsense my college used to tell me about ‘passion for learning’ and ‘learning to learn’ might be right.

And I think with the changes coming from AI in the next 10-20 years it will be more right than ever.

I know this is speculation and anecdote, but it’s based on having two children as students and hearing what they say and what their friends say. I think it’s possible too many students, like Ryan, are taking degrees they aren’t excited about to chase the security of jobs which won’t be there when they graduate. Or jobs which will wither away in the first 10 years of their career.

And when you see statistics like that there are 86 applicants for every entry level job and graduates say finding a job is like ‘throwing themselves at a wall’, and the guy checking us in at the hotel in Edinburgh has a major in Astronomy, and the finance internship my daughter was trying to get had 2,000 applicants for 5 spots, it makes you think there is an imbalance.

Everyone wants the security of a job. And yet, I worry the future is the opposite.

I think ‘jobs’ are a track with a door that is getting smaller and smaller.

On the other hand, if you want to be an entrepreneur, or a creator there have never been more tools or platforms at your disposal. The door is wide open and getting wider.

That’s the gap. That’s the open water. Trying to get a job is the opposite. Too many millions of the best and brightest from all over the world coming to the same cities to get the same jobs. It’s a bloodbath.

So if the future is less certain, if it might involve having to create your own thing, then what’s important? What degree should you study?

And I find myself returning to the liberal arts view. The classical liberal arts school says it doesn’t matter ‘what’ you study. What’s important is developing those universal skills which will carry you through any situation in life.

I think there are 6 core, under appreciated super human skills which get increasingly valuable in the years ahead. Having these 6 skills will be more important than any degree.

Curiosity: Do you go down rabbit holes even when they are seemingly a ‘waste of time’? Those rabbit holes are where the gold is.

Creativity: Do you create new things? Stories, art, code, motorbikes? And are you willing to start new trends, or voice new ideas even if you don’t fit in?

Compassion: Can you come across, even for 5 minutes, that you care about me and can put yourself in my shoes? If you can the world is your oyster. Sales is one of those key human skills which has a place in the future.

Competitiveness: Can you rally the team, or your office workers, to get energised to work together to tackle some goal and win? This is so important, and yet outside the US, I rarely see it. It comes from our obsession with team sports. Maybe another word for it is leadership.

Consistency: It’s the ability to work hard, eke out the small gains and compound. To keep going. It really is a marathon and always takes longer than you think.

Courage: Are you able to do something scary? We’re supposed to do something scary everyday. Even if it’s minor. Travel by yourself somewhere. Do a standup comedy act. Try rock climbing. Walk a different way home. Whatever. Do it. There’s gold in that.

I think these 6 C skills are what keep you afloat in the years ahead. They will be more important than your degrees or certifications.

And that’s why I bet earlier on the religion major. If you are so passionate about religion that you are willing to major in it even when every statistic says you will never make money, and if you are will to be persistent and work hard, then over time, not necessarily the first 10 years out of college, but over 20, it’s probably going to work out. I don’t know how, or whether it will even have anything to do with religion, but it will work out.

And in case you’ve never seen it. Nobody ever said it better than Steve Jobs (Stanford 2005).

Have a good Memorial Day Weekend!

Erik