Educated but Unqualified: The Liberal Arts Dilemma

I have a love-hate relationship with my liberal arts education.

On one hand, I think it’s a genius idea. Why should you have to know what you want to do with your life at age 18? General requirements provide a great opportunity, as annoying as it can be to figure out what to take and when to take them. We may be “adults,” but a lot of us need to be forced out of our comfort zone for the sake of expanding our minds and becoming well rounded, informed citizens. College teaches us to think for ourselves, live on our own, take on challenges, figure out what we want to do rather than just make a huge life decision while we’re still teenagers.

But at the same time, it kills me that in two years I will enter the real world with no legitimate skills. Tom Friedman wrote a great column a few weeks ago called A Gift for Grads: Start-Ups. He talked about how recent grads who are having a hard time finding jobs should just start their own companies. And I completely agree. Young, innovative minds are what we need to boost the economy and fix society’s endless problems. I would LOVE to start my own company when I graduate. I’d do it now if I could.

The problem is, I can’t. Sure, I come up with ideas all the time. Websites, services, products – I dream up all sorts of stuff when I’m bored at work. But I can’t program software, build a website, design a sustainable building, or physically create something I’ve invented in my mind. Yes, some liberal arts majors can do these things. Unfortunately I am not one of those people who thought to major in computer science or physics. Nope, I’m way over in social sciences, studying economics and psychology. Will I be able to apply some of the things I’ve learned in my future career? Probably. Have I gained the concrete skills necessary to create the kind of company Friedman is talking about? No siree. You’d think the econ would help in business, but the psych screwed me over by convincing me that all that supply-and-demand nonsense they teach us doesn’t apply in the real world, where people are irrational.

If I had to go back and do it again, or even if I could transfer now to major in business or engineering or whatever, I wouldn’t. In fact, I would probably drop one of my majors so I could take MORE useless classes in random departments. I think of these years in college as mainly a time to explore and mature. I just hope my “explorations” and internships amount to something in 2 years when I have to get a real job.