The Art of Manliness - #351： The Surprising Power of a ＂Useless＂ Liberal Arts Education

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we've all heard

00:00:18.840 the jokes about useless liberal arts degrees you know it's good for being a barista whatever

00:00:22.880 but my guest today argues that in today's high-tech economy liberal arts degrees can

00:00:26.380 be incredibly useful and even lucrative his name is george anders and he's the author of the book

00:00:30.480 you can do anything the surprising power of a useless quote-unquote liberal arts education we

00:00:35.800 begin our conversation looking at research that suggests that the jobs that pay the most money

00:00:39.540 and are in the most demand today require a liberal arts background and not necessarily a stem degree

00:00:44.880 he then goes on to highlight research that shows that most of the jobs being created today aren't

00:00:48.540 in computer programming or hard science rather in jobs that support those fields like sales management

00:00:53.580 marketing and consulting george then argues that the individual's liberal arts background are in

00:00:57.520 a killer position to fill these jobs we then discuss the perils of a liberal arts degree and

00:01:02.020 what individuals who have earned them can do to market themselves and take control of their careers

00:01:06.320 after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash liberal arts

00:01:10.440 george anders welcome to the show thank you good to be on the program so you recently published a book

00:01:18.680 you can do anything the surprising power of a quote-unquote useless liberal arts education curious

00:01:25.260 what caused you to write this book was there a particular moment you experienced or was it just

00:01:29.520 several moments or the zeitgeist that you've been hearing the news or are you just a liberal arts

00:01:33.940 major who just got tired of hearing your degree is a waste of money so the the first propellant uh

00:01:38.620 i end up being on a bunch of alumni lists so i get a half dozen calls a year from people who go hey

00:01:43.260 i just graduated i'm interested in writing you seem to be able to make a living in writing how do i do it

00:01:47.840 and i go and have coffee with them and they're all absolutely wonderful people and they're high

00:01:51.900 energy and they're smart and they're persuasive and you go you guys should be crushing it in the job

00:01:56.680 market but they aren't and then in my day job as a journalist i interview a lot of employers and

00:02:02.420 they're always saying you know we want to hire stem but we're not getting the creative people we need

00:02:07.500 we're not getting the people who think outside the box and i'm going oh my god there's this giant

00:02:12.000 disconnect you've got all these really good people who could be coming into your organization and could

00:02:17.340 be doing really great things and you've got a bunch of hiring specs that just make you blind to this

00:02:22.120 talent pool so the reason i wrote the book was because i felt that the college to career pathway

00:02:27.560 was broken and somehow it needs to get fixed and i'm going to do everything i can with this book to

00:02:32.220 try and help us get to a better place yeah one of the surprising bits of research you highlight in

00:02:36.580 the book was you know because like since i was in high school which was you know 20 years ago it was

00:02:41.580 always like you got to learn how to program like the jobs of the future are you know you got

00:02:45.660 software programmers software developers etc etc but you point out that a lot of the new jobs between

00:02:51.840 2012 2016 weren't actually programmer jobs yeah in fact if you look at the numbers we created about 10

00:02:58.500 million jobs only 600 000 of those were in information technology so 94 percent of the jobs came outside of

00:03:06.860 that core stem function areas like market research are booming you need people to design the questionnaires

00:03:12.620 evaluate the data fundraising as a growth area social media is huge this is the redemption of

00:03:18.500 the english major that at last you can get paid good money for being sassy and clever and coming up

00:03:23.820 with you know the kinds of sayings that go viral so there are a lot of opportunities that don't have

00:03:29.320 to do with tech and a point i want to underscore is that tech will open up opportunities quickly

00:03:35.180 but it'll shut them down just as fast and whatever software engineers are needed for right now within

00:03:42.140 five years that gets automated so you know it used to cost a million dollars to build a website now you

00:03:47.620 can sit down with wordpress or squarespace and get yourself a site in two or three hours that's a lot

00:03:54.400 of programming jobs that don't exist anymore so yes tech can offer you good opportunities but these can be

00:04:00.280 short-lived and i think the ability to be creative to be imaginative to show empathy with other people

00:04:06.580 those are going to be skills that you can take from one workplace to another and a lot of those just

00:04:11.620 parallel what you're going to get if you come out of college with a classic liberal arts education so

00:04:16.320 why do you think that that refrain though still exists that okay if you want to do well get a computer

00:04:23.120 science degree become a programmer when you know as you pointed out like a lot of the jobs they're

00:04:27.740 becoming automated there's there's it's a smaller percentage of our overall job market why do we

00:04:33.820 still have that why does that disconnect exist so i blame the media when in doubt you should always

00:04:38.260 blame the media semi-seriously if you look at the kinds of people that end up on the covers of business

00:04:43.380 magazines if you look at the kind of movies they get made with the you know coder in the hoodie making

00:04:48.620 millions of dollars yeah at the high end you can make incredible money if you have got great technical

00:04:54.140 skills but you know you could also make incredible money playing in the nba and that doesn't mean all

00:04:59.840 of us should try and you know become basketball players so i think there's a little bit of a skew

00:05:04.100 there that we focused on what the very top achievers in stem can do and it's impressive and we've tried

00:05:10.760 to say well everyone can get a piece of that pie and the answer is no if you are a b plus or a b minus

00:05:16.660 coder you're going to have a much more satisfying life and probably a more stable income if you look at some

00:05:21.940 of the ways that you can use your people skills so yeah i mean that's another interesting thing that

00:05:25.780 you highlight the research you point out that okay we think that stem jobs that's where the money is

00:05:30.200 at but you highlight research that shows that no actually in the long run individuals with liberal

00:05:35.860 arts degree end up earning more or they end in their career with a higher salary than say someone

00:05:41.060 with a stem degree so i tell the story in the book of andy anderegg who graduated from the university

00:05:47.300 of kansas with a master's in fine arts and creative writing and her first job was nothing really

00:05:53.180 amazing she went join groupon and she wrote those sassy little teaser notices that groupon would mail

00:05:58.540 out to us and i think it paid like 33 000 a year but she gets there and she's resourceful and she's

00:06:04.620 clever and she goes you know what let me build you a training module so that you can hire more people

00:06:08.600 like me and you can get them up to speed faster and then she said let me go and help you guys on campus

00:06:13.340 recruiting and pretty soon they're going wow you're actually really useful here we want to bump your

00:06:18.260 pay up and she gets up to close to 50 000 within a few months they go you should manage people she

00:06:24.860 becomes managing editor there she's up to 80 or 90 000 now she's set up as a consultant to other

00:06:30.780 companies that need to figure out how to make their stuff go viral she's working about half time she's

00:06:35.560 earning six figures and she's got a place by the ocean in venice california where she works on her

00:06:40.660 short stories life's good but there are a lot of those stories out there that your first job is

00:06:46.180 not your destiny and you know in the course of going from college to your early 40s people will

00:06:52.400 probably work 11 or 12 different jobs and instead of fixating on what's job number one being able to

00:06:58.840 work that pathway where your first job leads to a better second job leads to a better third job

00:07:03.600 over time life gets better so stem degrees uh you probably land a job that pays really well

00:07:10.380 your first job but it sort of stagnates it's not going to go up too much but you argue that

00:07:15.700 liberal arts degrees you're probably the first job first few jobs you get it's going to be

00:07:19.600 peanuts right 30 000 but as you adapt as you develop some career capital that can go up continue to rise

00:07:28.280 absolutely and you know is it possible for everyone to do that no there's a bit of risk here

00:07:33.680 but it's a big broad pathway that can work for a lot of people and public rhetoric is acting as if

00:07:39.800 that's impossible so i what i want to do was open people's eyes to some possibilities that they

00:07:44.600 might not be hearing about so what is it about a liberal arts degree well for like how do you

00:07:48.880 define a liberal arts degree is it just is it any like the soft things like literature psychology

00:07:54.860 and what sort of uh sort of degrees were you highlighting in the book yeah you're in the right

00:07:58.800 zone i mean humanities which is you know english classics uh philosophy and then social sciences

00:08:05.800 which is psychology sociology i count history that's the way some people count it in the

00:08:11.260 humanities but yeah it tends to be the the disciplines that work more with words than with

00:08:15.600 numbers although every now and then numbers are starting to come into the social sciences too

00:08:20.300 and there's nothing wrong with being able to function in in both levels it's like being able to play the

00:08:25.360 piano with both hands you do something with your left hand you do something else with the right

00:08:29.020 so i do like that sense though that you're working in the world of ideas rather than the world of

00:08:34.240 equations so what is it about a liberal arts degree that allows individuals to thrive in today's you

00:08:41.060 know job market that's you know being eaten by software it's much more information-based much more

00:08:45.720 tech-based how is it that a person who studied philosophy or classics how are they able to thrive

00:08:52.060 in that sort of job market so i identified five areas that seem to be constant on what i did was i

00:08:57.600 looked at job ads that offered at least a hundred thousand dollars a year and were looking for people with

00:09:03.580 critical thinking skills which tends to be the the big claim of you know major in the liberal arts

00:09:08.700 you're going to learn critical thinking and i go okay what exactly is this critical thinking and as i

00:09:13.320 said there are five things that amounts to first is the willingness to go explore something new

00:09:17.860 and a lot of people just want to be told what to do and do the same thing for a long time but if

00:09:23.320 you're willing to be adventurous if you're willing to go off the paved roads there are a lot of

00:09:27.480 opportunities in this world second thing the ability to analyze problems and sort of peel apart

00:09:33.440 gather the right facts third thing to be able to work up solutions especially in murky areas where

00:09:39.220 it's not obvious what do you do you know where are we going to build that road that's the kind of

00:09:43.460 thing that a city planner needs to figure out and that's not just an engineering question that's a

00:09:48.300 whole lot of trade-offs so both literally and metaphorically if you're a good road builder you can

00:09:53.320 always find work fourth area which is really crucial is the ability to read the room and that

00:09:59.260 translates into empathy translates into understanding what's on other people's minds and that can make

00:10:05.600 you so effective in all kinds of business settings all kinds of social settings and if you're in

00:10:11.160 politics you need to understand you know why some people are going to vote for you why some of them

00:10:15.500 aren't what their sticking points are how to address those sticking points and that starts to

00:10:20.520 translate into leadership that if you've got that ability to read the room you can become the team

00:10:25.320 leader you can become much higher up in management and then the last one is the ability to communicate

00:10:30.480 persuasively and you know we ask for good communication skills but i think that lots of people have good

00:10:36.320 communication skills what you really want is the ability to put it to work in a setting and bring

00:10:41.340 people around to your point of view so all five of those things are things that you can pick up with an

00:10:46.800 english degree with a history degree it doesn't really matter literally whether you know why the

00:10:52.460 irish rebellion of 1798 happened but it does matter that you know wow there are all these different

00:10:58.120 interest groups they want different things and i ended up talking with some people who've done very

00:11:02.700 well in sales with a liberal arts degree and they will tell me you know working with a client is like

00:11:07.880 a character in a novel and you get used to figuring out what makes this person tick and how can we get to a

00:11:13.620 situation where we can go forward together i mean what i love about the book is all the case studies

00:11:17.260 you you provide and i was really impressed with the case studies of individuals with a liberal arts

00:11:21.860 degree that somehow get a job at one of these tech firms and you think okay to get a job there you need

00:11:26.880 to have a computer background but in a lot of these cases these individuals okay they thought i don't

00:11:32.900 have that but i can get it and they use the resources and that skill set they develop with their liberal

00:11:38.820 arts degree to teach themselves new skills to thrive in this new job very much so and in fact i open the

00:11:45.340 book with the story of an anthropology major who after a bunch of zigs and zags ends up doing user

00:11:51.120 research for etsy which is the big global arts marketplace and what does etsy need it needs someone who can

00:11:57.680 figure out what exactly is it that artists want to accomplish on our site what do they care about you know

00:12:04.180 what's their point of pride what are their apprehensions how do we make it click for them

00:12:08.300 and all of a sudden an anthro background turns out to be kind of useful and he'll either go out in the

00:12:15.620 field and talk to them or set up these hour-long skype calls and he's really good at drawing people

00:12:20.980 out and going okay tell me more explain to me why that is what's what's your belief what got you

00:12:25.680 interested in art what what are your best pieces and why are you proud of them and that's an

00:12:31.260 interviewing skill and a field research skill that turns out to be really useful because

00:12:35.560 you can have the best technology in the world but if you've built your site for a set of consumers

00:12:40.760 that don't exist or if you've made some mistakes along the way that alienate people you're never

00:12:46.300 going to have the success that you want and sometimes bringing in an anthropology major to talk to your

00:12:51.640 users can save you months of time building features that are off target right and another example you

00:12:57.580 provide of liberal arts degrees individual liberal arts degrees thriving in today's more tech oriented

00:13:04.160 economy is big data right we're hearing all this information big data big data big data but as you

00:13:09.280 highlight as you point out in the book like data is meaningless without context and so you need

00:13:13.800 individuals to take that data that raw data and craft it into a story that people can understand

00:13:19.880 yeah and in terms of where the jobs are what amazed me i spent some time with open table which is

00:13:24.800 the restaurant booking service and they have a big data team and it's about 10 or 12 scientists you

00:13:31.080 don't need that many people to run the numbers that's done very automatically these days but they

00:13:36.300 have more than 100 people with ipads that go out on the road and sit down and chat with guys in

00:13:40.780 restaurants and say okay here's what i see in the numbers here's some things you could do with them

00:13:45.040 and you need a lot of personality and charm and you got to be a good listener and you got to be good

00:13:50.620 natured and as you're selling yourself as much as you're selling the numbers and if they just tried

00:13:56.800 to give restaurants a drop-down menu that says you should rearrange your seating the guy would go no

00:14:01.360 this is my restaurant who are you to tell me this but if you've got someone who comes in with

00:14:06.400 personality and yes they've got the data on the ipad and all of the bar graphs and everything

00:14:11.940 but they're going to make you feel nice about it first that ability to connect with another person

00:14:16.880 turns out to be really valuable and that's more than 100 jobs for doing that as opposed to 10 jobs

00:14:21.760 for being the tech guy in the background yeah perfect you give facebook as an example of that

00:14:25.780 when they first started their advertising business they wanted to make it automated just drop down and

00:14:30.300 it wasn't going anywhere and then finally they hired you know sales people who would go to people

00:14:36.100 face to face and that really kick-started their ad ad sales yeah and you know they'll do something

00:14:42.080 like you know tell you hey here's a cupcake shop and they put up a geotagged facebook ad to get

00:14:47.880 everyone within half a mile to see wow we've got two for one on cupcakes or something like that and

00:14:52.220 they sold them out like crazy and you go okay that's a very accessible real story i can use that in

00:14:59.120 whatever kind of business i have and there's an art to knowing how to spin those stories right and

00:15:04.060 it's sociology majors it's english majors it's people who have dealt in the world of stories and human

00:15:10.260 beliefs and attitudes and the like that end up doing that the best so there are now thousands

00:15:15.700 of people with non-technical backgrounds at facebook making good money bringing the you know

00:15:21.060 ad mechanisms to the world in ways that a face-to-face meeting can do things that a drop-down

00:15:26.440 menu cannot right and you also highlight many of the the ceos of some of these large tech companies

00:15:33.280 and just large businesses doesn't have to be tech necessarily a lot of them have liberal arts degree

00:15:39.320 there's philosophy majors classics majors can you highlight some of the the ones that stood out to

00:15:44.040 you during your research yeah so the philosophy majors in fact are especially interesting because

00:15:48.360 if you think about it that is a field where you're in a way put in a position where you imagine ruling

00:15:53.280 the world and coming up with edicts and principles that could guide all of civilization so these are not

00:16:00.300 low ego people i mean they've got nice manners they're not obnoxious but they they've got big ambitions

00:16:05.060 so uh one of the examples i really enjoyed was steward butterfield who runs slack slack is an

00:16:10.860 incredibly popular business communications tool that's kind of combines the the fun of facebook and

00:16:16.280 the utility of email it's it's very well built uh but he's the kind of guy who's always thinking

00:16:21.000 about you know what is what does the world need how do we communicate what does it mean to communicate

00:16:25.780 and he's able to assess that in sort of a a deeper way than someone who's just going you know

00:16:31.700 here's the um the technical specs of my site so very empathetic very good understanding of his

00:16:38.040 customers and uh you know philosophy degree got him on the road to do that right and he wasn't he

00:16:44.040 didn't just invent slack or create slack he also created flicker yes he did yeah and in fact the funny

00:16:48.900 thing about him is he keeps trying to create the ultimate multiplayer video game yeah and none of

00:16:53.760 them ever work game never ending right there's always one feature in there that someone goes you know

00:16:58.900 what even though nobody's playing your video game that's a really good feature so flicker was the

00:17:03.940 one to organize people's photos and he goes wow that could be a standalone business and he ended up

00:17:08.920 selling it to yahoo for 20 some million dollars and then slack was the communication system within one of

00:17:15.060 these games and people go well the the game is what it is but the communication system is really good

00:17:20.820 so it's it's again something that a liberal arts background may make you more receptive to is you had a

00:17:27.140 really good idea it's just different than what you thought your idea was and you need to let go of

00:17:31.620 half of what you thought you were doing and work with the best half and i think that ability to regroup

00:17:36.840 to improvise it's useful throughout all of life that um you know our our successes are not always where

00:17:43.000 we expect them and i think there's something about being widely read in college and debating a lot of

00:17:48.180 ideas and seminars that will open up your horizons to that idea that uh you need a little serendipity

00:17:54.060 and you should you should be willing to retool your plan once you see something new that's going

00:17:58.200 to work right isn't uh bezos like the guy of amazon's amazon ceo didn't he have a liberal arts degree

00:18:05.280 he is a polymath i mean he's someone who's got expertise in a lot of areas so he's got a computer

00:18:10.440 science background and in fact he ended up being the computer guy at a hedge fund early in his days

00:18:15.900 before setting it up but he's also an incredibly well-read guy he's a princeton graduate and uh you know he's

00:18:22.500 he's someone who will think in a lot of different directions and kind of combines both elements

00:18:27.020 an interesting thing i just read about him is that he has these meetings but before they start talking

00:18:32.460 he makes people read like this memo that's written out for like 30 minutes in silence

00:18:38.660 and so like he puts a premium on writing skills he expects the people who lead meetings to know how

00:18:43.400 to write well which is interesting because you know a lot of you hear a lot in the tech world is

00:18:47.100 like oh let's have a stand-up meeting we'll get done really fast but he's very deliberate

00:18:51.580 and takes almost a professor-like approach to what he does over there at amazon so a key point

00:18:56.200 there is that when you write you actually have to think through logically what you're saying

00:19:00.920 and when we talk we can get kind of hand wavy and everyone thinks they heard something slightly

00:19:05.900 different and the discipline of writing is you actually have to commit to what are we trying to do

00:19:11.180 what are we expected to accomplish when are we getting it done and it forces you to be more rigorous so

00:19:17.640 um that's valuable and i i've been in meetings where four people come out and each of them think

00:19:22.980 they've we've decided to do something different and then you have to have another meeting two weeks

00:19:27.620 later to sort out all that confusion and you know time's passed and you haven't accomplished anything

00:19:32.140 so it's very few people really like to write uh it's much more fun to have written and have produced it

00:19:38.200 but it's really good discipline and it can save you time right so do do you need to have let's say

00:19:43.760 someone's listening to this they're like their first year in college or they're thinking about

00:19:47.900 going to college trying to decide on that major to get this the benefits of a liberal arts degree

00:19:52.680 that we've been talking about do you need to get a degree from a prestigious university or could you

00:19:56.480 go to a state university and get a liberal arts degree there and do well for yourself you know i

00:20:01.020 actually have a chapter in the book called you can start anywhere and i have examples of people

00:20:06.240 who started out in community college and people from university of nevada reno and the cal state

00:20:11.300 schools and yeah if you find the right professors and you connect with them that can springboard you

00:20:17.620 into a good place and if you go to one of the world's fanciest schools you're going to be surrounded

00:20:22.320 by a lot of bright people and you're going to have a great alumni network and everything's a little

00:20:26.320 easier but that's not to say you can't make that happen that you know mississippi college or a lot of

00:20:32.280 other places and you know quite literally those are examples in the book you you're going to need to

00:20:36.900 try a little harder you're going to need to figure out how to get your foot in the door but uh the

00:20:41.760 benefits are are universal and the other thing i'd say is you know if you've picked a technical major

00:20:47.200 and you've got time to go take a psychology class or a philosophy class or a you know history class

00:20:53.920 that can get you some of the benefits too i i wrote mostly with a focus on what you can do with a

00:20:59.860 full-fledged major but one of the examples that hit home for me after i you know announced i was doing

00:21:05.680 the book i got a note from one of my college classmates who'd gone pre-med and neil just always

00:21:10.480 liked to take classes outside his field we were in a first amendment uh bill of rights seminar one time

00:21:15.800 and he wrote me and said hey i've done pretty well in medicine i'm now a pretty prominent guy on public

00:21:20.540 health i go and testify at the state legislature a lot and i need the md to have credibility there

00:21:26.720 but it's the stuff i picked up in those english and law classes that lets me figure out what does the

00:21:33.460 legislature really want to hear from me when they ask me a tough question what do i need to tell them

00:21:38.940 to answer it where do i not need to go because it'll just embarrass all of us and he said it's

00:21:43.680 that liberal arts training that actually made me an effective guy to go and do that sort of testimony

00:21:48.640 so in a case like that you take the two disciplines and you put them together and it gets you farther than

00:21:53.960 you'd be with just one of them so you mentioned earlier about artificial intelligence eating jobs

00:21:59.860 particularly tech jobs right so before it caught you'd have to spend a million dollars to build a

00:22:03.300 website now you can do it in five minutes with squarespace don't need it only programming

00:22:07.960 um are jobs that require liberal arts degree immune from this because i mean i've been hearing

00:22:12.840 talk of like ai outsourcing stuff to ai in the legal field medical field even writing like you know

00:22:20.480 really short snippets for news what's the what do you think the future is there so here's what's

00:22:25.180 really interesting is that software and ai can replace the routine part surprisingly quickly so

00:22:31.960 if we you know go into medical for a moment uh analyzing an x-ray analyzing an mri over time

00:22:38.900 that's going to be the kind of thing where you're going to have software that can do it but let's go to

00:22:43.780 another specialty the geriatrician the person who deals with the elderly and tries to keep them

00:22:48.060 healthy as long as possible so much of that is a personal connection you know you can tell them hey be

00:22:53.160 careful about falls and you know use a cane or get some rails in your apartment or your home or

00:22:58.200 whatever and most people will nod their heads and say yeah yeah yeah and they won't do it and the

00:23:03.640 good geriatricians know how to make that personal connection where they inspire their patients to make

00:23:08.600 real changes in their lives and that requires a very human touch it's the same story in writing and

00:23:14.340 there are now programs that can do minor earthquake reports earthquake that registers 2.8 on the richter

00:23:20.260 scale happened at 2.53 in the morning with an epicenter at whatever and you don't need a human

00:23:25.220 being to do that you you can just have a connect the dot software program that does it but if you're

00:23:30.680 wanting to write a poem or if you're wanting to write a hit song there has been basically no progress in

00:23:36.400 the last 50 years in coming up with ai songwriters and if you think about your favorite pop stars and what

00:23:43.460 makes their songs powerful that's not the kind of thing that software can do so i think anytime you're

00:23:49.760 venturing into an area that involves creativity or curiosity or empathy you're on safe ground you're

00:23:56.180 doing non-routine work and you're doing human to human work if your job is very mechanical then yeah

00:24:01.360 you should worry that in 10 or 20 years it'll be automated yeah where i thought you could combine

00:24:05.820 the benefits of liberal arts degree is combining that with what we would consider trade jobs or blue

00:24:10.520 collar jobs i have a guy i know a guy who went to college got a you know degree i forgot what it was

00:24:16.080 like literature something like that but then he ended up starting a lawn care company and he's doing

00:24:20.540 fantastic and i think one of the reasons why he's done so well is that he's developed that flexible

00:24:25.980 thinking and he's really good at sales and i think that from his work experience as a you know studying

00:24:32.320 literature that's helped him out a lot in his you know dirty job quote unquote you know if you're in

00:24:38.140 lawn care half of what you're selling is the chance to chat with you and you know to talk about how your

00:24:43.740 home looks and that kind of thing and i took my car in for an oil change yesterday and i ended up with

00:24:48.660 you know the little local mechanic where ken is just a really fun guy to talk to and he probably

00:24:54.380 charged me 10 or 20 more than speedy but he's close he's friendly you know he's got a take on life

00:25:00.700 if i've got you know issues you know involving all kinds of things from road trips to what have you

00:25:07.660 ken's always got a story for me and i'm going there as much to hang out with ken as i am to get the oil

00:25:12.440 changed you can bring that into an awful lot of other things i mean financial planners that's a

00:25:17.600 field that if you take a narrow definition should be completely automated there's software now to tell

00:25:21.940 you where to put your money and what dev and stocks and what dev and bonds but it turns out that

00:25:26.360 we're using people more than ever because it's not enough just to know what we're supposed to do

00:25:31.300 we need someone who understands us and cares about you know where we're going to take vacation and how

00:25:36.660 the kids are doing and are they going to go to college or not and if you can bring that level of

00:25:41.200 warmth people will pay extra for the human engagement and a really good place to pick that up is in a

00:25:47.620 college seminar often in a field that has nothing to do with car repair or financial management but

00:25:53.320 or lawn care but this gets you in the habit of talking to people and engaging them yeah you give

00:25:58.100 an example of how automation ended up creating a lot more jobs in the finance industry was with

00:26:03.040 banking right the automatic teller machine it actually we thought this would be the death of

00:26:07.700 teller jobs they've actually banks have built more banks and hired more people to talk face-to-face

00:26:13.880 with potential clients or their clients yeah yeah automats we've we had the ability to put food on a

00:26:19.480 conveyor belt and run it around people's chairs in a restaurant since the 1950s it's pretty rare for

00:26:25.340 anyone to do that you want to have that interaction with the server and you want to you know meet the

00:26:30.660 restaurant manager who knows you by name yeah never underestimate the power of the human touch

00:26:34.920 so liberal arts degrees as we talked about earlier they don't pay that great the jobs you can get

00:26:39.940 don't pay that great right after you graduate what's your career advice for folks who just graduated

00:26:44.380 with some degree in humanities or psychology or literature so they're on that path where 10 years

00:26:50.240 from now 15 years from now they're earning a comfortable income so i have a chapter at the end

00:26:55.480 of the book called how to get paid properly and there's an art to it and i don't want to peel it all

00:27:00.460 down but i'll share a couple different pointers for you one is you need to be assertive about asking

00:27:05.680 for a raise and sometimes i think this is a gender issue i think guys are it's more comfortable for us to

00:27:11.240 go in and say you know i'm working hard i got a competing offer what can you do for me you know

00:27:16.200 whatever your background is being assertive for yourself does pay off and then the other thing uh

00:27:21.980 this is a really good hack that i learned from a guy at nasa is don't just think about solving your

00:27:26.940 boss's problems think about solving your boss's boss's problems and that gets you higher up that

00:27:32.260 gets you more strategic it also gets you much more visible with the kind of people who are going you know

00:27:37.140 what you're just way too smart to be in this job we should get you into a bigger job

00:27:41.100 and i think sometimes just doing what you're told will get you more of the same and taking

00:27:45.940 the initiative to come up with ideas that'll help your company solve bigger problems that can take

00:27:51.380 you to good places so anyway read the chapter for more you know be assertive and look for ways to

00:27:57.280 extend your reach beyond your literal job description that will start to get you in a good place

00:28:01.180 yeah another issue too you talk about is how liberal arts schools are being more proactive about

00:28:05.440 helping their graduates in the job because before you know liberal arts a lot of liberal arts

00:28:09.300 professors like you learn for the sake of learning it's this is not a trade school but they're

00:28:13.140 realizing they need to help their students find jobs i mean it's not their responsibility but like

00:28:18.500 provide some resources where they can learn how to market their their degree in the job market are

00:28:23.820 you seeing steps there where it's getting better yeah i am i'm not seeing it happening as fast as i'd

00:28:29.420 like although at any speed i would still be saying do more move faster and uh i'm going to disagree

00:28:35.300 with you a little bit i think that is professor's responsibility that when i went to school the

00:28:39.740 place i went you know entry tuition was 3500 a year and if you really worked hard over the summer

00:28:45.060 you could earn that and pay for your whole year's college off of your summer earnings you cannot do

00:28:51.080 that now for the kinds of schools that charge you know thirty thousand dollars forty thousand or more

00:28:56.120 and i think that brings a responsibility that schools can't really pull people in at that price

00:29:02.020 without saying you know what we're going to get you to a better place when you graduate as opposed

00:29:05.580 to wow here's your degree now you figure it out so i'm always happy when i see professors who've got

00:29:11.480 networks and who share it i think some of the best professors who are ones who've worked outside

00:29:16.080 academia for a few years and know what the world is like beyond the gates and help their students

00:29:21.360 i'm seeing career services departments getting more money and doing much bolder things i mean for some of

00:29:27.000 the schools and rural or isolated locations they will load up students on a bus and take them to

00:29:32.840 new york city or chicago or wherever the job market is and that's your spring break and you go meet

00:29:37.700 employers and the school sponsors it and sets up meetings but you also need to show some initiative

00:29:42.960 yourself you you need to create your own job and i have a chapter in the book that talks about how to

00:29:49.020 create a job that doesn't exist yet it's not as easy as just sort of waiting for deloitte to come to

00:29:53.360 campus and say we're hiring accountants and you show up with your accounting degree and they give you

00:29:56.940 a job but i think the opportunities to get to something that's really fulfilling are higher

00:30:02.440 it just takes a little more initiative right you can do anything with a little large degree there you

00:30:06.780 go there you go well hey george this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn

00:30:11.080 more about the book so on the internet www.georgeandersbooks.com we'll give you a link and it'll explain

00:30:18.380 what the big ideas of you can do anything are that's the name of the book on twitter i'm at george

00:30:23.320 anders and of course the book is up on amazon as well fantastic george anders thank you much for

00:30:27.760 your time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest today was george anders he's the author of the book

00:30:31.660 you can do anything the surprising power of a useless liberal arts education it's available on

00:30:36.400 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:30:40.360 slash liberal arts where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:30:44.240 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:31:00.620 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the

00:31:04.020 show i've gotten something out of it i appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on

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00:31:11.300 podcast so share it more the merrier as always thank you for your continued support until next

00:31:15.340 time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#351： The Surprising Power of a ＂Useless＂ Liberal Arts Education

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