If you were among the 24% of 2010 college grads fortunate enough to get a job, what kind of salary did you get? An article on 'Glimmers of Hope' for Grads in this morning's Times has the research. The study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers said that the percentage of grads with a job waiting has gone from 20% last year, to 24% this year. Average salary for those with a bachelor's degree has slipped 1.7% to $47,673.
Average salaries for finance majors are up to $50,546, while computer-related degrees are getting $58,746. Liberal arts majors fell 8.9% to $33,540. Furthermore, the jobless rate for college grads under age 25 was 8% in April, up from 6.8% in 2009, and 3.7% in 2007 before the recession. The most shocking statistic, however, is that for high school graduates under age 25 who did not enroll in college, the jobless rate was 24.5% last month, up from 11.4% in April 2007. And the salary differential is comparable.
Clearly, in spite of the Wall Street Journal's occasional head-in-the-sand articles that some shouldn't get a college degree, if you're without one, you're in trouble. Still, I'd suggest that looking at entry level salaries and opportunities is a very poor way to make a decision on college majors. And that's after working with managers and execs in top companies for more than 25 years.
My own attitude toward undergrad business degrees is more than a bit jaundiced, and not merely because none of my three professional daughters or myself have a single undergrad course in business. It's because the arts, on a long term basis, are liable to provide much more in the way of opportunities long term for the 21st century.
First, let's dispose of one issue that is under the business table and few in the unwashed herd understand. If you've developed your smarts to the place where you got in and finished your undergrad degree at one of America's top 25 or 30 colleges, whatever you major in is largely irrelevant. There'll be a line-up for you that includes America's greatest firms. One of my favorite physicians, who like me graduated from a pooh-bah ordinary college, has a daughter majoring in comparative literature at Columbia University. She's perhaps looking at a university faculty position, but not at all sure. "You do understand," I said, "that with a Columbia degree, she can do whatever the hell she wants to, don't you?" She was with me on that topic. At an undergrad level among those top schools, it's just as true as Jeff Pfeffer's (Stanford MBA prof) comment that the purpose of the top MBA programs was to save the top firms from bothering with a recruiting and selection process. And if, like the huge majority of the population, you didn't graduate from one of those schools, you've got a different problem.
Although I think Penelope Trunk is often hilarious and sometimes spot-on, her advice that no one who wants a job should get a humanities degree is utter nonsense. The real secret to getting a job right out of college is the quality of your face-to-face network. Having a quality network, though, is unusual both for college students as well as for business people. People who've figured that out and taken the necessary steps can usually count on a job in the worst of recessions. That's because learning, creativity, innovation, adaptability, and adventuresomeness are much better developed with a liberal arts degree.
I've alluded to this before, but here's a BusinessWeek article that some parents and students I know should paste on their forehead: Not every corporate chieftain studies business in college. Many of them major in history, psychology, or even philosophy. It may be one reason why they succeed.
As Louis Lavelle, the BusinessWeek writer says, there's a slice of big-company CEOs that have gotten a lot less attention, and are far more interesting: those who started their academic lives studying something completely unrelated to business. Jeff Immelt of GE, applied math at Dartmouth. Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan, psychology (plus economics) at Tufts. Michael Dell was pre-med before he dropped out of college. Carly Fiorina (like her or not) was into philosophy and medieval history. Janet Robinson, the CEO of the NYTimes, English major. Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, communications at Ithaca College. Sam Palmisano, the CEO of IBM, history at Hopkins.
Although plenty of people would be hard-pressed to believe a 20-year-old philosophy major has much of a business future, here's the response from a raft of headhunters. What an executive studied in college is almost meaningless. Peter Crist of the executive search firm, Crist Holder Associates, notes that liberal arts individuals have one big advantage over those with an undergraduate degrees in business, engineering, or the sciences: an expansive and inquiring mind.
Todd Bucholz, who wrote New Ideas from Dead CEOs, goes still further. To me, studying business as an undergrad is like reading the car manual that came with our car before learning how to drive.
This is probably a total waste of my time. It's so far from conventional wisdom as to be nearly totally unbelievable by 95% of the population. Still, it was a fun rant!
See my protege's blog: Liberal arts and business: A Power tool for success.