MARCO ISLAND, Fla. -- Whenever presidents of private liberal arts colleges gather, the topic of their graduates' career readiness is near the top of their minds.

We are constantly besieged with messaging that a liberal arts degree is useless. Maybe even worse than useless: a path to being a pauper or something close. Stuck in low-paying work that leaves you unable to pay off the loans and earn enough to buy a house and raise a family. Think again!

English majors are down 25.5 percent since the Great Recession, just as world’s top economists say we need more ‘storytellers'

For some understandable yet deeply misguided reasons, a defining majority of our country’s discourse has focused on the financial outcomes of college – the blindingly narrow “return on investment.”

By Debra Salvucci | Peter Ubertaccio – Dean, Leo J. Meehan School of Business | Dean, Thomas and Donna May School of Arts & Sciences

[The following is the abstract of an article co-authored by CAS faculty and Multidisciplinary Studies Chair Tina Kruger. Please see the link below for the full article] 

Clayton Spencer, the president of Bates College, a small liberal arts college in Maine, is unapologetic that careers do not arrive as neatly packaged gifts for students.

At university, when I told people I was studying for a history degree, the response was almost always the same: “You want to be a teacher?”. No, a journalist. “Oh. But you’re not majoring in communications?”