29 People With 'Soft' College Majors Who Became Extremely Successful

[ErikJ]

As a new crop of college students arrive on American campuses this fall, many will be forced to consider whether to major in a more creative, "softer" discipline like English, or begin charting their career path with a "hard" major like business or physics.
While the liberal arts are often bemoaned for offering few post-college job opportunities, the truth is that a great many of our nation's most successful business executives and political figures spent their undergraduate careers studying things like classics and psychology.

Here are 29 extremely successful people who prove that it's possible to climb the ladder without a bachelor's degree in business or science.

Mitt Romney, former Bain Capital CEO, majored in English at Brigham Young University
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Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State, majored in political science at Wellesley College
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Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, majored in English at the College of the Holy Cross
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George Soros, hedge fund manager, majored in philosophy at the London School of Economics
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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-liberal-arts-majors-2014-9?op=1#ixzz3CStOdfXu

[JCMach1]

1. Business hard??? What planet thinks that?

[MineralMan]

2. I think the "soft" and "hard" here refer to

something different than easy or difficult. Think about the difference between a pillow and a concrete block. Those two words have multiple meanings. Nothing easy about an English major if you do it right, and nothing difficult about a business major, really. One is extremely flexible, and the other is more rigid.

[ErikJ]

3. Haha-good point.

[MADem]

4. Those people all had postgraduate education. They used the "college years" to learn how to think,

and their postgrad education years to learn a specific skill, like being a lawyer, for example, or going to business school.

[JCMach1]

5. Good point, I also have know plenty of Liberal Arts majors who couldn't think their way out of a

paper box.

It's about learning to think, regardless of the major.

[ErikJ]

7. Philosophy teaches thinking

Deductive reasoning of logic and cause and effect. I just think the natural sciences can explain the world a lot better.

[Brigid]

10. This is all you need to know about philosophy:

[GeorgeGist]

6. Shocking ...

another fucking list.

[shenmue]

8. There was this Shakespeare fella...

You can't go anywhere with an English degree.

[ErikJ]

9. Disney CEO Michael Eisner defends his English Lit/theater degree

Offbeat majors help CEOs think outside the box

By Del Jones, USA TODAY http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/covers/2001-07-24-bcovtue.htm

George W. Bush may be the first president with an MBA degree, but U.S. business is run by CEOs with a hodgepodge of degrees in everything from atmospheric physics to French literature.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a medieval history and philosophy major (Stanford '76), says her curiosity about the transformation from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance folds neatly into the digital awakening she now must address.

"A century of sustained and enduring human achievement" long ago leaves her confident that "we have, in fact, seen nothing yet," Fiorina says.


Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner never took a single business course, getting a double major in English and theater.

Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner never took a single business course, getting a double major in English and theater (Denison '64), and he has nudged his three sons into liberal arts. He was reminded of a favorite English professor, Dominic Consolo, when reading the script for Dead Poets Society, a movie about a passionate poetry teacher starring Robin Williams. Eisner considers it to be one of the best movies Disney has made.

"Literature is unbelievably helpful, because no matter what business you are in, you are dealing with interpersonal relationships," Eisner says. "It gives you an appreciation of what makes people tick."

Ambitious college grads peddling offbeat degrees in a job market gone sour can take heart that such success stories are far from rare.

Just one-third of CEOs running the USA's largest 1,000 companies have a master's of business administration degree, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. Cisco's John Chambers added an MBA to his law degree, and Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay added a Ph.D. in economics to his MBA. But for every CEO who takes a businesslike approach, there are those who follow pure interests and trample practicality on the way to the top.