Swarthmore College

Date: Apr 16 2007
Major: Political Science (This Major's Salary over time)
A liberal arts degree from Swarthmore was enormously helpful to me in the business world. At its best, liberal arts teaches you to understand how people think about problems. The significant problems in many organizations are at the interstices of different technical and administrative disciplines. Swarthmore gave me the ability to understand how diverse groups of people are looking at problems, which has on many occasions enabled to understand the root cause of organizational difficulties, and thus be able to fix them.

My Swarthmore degree in Political Science has served me well enough that - combined with a Master's in Public Policy - I have been in jobs that usually require a graduate degree in science and engineering for the past 15 years. And I had a wonderful comment made about the value of a Swarthmore education when I was being considered by a search committee to lead a major (~600 people) research organization (I didn't make even the final cut, but the following comment is the key part). When the head of the search committee was reviewing my credentials with the person who would make the ultimate selection, he noted my lack of a science or engineering degree (one of the criteria for the job was to be a recognized world leader in science or engineering), but said that I had other capabilities that would make me an interesting candidate. The man in charge of the decision responded "If he went to Swarthmore, he should be able to pick up the science".