Once viewed as an impractical course of study for dreamers and artists, a liberal arts education can in fact offer aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs a broad range of skills necessary to succeed in an age of increasing social awareness and interaction.
Once viewed as an impractical course of study for dreamers and artists, a liberal arts education can in fact offer aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs a broad range of skills necessary to succeed in an age of increasing social awareness and interaction.
Armed with a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from Harvard University, Neil Davidson, chief executive of local fintech company Coda Pay, has undoubtedly stellar credentials. But what may make one pause – particularly in pragmatic Asia – is that Davidson majored in history and literature as an undergraduate.
While classes he took such as the “Fundamentals of Lyric Poetry” and “The World of Late Antiquity” might not have direct applications to his daily work today, US-born, Singapore-based Davidson says his education has enriched his life beyond dollars and cents. “A liberal arts education exposes you to a breadth of disciplines that you probably won’t be exposed to in the course of your work,” he says. “Whether or not it makes you better at your work, it gives you a wider range of interests, saving you from becoming totally defined by your professional life.”
On a more practical level, he adds that his time in a liberal arts college has honed his writing skills. “Many people who’ve studied finance or accounting can’t coherently string words and sentences together, which is a pretty big impediment to being successful in business.”
Davidson is in good company. From Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Alibaba’s Jack Ma, to former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner, these successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common – they graduated with a humanities degree.
The study of the liberal arts, which include topics in history, literature, philosophy and the social sciences, has long been the cornerstone of the American higher education system, drawing generations of eager young minds whose purpose is to absorb as much of the world’s collective knowledge as they can. In Asia, though, tertiary level students have traditionally been drawn to more practical and professional disciplines such as engineering, accountancy, law or medicine, which have immediate applications in the workplace.
Skills for the modern world
However, this pragmatic perception is evolving in Singapore and the region, with students, parents and society at large increasingly giving credence to the intrinsic value of the qualities of empathy, adaptability and critical thinking that a liberal arts education can impart to the future movers and shakers of society. To meet this growing demand, more universities in Asia, including The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Seoul National University in South Korea, Waseda University in Japan and the National University of Singapore (NUS), have started their own liberal arts programmes.
Industry observers say it is time for the creative-minded to shake up the entrepreneurial scene here. Jason Seng, human capital director for Deloitte Singapore, says: “Entrepreneurs – at least at the beginning – require a lot less structure and a lot more creativity. A liberal arts education offers this training in terms of mindset, in unleashing innovation and cultivating a willingness to take risks.”
Take it from Ma who has been a vocal critic of China’s rigid education system. He said at a 2014 Shanghai convention: “Many painters learn by having fun, many works (of art and literature) are the products of having fun. So, our entrepreneurs need to learn how to have fun, too.”
One could say that social media giant Facebook is the perfect marriage of science and liberal arts. In founder Mark Zuckerberg’s own words, Facebook is “as much psychology and sociology as it is technology”. And in this digital age of increased connectivity, cultivating creativity and cultural sensitivity cannot be ignored, especially when technology is fast taking over many technical capabilities traditionally performed by humans. Professor K. Ranga Krishnan, chairman of the National Medical Research Council Singapore and dean of Rush Medical College in Chicago, US, says: “As computers and artificial intelligence (AI) systems replace routine workplace skills, one needs higher levels of literacy and numeracy, as well as problem-solving, communication and interpersonal skills. Technical skills – unless they are very specialised and cannot be replaced by AI systems – need to be supplemented by these non-technical core skills.”
The X factor
These are also attributes that professional institutions of higher learning now look out for when admitting students. At Duke-NUS Medical School, where Prof Krishnan was its dean until June last year, he says the admissions team looks out for students with the ability to “leverage their understanding and insight to solve problems... beyond the technical competence to perform well in the school”.
Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, what sets a liberal arts education apart from a science-based or technical education is that its style of pedagogy nurtures and encourages a young person to pursue his or her true calling.
Says David Leong, managing director of Peopleworldwide Consulting: “These people are driven by a passion and see a world of endless possibilities. Though they may not know how to build, they know how to excite, motivate and actualise their dreams through collaborators. They draw mental visuals of their dream and articulate them, push the limits of their collaborators and, by sheer force of their determination, make things happen.”
