When I review the stats for this site and our jobs website (www.jobopenings.net), I am struck by how many searches I see for things like “Jobs for economics majors” or “careers for psychology majors” or “job openings for philosophy majors.” When I see those and many similar searches, I realize that colleges have failed, at least in those cases, to convey the primary goal of a broadly based college education. When Liberal Arts colleges are fulfilling their missions, they are creating the kinds of graduates that are prepared to do just about anything they wish to do in the workforce. Although some more specialized fields will require additional training (professional degrees, master’s degrees, etc.), many career opportunities require only minimal on the job training. How have colleges and college graduates become so confused about the value of a hugely valuable Liberal Arts education?

Everyone has heard the expression “numbers lie.” As a former CPA with 25 years in the business community, I emphatically believe in the truth of that statement. The current intentionally misleading unemployment numbers are a particularly damaging lie. First, unemployment can never be zero because of a phenomenon the economists call “frictional unemployment.” In simple terms, that means that because businesses are always moving, opening and closing and changing direction, there are always people temporarily out of the workforce.

Although the goals of the two are typically quite different, the methods can be surprisingly similar. This line of reasoning was inspired by a scene in the hit movie We are Marshall. If you saw the movie, which I highly recommend, you will no doubt remember the important scene where the new head coach, played by Mathew McConaughey, asks the college president to consider why he might be having trouble getting the NCAA to make an exception for Marshall to allow them to play freshman on their football team. The coach says to the college president [played by David Strathairn],…