The world's most successful 'soft' major graduates
The web is littered with lists of rich people, chopping and dicing them into any number of subcategories.
One of the most popular – aside from, say, the hottest CEOs in the world (yeah, like you’re not clicking on that) – is the rundown of billionaires that are also university/college dropouts: guys like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the late Steve Jobs.
Yet within this educational demographic is another that’s rarely represented; those that graduated post-secondary school but with so-called “soft” majors.
These are the people that hold degrees in liberal arts programs like English and philosophy. These are also the people many thought wouldn’t amount to much.
Certainly, that is the distinction today, that a degree in history or geography or theatre is a surefire way to debt and a post-grab job at Best Buy.
*Bing: Who is the world’s highest-paid CEO?
But surely that isn’t always the case. Just as history is littered with dropouts that made it rich, so too are there plenty of “soft” major grads that did the same. Granted, some of these people went on to more schooling after their undergrads, but the point stands: a philosophy degree doesn’t have to be a waste each and every time.
A partial list of successful “soft” program grads, courtesy Business Insider:
1) Michael Eisner: The former Disney CEO holds two majors, and they’re both as soft as a warm cookie. Before leading Disney for more than 20 years, Eisner graduated with a double major in English and theatre at Denison University in Ohio.
2) Ted Turner: The CNN and TBS founder studied classics in college before changing the face of television in the 1970s and ‘80s.
3) Peter Thiel: The PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist was Facebook’s first outside investor. He also holds a law degree, but first graduated Stanford in 1989 after studying philosophy.
4) Mitt Romney: The would-be 45th president of the United States earned plenty of designations over his academic career, but began it modestly with an English degree from Utah’s Brigham Young University.
5) Bob Iger: The man that took over Disney’s CEO post from Michael Eisner had similar beginnings. Iger studied communications at Ithaca College in New York, began his career as a TV weatherman and climbed the corporate ladder at ABC, which was later bought out by Disney.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: Dave | Dec 20, 2012 9:49:35 AM
So we are still going with the definition of success being the ability to extract the most money from society for oneself then?
If that is the criteria why no mention of Robertl Mugabe's Bachelor of Arts & Bachelor of Education among others?
Bernard Madoff had a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
Etc, etc, etc.
Of course at one time Higher learning itself was the goal. Now we have turned our education system into a series of glorified trade school degree mills.
This has been wonderful for businesses (who no longer bother having to train their staff) and not yet a total calamity for society which now has young couples leaving their children in care while they both work 50+ hours a week to pay back student debt which they should never have in the first place.