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<p>Not really. That might have been true decades ago but today, mastery of content in a technologically-based field is valid for such a brief period of time that it’s the liberal arts skills that last. Consider this USA Today article from a few years back:</p>
<p>Many top CEOs say MBA not necessarily ticket to success</p>
<p>George 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 that she must now address. “A century of sustained and enduring human achievement” long ago leaves her confident that “we have, in fact, seen nothing yet,” Fiorina says.</p>
<p>Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner never took a single business course as he earned a double major in English and theater (Denison '64). 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.”</p>
<p>Ambitious college grads peddling offbeat degrees in a job market gone sour can take heart that such success stories are far from rare. One-third of CEOs running the nation’s largest 1,000 companies have a master’s of business administration degree, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart, many others do not.</p>
<p>Certainly, many CEOs take a more conventional educational path: Cisco’s John Chambers added an MBA to his law degree, and Enron CEO 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.
No one disputes that there is a place for the traditional MBA. Miramar Systems just hired a Harvard MBA for business development. But CEO Neal Rabin, who majored in creative writing (UCLA '80), says chief executives who learn at the knee of Harvard case studies know too many ways that companies fail. They find themselves paralyzed by fear, he says.</p>
<p>Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Computer, was a pre-med biology major at the University of Texas before dropping out after his freshman year. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates also left college without earning a degree. More typical, however, are executives who completed school but whose course of study now seems irrelevant. Others say the degrees helped launch their careers where economics, finance or business may have not.</p>
<p>Any good education would have been enough to get a foot in Corning’s door 37 years ago, says CEO John Loose. But it’s unlikely he would have been chosen for his first big international assignment without a degree in East Asian history (Earlham '64). “To have an understanding of the history and culture of Koreans, Japanese, Indians and Chinese was invaluable,” says Loose. Even today, Corning continues to court Asia as a rare bright spot in the depressed fiber-optic market.</p>
<p>Likewise Sue Kronick, now group president of Federated Department Stores, majored in Asian studies (Connecticut College '73). Her rise from a Bloomingdale’s buyer was helped by understanding India’s economic system so well that she found ways to slash the cost of imports. “My background served me well,” Kronick says. “You tend to get more narrow in point of view as time marches on. Liberal arts is about approaching problems from a different point of view.”</p>