SEO Headline (Max 60 characters)

Billionaire Predicts Liberal Arts-Driven Future

By

February 20, 2017

Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, gave a lengthy interview to Bloomberg on Friday. Much of the discussion was about Cuban's pessimistic (for workers) view of the world of work in the years ahead. He predicted that automation and artificial intelligence will eliminate many jobs, leading to widespread displacement. Asked if this means students should major in finance, he rejected the idea, predicting "much greater demand for liberal arts majors" in 10 years than there will be for those who study programming and maybe engineering. It will be those with true analysis skills and creativity who will thrive, he said, specifically stating that majors in English, philosophy and foreign language are likely to be in high demand. The bad news for the liberal arts, in Cuban's view, is that its graduates "will starve for a while" until all of these job shift happen. The discussion of employment and majors starts around the 12 minute mark of the video below.

Scott Jaschik

Scott Jaschik, Editor, is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues, quoted regularly in publications nationwide, and publishing articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. He has been a judge or screener for the National Magazine Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, the Folio Editorial Excellence Awards, and the Education Writers Association Awards. Scott served as a mentor in the community college fellowship program of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, of Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a member of the board of the Education Writers Association. From 1999-2003, Scott was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Scott grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and graduated from Cornell University in 1985. He lives in Washington.