The liberal arts and the path to fulfillment: the road may not be straight but it is often upward. From the article:

In 2016, the National Association of Colleges and Employers surveyed 5,013 graduating seniors about their family backgrounds and academic paths. The students most likely to major in the humanities or social sciences—33.8 percent of them—were those who were the first generation in their family ever to have earned college degrees. By contrast, students whose parents or other forbears had completed college chose the humanities or social sciences 30.4 percent of the time….

For college leaders, the liberal arts’ appeal across the socioeconomic spectrum is both exciting and daunting. As Dan Porterfield, the president of Pennsylvania’s Franklin and Marshall College, points out, first-generation students “may come to college thinking: ‘I want to be a doctor. I want to help people.’ Then they discover anthropology, earth sciences, and many other new fields. They start to fall in love with the idea of being a writer or an entrepreneur. They realize: ‘I just didn’t have a broad enough vision of how to be a difference maker in society.’”

Based on his new book, You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless” Liberal-Arts Education

h/t Eric Bing