You're a Liberal Arts major, but don't be that Liberal Arts major.

You know, the one that proves that studying history, literature and philosophy was a mistake. The one that would have fantastically deep conversations over dinner that tie current events to historical patterns, except he can't afford to go out to dinner. The one that works with a bunch of high school grads who live with their parents and are shocked to find out he went to college.

Take a few computer science classes and make the most of your liberal arts degree.

Be the Liberal Arts major that works with very financially and technically smart people, all the while appearing to be smarter than them. Why? Because you can write, debate, correlate and analyze while all they can do is program and calculate. You understand what they do, but they don't understand what you do. You've read, written and discussed topics that are beyond them, but their computer science doesn't mystify you.

How? By pairing your liberal arts major with classes in computer science. This is a trend that many colleges are promoting, to improve the chances of their graduates to succeed in the workplace.

You Love What You Study

Did you choose your major or was it the only thing you ever wanted to study? When you made the jump to college, the world of great books, art history, foreign language and sociology was the world you wanted. The only science you hungered to learn was political.

When you get out of college, that won't be your world anymore. It's not the realm of Plato and Aristotle any longer. The globe belongs to the students of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. But with a thorough understanding of computer science in your arsenal, you'll be ready.

What Else Did You Learn?

You took courses like Computers and Money from the City University of New York. That class covers quantitative reasoning for the technical age. It teaches how financial issues like gambling, stocks, taxes, hedging and real estate can be tackled with computers. Students gain a broad view of how to handle money, which is the ultimate purpose of education and work anyway, right?

Hopefully you studied at a Liberal Arts school that is forward-thinking, like Bates College in Maine. Benefitting from a $19 million gift, the 2000 student school added a Digital and Computational Studies program. Bates added facilities, equipment, six faculty members and a whole new attitude. Computer science is weaving into every other field, allowing students to learn about connectivity, computational thinking and digital platforms.

If you truly pursued your education with a 21st century state-of-mind, you'd have followed your Liberal Arts BA with a Master of Science in a computer science field. As a historian, writer or artist, you will approach your digital study with your personal viewpoint. You will learn how to communicate your chosen field in a modern and technical way. You will exit your six years of school with a unique skill set and a huge advantage over the egg-heads with a pure Computer Science background.

Cybernetic Socrates

Do what you love. Devour the knowledge you crave, but do so with both eyes focused on the future. In order to succeed, you need to separate yourself from the pack. In a good way.

You can be an individual by not knowing how to project your ideas across the new digital globe. You don't want to be that kind of individual. Or you can be one-of-a-kind by having a smartly designed collection of knowledge and skills knitting old knowledge and new. Who wouldn't hire that person?

Want to go to one of the best schools in the country for liberal arts majors? See which colleges are at the top of our rankings!

Best Colleges for Liberal Arts Majors