State of the (liberal) arts: Indiana colleges tout a broad-based education.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy

Reading good literature and studying art may produce a well-rounded person, but you need a practical education to get a good job, liberal-arts students may hear from parents.

Indeed, during the 1980s, many humanities and other liberal-arts graduates were edged out of jobs by business-school graduates.

Today, that trend may be reversing.

"I believe the pendulum may be going back a little, and we're not demanding as many specialized and business-management advanced degrees," says Wayne Davidson, a member of the University of Evansville board of trustees who retired last year from his post as president of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical and Nutritional Group.

"I'm not convinced companies need the number of MBAs they have been paying exorbitant rates to get. There's definitely a place for the liberal-arts graduate in the business world," Davidson says.

The business world's attraction to the liberal-arts graduate is much more than the possibility of being able to pay a lower starting salary, he says. "Liberal-arts graduates bring a background that allows them to function in any number of areas rather than being pigeonholed in one area," he says. "People with a liberal-arts degree are more apt to be moved around and obtain a broader business experience."

Indiana's liberal-arts colleges wholeheartedly concur. From every corner of the state, presidents and deans echo the benefits of hiring their liberal-arts students.

Most frequently cited are graduates' abilities to think, reason, evaluate and communicate. Liberal-arts graduates, say the people who educate them, are likely to be flexible on the job, able to adapt to changing work situations. And good people skills come from the liberal-arts student's exposure to a variety of cultures, these educators say.

The proof is in the pudding. Take the example of Lafayette's Greg Milakis. He leveraged a scholarship to Wabash College, Crawfordsville's exclusive liberal-arts school, to earn a key banking position. After a decade in banking and finance, he's recently taken the reins of a challenging new job, commercial lending vice president at Lafayette Savings Bank.

"When I got out of school, I wasn't a specialist in the field of business," Milakis admits. "Liberal arts gave me a background. It taught me how to think, how to problem solve. I learned how to break a problem down into components I can analyze individually and then stack up and make a good decision."

After working a while, he earned an MBA...