Britain’s New College of the Humanities has recently published research showing that 60% of the UK’s leaders have humanities, arts, or social science degrees, according to the Guardian. The study, entitled Choose Humanities, reviewed leaders across a broad range of fields in the UK, including FTSE 100 CEOs, MPs, vice chancellors of Russell Group universities, Magic Circle law firms, and managers of creative businesses, and found that leaders with degrees in the humanities were the largest group. As Matthew Batstone, co-founder and director of the New College of the Humanities, argues:
The humanities provide a rich training in the skills underpinning leadership and innovation, regardless of whether that leader runs a government department, a school, a newspaper or a corporation.
To succeed in the humanities you need to build an argument and you need to be able to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of the contrary position. Moreover you need to be able to present your position in a compelling and charismatic manner (the tradition of 1:1 tutorials is fantastic training for this). Purely on a practical level, the weekly distillation of a huge amount of material is exactly the discipline required in many forms of work.