Speaking of secondary reasons to pursue a liberal education, did I mention that pursuing the liberal arts is the best preparation for a successful career?

For those of you who are still wavering on this point, don’t take my word for it, listen to Clyde Tuggle, Coca-Cola senior vice president and chief public affairs officer,

“I never had finance or accounting, yet I help run a huge business,” the visiting Woodrow Wilson Fellow said. “I learned communications, research and critical thinking” in liberal arts and religious studies at Hamilton College and Yale, respectively. At Coke, “I blew right by the [business majors].”

And further he says,

“Succeeding in business is all about bringing good judgment to bear. When I need data, I bring in a team to crunch the numbers, but then I go negotiate the deal…a liberal arts university … offers all the learning needed to succeed in any business today.”

And when I read the next passage I couldn’t help but to think of the famous saying that Plutarch attributes to Socrates when he said,

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world”

Echoing this, Mr. Tuggle says that to serve an organization like Coca-Cola,

“you need to speak a minimum of two foreign languages…You need to see yourself as a citizen of the world …You need the cultural skill to walk into any space and be comfortable, to blend into the environment….If you are going to lead something, you must imagine not only what it is, but what it can be in the future. Doing so requires process, rigor and discipline … it requires creativity, courage and breaking rules, but especially creativity— thinking skills, …that are taught by the liberal arts.”

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