↓ Key Findings
↓ Ricketts Great Books College Delivers What Employers Want
↓ How and Why a Great Books Education Prepares Students
↓ Return on Investment and Value of the Degree
↓ How Great Books Courses Map to Employer Competencies
↓ Different Career Pathways
↓ Various Details on Peer Institutions and their Graduates
↓ References
Employers frequently indicate that they hire employees for the durable skills that Great Books education develops. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) publishes an annual jobs outlook report. According to the 2025 report, skills that employers most seek on new-grad resumes are problem-solving (88.3%), teamwork (81.0%), and written communication (77.1%). These are all skills that are well developed in Ricketts Great Books College. [1]
Also noteworthy in the report is that skills-based hiring is mainstream, with NACE reporting that 64.8% of employers use skills-based hiring. This is in opposition to hiring based on a student's major field of study. [1]
Academic major is not destiny: NACE reports that only 23.2% of employers hire graduates whose majors are exclusive to their industry. The other 76.8% of employers will consider candidates who have majored in subjects outside their industry. [1]
Job postings evidence reported by America Succeeds and Lightcast in their report Durable by Design: Why Skills for the Future Start Now (July 2025) shows that an analysis of nearly 76 million U.S. job postings (2023-2024) found durable skills were requested in 76% of postings, with nearly half asking for three or more. Durable skills include: Leadership, Character, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Metacognition, Mindfulness, Growth Mindset, and Fortitude. [2]
American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) via GlobeNewswire has a report entitled New National Survey Finds Strong Employer Confidence in Higher Education (Dec 11, 2025). This report shows that employers value open inquiry and constructive disagreement: AAC&U's 2025 employer survey reports 96% say it is useful for graduates to engage in constructive dialogue across disagreement; 94% say citizenship preparation and workforce preparation are equally important. These are traits and activities cultivated in Socratic seminars. [4]
Return on investment for Liberal Arts education, which includes Great Books college education, is higher than the college average. The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce reports 40-year median ROI of $918,000 for liberal arts colleges versus $723,000 across all colleges. [8]
A good on-ramp for future teachers. Classical K-12 is growing rapidly and teacher supply is the bottleneck: Fordham University reports classical schools are constrained by lack of a reliable teacher pipeline, and notes recruitment from Great Books programs like St. John's and Thomas Aquinas College. [25]
National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2025 is widely used in career services and reports the resume attributes employers most seek and how employers are adapting hiring practices. [1]
Top resume attributes:
Career readiness importance ratings (5-point scale):
These are skills that are well developed in the Socratic Seminar model of Ricketts Great Books College.
Skills-based hiring: 64.8% of employers report using skills-based hiring.
Major flexibility: 24.3% of employers report hiring graduates in any major; 50.8% report hiring both "exclusive-to-our-industry" majors and majors outside their industry.
Great Books seminars, close reading, argumentative writing, and discussion-based inquiry are direct training for exactly these "top-of-the-stack" competencies: critical thinking, communication, analytic reasoning, and collaborative dialogue.
Compare this with large-lecture classroom experiences in which students sit passively, absorb information, and then regurgitate it on multiple-choice exams. Likewise, compare this with large online universities where students have no real interaction and never develop any of these skills.
America Succeeds and Lightcast together analyzed nearly 76 million U.S. job postings (2023-2024) and report that durable skills appear in 76% of postings, with nearly half asking for three or more. The report also notes that eight of the top ten most requested skills are durable skills. [2]
The American Association of Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U) 2025 employer survey release provides unusually direct support for the Great Books seminar method:
An Important Point to Emphasize: While a Great Books education is grounded in historical texts, it is not an escape from reality; it is training for thinking, dialogue, and leadership in an ever-changing world.
In a world where things are changing rapidly, timeless skills are the ones that will retain their relevance. This point is made in the World Economic Forum report below.
WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 reports that employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030. This supports a "future-proofing" message: durable capabilities (reasoning, communication, judgment) retain value as tools and platforms evolve. [3]
National baseline: earnings and unemployment by education level. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2024, workers age 25+ with a bachelor's degree had median weekly earnings of $1,543 and an unemployment rate of 2.5%, compared with $930 and 4.2% for high school graduates. [5]
Return on Investment (New York Fed). The New York Fed estimates the median return to college at 12.5% in 2024 and notes the return has held between about 12 and 13 percent for the past three decades. It also cautions that returns vary significantly by major, institution, and time-to-degree. [6]
Liberal arts ROI over time (Georgetown Center Employment and Work). Georgetown CEW emphasizes the long-run payoff story: its press release summary reports a 40-year median ROI of $918,000 for liberal arts colleges—about $200,000 higher than the median ROI across all colleges ($723,000). [8]
Great Books pedagogy maps neatly onto the competencies employers prioritize (communication, critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving). The table below is intended as internal scaffolding for web copy and student resume guidance.
| Great Books Practice | Competency Developed | Evidence Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Close reading of difficult texts | Analytical reasoning; evidence evaluation; attention to detail | Durable skills requested in 76% of postings; critical thinking rated highly. |
| Socratic seminar discussion | Oral communication; constructive disagreement; collaboration | 96% of employers value constructive dialogue across disagreement. |
| Writing-intensive coursework and revision | Written communication; clarity; persuasion | Written communication is among top resume attributes employers seek. |
| Cross-disciplinary synthesis (history, philosophy, science, literature) | Systems thinking; adaptability; learning agility | Employers expect 39% core skills to change by 2030. |
| Ethical and civic reasoning | Judgment; responsible leadership; civic competence | Employers reject a false binary between workforce and civic skills. |
| Distance-learning with real-time Zoom seminars | Remote work; effective use of technology to manage work by distributed teams | Remote work has played an increasingly important role since Covid. |
The education provided by Ricketts Great Books College does an excellent job preparing students for a number of different future careers, some of which will require additional study and others which will not.
We look at examples for the following: professions (law, finance, medicine), tech, consulting, and education (with emphasis on classical academies).
Why Great Books fits: Law is a reading-and-writing profession. Success depends on careful interpretation of texts, structured argument, and persuasion. These are all core Great Books habits.
Pipeline evidence: The Law School Admissions Council data show strong admission outcomes for applicants from majors commonly associated with Great Books-style study (e.g., philosophy, history, English). [26]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
Why Great Books fits: Clinical work requires scientific competence and the capacity to reason ethically, communicate clearly, and empathize. These are capabilities strengthened through Great Books study.
Pipeline evidence: AAMC Table A-17 reports humanities applicants and matriculants with competitive MCAT performance; humanities matriculants' mean total MCAT is reported as 513.1 in 2023-2024. [27]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
Why Great Books fits: Finance rewards judgment under uncertainty, clear communication with stakeholders, and ethical reasoning alongside quantitative skill.
Demand evidence: Durable skills are foundational across industries and appear frequently in employer requirements. [2]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
Why Great Books fits: Tech evolves quickly; durable thinking, problem framing, and communication differentiate professionals over time.
Demand evidence: Employers expect significant skill change by 2030 while durable skills remain essential. [3][2]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
Why Great Books fits: Consulting is applied critical thinking, with diagnosing ambiguous problems, synthesizing evidence, and communicating recommendations.
Recruiting signal: BCG's Bridge to Consulting explicitly welcomes students of all majors and states that no prior business knowledge is required. [28] Bain's campus messaging similarly states applications are welcome from all industries and degree types. [29]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
Why Great Books fits: Classical schools need teachers who can teach literature, history, philosophy, logic, and civics with depth and confidence, and who can lead seminar-style discussion.
High-demand evidence: Fordham reports classical education now includes more than 1,500 schools serving nearly 700,000 students, and projects 2,600 schools by 2035. It reports leaders say growth is limited by the ability to find teachers and that there is no reliable pipeline of teachers prepared to staff classical schools. [25]
Fordham further notes that classical schools have historically recruited from Great Books programs like St. John's and Thomas Aquinas College. [25]
Peer and illustrative pathways:
St. John's College reports multiple outcome indicators on its Career Success page, including:
Los Alamos National Laboratory employer quote (as reported by St. John's): hires Johnnies because they are taught to think critically about how/what/why, supporting breakthrough science. [10]
OpenPath Products founders (software company): about 27% of new hires over the years have been St. John's graduates. [11]
UD's Office of Personal Career Development reports 99.2% of the Class of 2024 employed or engaged in continued education (knowledge rate 96.4%) and notes it follows NACE standards. [13]
UD's public alumni profiles provide a robust cross-industry case-study bank spanning law, finance, cybersecurity, defense/space, medicine, and entrepreneurship. [14][15][17]
TAC's alumni pages summarize broad post-graduation pathways, stating about one third of alumni pursue graduate/professional education and as much as a third become educators (institutional statement). [18]
TAC also describes Great Books outcomes in explicit skills language: critical and analytical thinking; reading difficult texts; parsing complex arguments; reasoning with others. [19]
| Industry | Example (Peer Institution) | Role/Trajectory | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Law | Shawn Watts (St. John's) | Judge and law professor (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation; University of Kansas) | [12] |
| Law | Talley Kovacs (St. John's) | Assistant Attorney General / natural resource | [12] |
| Law | Mary Watson (University of Dallas) | Law clerk (Louisiana Supreme Court at time of profile); links close reading to case law interpretation | [15] |
| Medicine | Dr. Martin Gaudinski (St. John's) | Medical Director, Clinical Trials Program, NIH | [12] |
| Medicine | Dr. April Sharp (St. John's) | Pediatric neurologist; Johns Hopkins | [12] |
| Medicine | Dr. Samuel Caughron (Thomas Aquinas) | Pathology Group president/CEO; expanded expedited COVID testing | [21] |
| Finance | Lee Munson (St. John's) | Chief Investment Officer; Portfolio Wealth Advisors | [12] |
| Finance | Joshua Rogers (St. John's) | Founder/CEO; Arete Wealth | [12] |
| Finance | Irvin Ashford (University of Dallas) | Managing Director; Charles Schwab | [14] |
| Finance | Judy Davis (University of Dallas) | Executive Director; JPMorgan Chase & Co. | [14] |
| Tech | David Reed (St. John's) | Lead Member of Technical Staff; Salesforce | [12] |
| Tech/Cyber | Skip McGee (St. John's) | Information system security engineer; Los Alamos National Lab | [12] |
| Tech/Cyber | Ken May (Thomas Aquinas) | Cybersecurity expert and CEO; authoring and teaching | [20][23] |
| Defense/Tech | Michael Hoff (University of Dallas) | Research Engineer; Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories | [17] |
| Consulting/Strategy | Michael Wu (St. John's) | Principal & Founder; Converge Strategies | [12] |
| Consulting (Leadership) | Doug Lattner (University of Dallas) | CEO; Deloitte Consulting (title at time of award induction) | [13] |
| Education/Classical | Joseph Mazza (University of Dallas) | Taught at Great Hearts Academies after graduation | [16] |
| Education/Classical | Joseph Cunningham (Thomas Aquinas) | Academy director; Joseph of Cupertino Classical Academy | [22] |
