In the past anecdotally at least in the City of London 'well rounded' individuals were preferred for high finance i.e. you might be better off studying Classics at Oxbridge than pure math. Today this is probably less true as computerization and trading systems have come to the fore.
However, I would be very surprised that in your case you didn't have all of those skills mentioned in place before going to university. Is it likely they got some enhancement? It certainly wouldn't do any harm studying anything in a good department.
I don't see any tangible evidence that 'soft skills' are manufactured out of liberal studies and I find it a baffling conclusion that there even would be an automatic superiority of these skills versus a 'high calibre' person studying engineering.
Although I think plenty of other comments defending Liberal Arts make this point more explicitly about the relative benefits.
But couldn't you have learned those skills with another degree as well? So, wouldn't you have been better off learning those skills in classes where you also learned about the subject matter in the area where you are working?
I'm curious: where did Mr. Ponzi get his degree?
Yes, it's pretty obvious that if you get into a name-brand university and manage to teach yourself marketable skills on the side, you can be pretty successful. What if you don't get into a name-brand university? You're screwed for life and your best shot at success is to work for someone like you? No thanks.
It was a rhetorical question. The point was, Andrew Mason's accomplishments don't seem quite so respectable anymore.
The article is about the growing number of Liberal Arts graduate s. My point is that if you are going to study liberal arts in this economy, you'd be better off studying somewhere good and have more opportunities later.
I submit that if you get into a name brand university, you probably already have the upper-middle-class/upper-class background, connections, and upbringing necessary to do well in the job market regardless of what you actually study. And either way, now that you're in the elite social category of "people who got into a name brand university". That's all status, and no one ever argued that status didn't get you places in the world.