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Careers With a Master of Liberal Arts

In every field, the pace of change is accelerating. Leaps in artificial intelligence, shifts in work culture, and global challenges from ecology to economics are reshaping how we live and lead. For professionals who have already achieved success in their chosen industries, these changes invite an important question: what comes next? 

The Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) at the University of Chicago offers a space for professionals to challenge what they know and how they think, strengthening the habits of mind that support meaningful leadership in an age of transformation. 

The MLA is a program for those who want to pair their established expertise with deeper insight: to think critically, communicate clearly, and act decisively in a complex, technology-driven world. .

Smiling student with pencil in hand

From Soft Skills to Power Skills

The technical skills you may have gained in a career-aligned undergraduate or graduate program are vital to launch a career, but they may not be sufficient to achieve your long-term goals. Sustaining success throughout your career requires something more: the ability to interpret, innovate, and inspire. 

Soft skills, such as critical thinking, teamwork, and emotional intelligence, are increasingly recognized as the true “power skills” that determine leadership success. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 finds that analytical thinking has remained the most valued skill across industries for the past three years, with seven in ten surveyed companies identifying it as essential. Close behind are resilience, flexibility, and agility—emphasizing the growing importance of adaptability and collaboration alongside cognitive strength.  

Similarly, a study published by Jobs for the Future observed that job postings mentioning AI more than doubled from December 2022 to December 2024 across all roles, underscoring how profoundly these tools are transforming the nature of work. While technology proficiency is vital, it’s the human capacity to use these tools thoughtfully, to ask better questions, to synthesize ideas across disciplines, and to act ethically, that truly sets professionals apart. 

At UChicago, the MLA curriculum is designed to cultivate precisely these skills. Through discussion-driven seminars and writing-intensive courses, students practice articulating complex ideas, listening to divergent perspectives, and refining their capacity for reasoned judgment. 

The Human Edge in the Age of AI 

As artificial intelligence reshapes industries, leaders are increasingly called to combine technical literacy with human insight. The International Association for Workforce Professionals notes that in this era of rapid transformation, AI literacy has become an essential competency. Across sectors, professionals are now expected to understand how to work alongside AI, use it to enhance productivity, and apply it responsibly.  

Within the MLA, you’ll develop that balance: the discernment to navigate emerging technologies and the ethical imagination to consider their impact. Courses in the Ethics and Leadership and Tech & Society concentrations, for example, help students explore pressing questions: 

Through the MLA’s interdisciplinary lens, you’ll learn to approach these questions with intellectual confidence and moral clarity. 

I worked for almost two decades in diplomacy and national security, serving in Mongolia, North Macedonia, and at the White House, among other locations. After working increasingly on tech issues, I later joined a space company in San Francisco that’s trying to bring the internet to the unconnected parts of the globe. Inspired by my time at the Graham School and as a direct result of my MLA thesis, I am now building a new and better internet for democratic societies and individuals. The MLA program stretched my thinking and my abilities well beyond what I thought I was comfortable with or capable of.

Robert Mann

Foreign Service Officer

The sustained effectiveness of a leader rests on deep knowledge, the capacity to listen selflessly, the ability to navigate complex and often abstract situations, openness to being wrong, and the sensitivity to communicate with clarity and empathy — all in service of discerning and doing what is right. The MLA classroom has proven to be an environment in which such wisdom is cultivated, where assumptions are rigorously questioned, competing perspectives are examined with intellectual honesty, and one not only learns, but learns how to learn.

Mark Heaney

Chairman of Board of Acara Home Care, Former CEO of Addus HomeCare

If you want your idea to win in today’s fast paced, time-starved, and technology-driven workplaces, the ability to communicate and advocate your position coherently and concisely is a key differentiator. The MLA program helps you develop skills to better organize your thoughts, sharpen your points, and deliver a strong argument.

Brian O’Connor

Head of Embedded Banking, JP Morgan

As I grew in my consulting career, I realized that EQ becomes increasingly important over IQ as one assumes leadership responsibilities. The MLA program gives me a unique opportunity to get formal classroom training in the liberal arts, especially in the disciplines of classical philosophy and ethics that have helped me hone my leadership skills.

Kaushik Bhattacharya

Director, Data & Analytics, North Highland

As a midcareer professional whose role is increasingly focused upon leadership and management, I wanted to undertake further study and the MLA with its concentration in ethics and leadership was a perfect fit. I had always felt that I could enrich my life experience through further study in the social sciences and humanities. I have been rewarded so greatly in these areas through my MLA studies.

Joseph Monaghan

Partner, Holding Redlich Lawyers

Who Our Students Are 

The UChicago MLA draws a wide range of accomplished professionals who have already built meaningful careers and are now looking for something deeper: a space to reflect, to expand, and to connect their expertise with insight. 

Many are senior leaders and executives who have mastered the operational demands of their industries and want to sharpen the intellectual and ethical dimensions of leadership. They come to the MLA to step outside day-to-day pressures, examine complex decisions from new angles, and rediscover the curiosity that first drove their success. Others include attorneys and policy experts exploring how law intersects with philosophy and social change, as well as communications and public relations professionals and writers seeking to deepen their craft or prepare to teach at the university level. 

Professionals across technology, healthcare, education, and finance enter the program to step back from day-to-day demands and consider the broader purpose behind the systems they influence. 

What unites MLA students is not only accomplishment, but ambition of a different kind: the desire to learn among peers who bring experience, insight, and curiosity to the table. In every discussion, you’ll find yourself in conversation with people whose perspectives challenge your own — a finance executive beside a policy advocate, an attorney beside an editor, a teacher beside a strategist. This productive collision of perspectives is central to the MLA’s approach to education. 

Liberal Arts in the Future of Work

In addition to expanding your cultural and scientific knowledge, the UChicago MLA program focuses on an array of skills that will benefit you in a leadership role:

Verbal Communication

MLA courses follow a Socratic seminar format that’s driven by open, respectful discussion rather than top-down lectures. Through conversations about vital topics, you’ll grow as a communicator, listening carefully to what your classmates have to say and formulating compelling, thoughtful responses. Advocating for and defending your positions results in a deeper knowledge of the subject matter and reveals strategies you can apply to achieve your objectives in the workplace.

Writing

There are few traditional exams in the MLA program, but you will write a great deal. These tasks range from short reflections on assigned reading to full-length essays and finally a thesis or special project. By reading foundational texts from multiple disciplines, you’ll explore what factors go into a compelling piece of writing. Then, you’ll produce work of your own that investigates new ideas, interprets data, presents information from sources, and makes powerful arguments. You can access support along the way from a dedicated MLA writing advisor and writing workshops.

Collaboration

Even for highly technically capable professionals, it’s often difficult to collaborate with others efficiently and productively, not letting disagreements or incompatible work styles get in the way. The MLA gives you opportunities to engage with perspectives that are different from your own through discussions as well as reading and writing assignments. Exchanging ideas with others makes you aware of your own biases and intellectual tendencies, adding nuance to your views and helping you to become a better, more understanding team member. You’ll see how cooperation between people with varied strengths and diverse life experiences can serve to overcome individuals’ limitations, yielding better outcomes.

Critical and Synthetic Thinking

Strong leaders are defined by the ways they work through complicated issues, determining what ideas and sources of the information to embrace or to set aside. Studying the liberal arts gives you intellectual frameworks and discipline of mind to think analytically about a wide range of subject matter. You’ll break down concepts into their essential components and draw informed conclusions based on the evidence at hand. At the same time, you ‘ll become more capable of synthesizing varied perspectives and strategies into your own approach. By finding useful points in research and others’ experiences, you can identify the best way forward.

Problem Solving

In the MLA program, you’ll contemplate problems that humanity has wrestled with for centuries as well as a new wave of challenges. Our courses present structured, evidence-based frameworks to address questions such as what obligations a tech firm has to protect user data, what actions a corporation should take to protect the environment, and whether literature plays a central role in creating a more just society. These issues don’t have simple solutions, and individual or organization may view them with disparate perspectives. Considering those varied points of view will deepen your skills and enhance your mental discipline.

Adaptability

Today’s hyper-connected, global businesses operate at a lighting-fast pace that requires employees to pivot quickly between different types of tasks and monitor developments around the world. The MLA is designed to help you become a more flexible leader who can examine evidence and confidently enter conversations on a wide range of topics. As you take courses in fields of knowledge from poetry to astrophysics, you’ll stretch your mind to adapt quickly to shifting subject matter and situations.

Creativity

Innovation is key to organizational growth, so businesses value creative thinkers. The MLA nurtures your imagination in many ways, presenting you with great works from the past and driving you to rethink the established ways things are done. Rather than repeating lessons you’ve been taught, you’ll be constantly asked to apply logical frameworks, establish your own positions, and support your points with original arguments. Feedback from your peers and professor will motivate you to refine your thoughts and inspire you to pursue new avenues of learning. In your thesis or special project, you’ll be able to research, develop, and fully realize an idea that’s relevant to your personal or professional goals.

Happy man with arms folded

Prepare for the Next Stage in Your Career

As a student at one of the world’s top universities, you’ll gain access to exceptional career support resources. If you have questions about the next steps in your professional development, knowledgeable advisors are available to review your resume, recommend networking opportunities, and answer questions. And when you’re ready to seek a new role, you can participate in virtual and on-campus career events where world-class employers seek to recruit UChicago alumni. 

Our expansive, well-connected alumni network is more than 193,000 strong and stretches around the globe. These graduates include internationally respected experts and innovators working at the forefront of transformations in technology and business. By earning a degree from UChicago, you become part of an vibrant community that’s passionate about providing guidance and opportunities to the next generation of leaders. 

Graduates often find that their MLA experience opens new doors, whether stepping into senior leadership roles or making successful transitions into teaching or consulting. More importantly, they carry with them the analytical discipline, communication skill, and moral insight that define our alumni. 

Swipe Up: Is an MLA Right for You?