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.
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:
- How do we preserve human connection and creativity in workplaces increasingly mediated by AI?
- What responsibilities do organizations have to protect privacy?
- How should leaders respond when technological efficiency collides with human values?
Through the MLA’s interdisciplinary lens, you’ll learn to approach these questions with intellectual confidence and moral clarity.
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:
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have questions about our master’s degree in liberal arts that aren’t answered here? Find answers on our FAQ page
What can you do with a Master of Liberal Arts?
The MLA can support many different next steps, depending on your individual goals. Some graduates use the degree to advance in their current field or move into new roles, while others pursue teaching, consulting, further graduate study, or more independent intellectual and creative work.
Because students enter the program with different goals and at different stages of their careers and lives, there is no single path after graduation. Our student stories offer a closer look at how individual graduates have used the MLA to shape what came next.
Do employers value what the liberal arts teach?
The liberal arts develop the critical thinking, communication, collaboration, adaptability, and judgment that employers increasingly value across industries. The MLA is designed to strengthen these capabilities through discussion-driven seminars, intensive writing, and sustained engagement with complex ideas and differing perspectives.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies analytical thinking as the most valued skill across industries for the third consecutive year, with seven in ten surveyed companies calling it essential; resilience, flexibility, and agility follow closely behind. And as artificial intelligence reshapes the workplace, these distinctly human capabilities are becoming even more important.
A study published by Jobs for the Future found that job postings mentioning AI more than doubled between December 2022 and December 2024, reinforcing the value of professionals who can ask better questions, interpret information, communicate clearly, and exercise sound judgment when using emerging technologies.
What career support is available to students?
MLA students have full access to UChicago career resources, including advisors who review résumés, connect you with networking opportunities, and conduct mock interviews. You can also attend virtual or on-campus career events to meet with top employers who are actively recruiting UChicago alumni and join a global alumni network of nearly two hundred thousand.
Can you develop leadership skills through a liberal arts degree?
The MLA can deepen how you think about leadership by giving you the opportunity to examine different leadership traditions, approaches, and dilemmas through literature, philosophy, history, and politics. In the Ethics & Leadership concentration, students explore questions of judgment, responsibility, practical wisdom, organizational life, and the ways leaders respond to complexity.
Recent courses include Foundations of Leadership, Aristotle and Confucius on Leadership, and Leading with Practical Wisdom. Through seminar discussion and close engagement with ideas and examples, students reflect on different leadership styles and frameworks alongside classmates who bring their own professional and leadership experience to the conversation.