Bill Winters, the chief executive officer of the 160-year-old Standard Chartered bank, regards his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business as a “waste of time,” whereas he finds more value in his undergraduate degree in humanities from Colgate University.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua, Winters, now 63, was asked about his study recommendations for young people. He revealed that he studied international relations and history as an undergraduate, completing his degree in 1983. He endorsed these subjects, explaining that they taught him vital critical thinking skills.

But his MBA from Wharton in 1988 was unnecessary, he said.

“I obtained an MBA afterwards, but it turned out to be pointless,” Winters shared with Bloomberg. “It was during my time in university where I truly learned how to think. Over the past 40 years since I graduated, those skills have progressively deteriorated.”

Winters explained that critical thinking skills are “coming back” and becoming more important in the workforce now because AI is taking over tasks on the technical side.

“I really think in the age of AI that it’s critical that you know how to think and communicate,” Winters said.

He clarified that communication doesn’t mean to act like ChatGPT and churn out answers, but to know an audience and anticipate their needs with curiosity and empathy. Technical skills are being needed “less and less,” Winters said.

^{Bill Winters. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Winters started his career at JPMorgan in 1983, rising over nearly three decades to become the co-CEO of JPMorgan’s investment bank. He was considered a potential successor to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, but was ousted by Dimon in October 2009. He started his own fund management business, Renshaw Bay, in 2011 and joined Standard Chartered as CEO in 2015.

Winters isn’t the only executive encouraging the study of the humanities. Goldman Sachs’ Chief Information Officer, Marco Argenti, wrote in a post in the Harvard Business Review last year that engineers should take philosophy classes in addition to standard engineering courses. That’s the advice he gave his college-age daughter who was thinking about what to study.

Meanwhile, big tech companies are rapidly adopting AI in their operations as the technology sweeps over technical skills. AI generates about 30% of new code at Google and Microsoft, and up to half of software development within the next year at Meta.

“Vibe coding,” or having AI code entire apps and projects based on prompts, is also on the rise. Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated earlier this month that he had used AI coding assistants to “vibe code” a webpage in his spare time.