Recent economic downturns have led some liberal arts institutions to consider changes to their program offerings. With this article we seek to enhance the understanding of the correlation between liberal arts and pre-professional programs with the economy in order to help inform higher education faculty and administration when exploring changes to their institutions' identity. Our research suggests that the percentage of liberal arts degree completers is sensitive to macroeconomic conditions. While driving forces behind these results were not investigated in this study, we consider two possible causes for our findings. Specifically, we suggest a student driven and faculty/institution driven reason for our findings.