The Importance Of A Liberal Arts Education
09.04.2005 | Chris BaileyOne of my pet passions (though, right now, largely unrealized) is helping liberal arts college students integrate the full college experience and build a solid portfolio for the upcoming world of work. The reason for this passion is that I wish someone had helped me do this throughout my collegiate days. I was a history major and approached my choice with love and fascination, but also with a certain anxiety as to what in the hell I would do with it once I stepped on the other side of graduation. Work in a museum? Go to grad school? What does a wandering historian do?
And that was part of the problem…I felt like since I was trained for being a historian, that was what I was. I internalized my subject as a part of my identity. Perhaps folks like advisors and professors did make it clear that I was actually being taught valuable skills to take to potential employers (It’s equally possible that they were trapped in a familiar academic mindset that the purpose of college is to study for its own sake). If they did, it didn’t quite penetrate my thick early-twentysomething skull.
Where’s all of this coming from? This morning, as I was perusing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s website looking for the latest Steelers news, I ran across this article on how some of this year’s college grads are still struggling to find their first job. It’s a well-constructed and thoughtful article on the seemingly conflicting purpose of liberal arts schools: should they teach their students toward a future job or should they teach toward intellectual growth. As with anything complex and paradoxical, I think both notions are right. Jim Fitch, Associate Director of the office of career services at Allegheny College, mentions this inherent tension when he says:
The faculty would tend to encourage students to study for the sake of
studying. That’s what the liberal arts tradition is all about. But we help the students take that learning and build some
cognitive hooks.
Where I think most liberal arts colleges fall down is not in helping their students realize they have marketable skills and experiences. For the most part, I think there is a growing emphasis on how those ways of thinking about history can benefit employers now. Where liberal arts colleges need to pick up the pace is in helping their students build those "cognitive hooks." Or in other words, help students better market themselves…give them the tools to help a prospective employer connect the dots between studying Russian literature and writing copy for magazine ads. The fact is that employers are eager to hire liberal arts students simply because they are well-rounded individuals who are prepared to think. Jeff Martineau, Director of Higher Education at the American Academy for Liberal Education, argues:
A general education is useful for students because it allows them to
step into any profession and succeed, which is important in a shrinking
marketplace. This is especially true in a job market where today’s
college graduates will have four to five careers. To make those transitions across fields does not require a specialist. It requires people who can adapt.
In a service or creative economy, I think the pendulum is swinging toward those folks who can think, process diverse information, and generate insights. Sounds like liberal arts colleges are just the place for tomorrow’s best and brightest. We just need to help grads connect the dots.
12 Responses to “The Importance Of A Liberal Arts Education”
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As a liberal arts college graduate myself (majors in English and communications), I wholly support your idea that both overall learning and “cognitive hooks” are essential. This dilemma reminds me of the same challenge I now have in convincing companies and individuals that the “soft skills” (leadership, communication, teambuilding, etc.) really can pay off in “hard results.” The challenge is in finding ways to measure those results.
I think we all KNOW that liberal arts educations – like effective communication skills – are “good” but we have trouble living what we supposedly know. Maybe if we tried just living it – or just BEING the people we are meant to be – instead of convincing someone of the importance of that being, we might discover that we don’t have to determine what’s important based on what someone else says is important.
I realize that making this impact on employers and leaders of organizations is somewhere down the road, but I also realize that transformation has to start someplace. Supporting each other in finding and applying those “cognitive hooks” and then living what we know can give us more stories to share with each other as we build our cases.
People shouldn’t study for the sake of studying, they should be encouraged to study to learn how to do it well. Then, when they need to learn something later in life, they’ll know at once how to set about it in the most effective way.
I think the problem with employers is the familiar short-term mentality. They want to hire people who, they believe, won’t need training to be useful. They forget the future isn’t predictable. What people start by knowing well may quickly become obsolete. Then they need to learn again.
Someone who thinks they already know it all (because of their prior education in the specific discipline) may turn out to be a liability who can’t adapt quickly enough to change. Far better to hire someone who knows how to learn and realizes what he or she knows already isn’t going to last them long.
It was Socrates who said: “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Not a bad start for someone about to change Western civilization permanently.
Carnival of the Capitalists – Rethink(IP) Edition
Thanks for wandering on by Rethink(IP) for this weeks installment of the Carnival of the Capitalists. If you are scratching your head trying to figure out what the heck Rethink(IP) is all about head on over to the Blawg…
I am a big fan of a sound liberal arts education. I graduated with a BA in Language and Composition with a minor in Sociology and that education has served me very well in the business world.
I’ve been in a hiring position on more than one occasion. While I am almost always interviewing for a job that in theory requires particular skills, I am also VERY cognicent of the fact that the person I hire will most likely NOT be doing that job 18 months from now, but WILL still be with the company. I need people I can redeploy broadly.
While I admire the principle of producing a well rounded well educated person that may have at one point been the driving force behind a liberal arts education, and I find the skills imparted by some subdisciplines thereof (particularly the data mining and writing skills of historians), I find most people I’ve encountered with liberal arts degrees quite narrow.
The modern liberal arts education includes only token versions of mathematics and science, insufficient to develop the analytical muscles needed for many jobs in the modern world. Because of these difficiencies they frequently can’t follow the thought train when economics or business get’s too quantitative either.
If I really need to find someone with a well rounded education, I’ll look for a physicist. They usually have very strong mathematical skills, strong physical science backgrounds, strong analytical muscles, strong capabilities understanding and modeling complex systems, some ability to program, etc. I can ramp them up for almost anything because their minds *track*.
What I would kill for is a person who combines the analytical skills of a physicist with the writing and textual research skills of as historian.
Quadrupole, I think you raise an interesting argument. The value of hiring a liberal arts grad does have something to do with work. There are some jobs and career paths where I would be sorely unqualified to enter: anything heavy in math, for sure.
I would argue that how many folks out there who get just an engineering, economics, or a physics degree also have that background in history, philosophy, or sociology? May be great at the analytical stuff, but when it comes to getting creative how does it work out?
I’d also argue that the modern world you mention seems to veer toward highly technical work. It might be that we’re viewing business from different perspectives. Yes, most jobs require analytical tools, but there are different types of analysis outside of math and science. From experience, I can say that history, anthropology, and philosophy have their own versions of deep thinking that are just as important.
Thanks for the different insight and contribution. Any perspectives from other folks? Honest debate is always appreciated here
LOL…
Most science and engineering programs has substantial requirements for liberal arts (history, philosophy, sociology,etc) including requirements to take things above the nose bleed level (ie, poetry for chip heads doesn’t count). Most science and engineering programs also have strong foreign language requirements (in fact where did my undergrad, a science major had to take more foreign language than any liberal arts major not majoring specifically in a foreign language or comparative literature).
It’s hard to buy into the whole ’sure, they can do math, but do they have a broad education’ myth when I’ve been in colloquium of physicists where the talk was titled ‘The incalculable in pursuit of the ineffable’ and the whole room got the Oscar Wilde reference.
Spending long evenings discussing things lik Searles Chinese room and it’s relationship to computability questions in Turing machines over coffee with mathematicians also disuades me from this view. The philosophy students couldn’t come along for that ride, they didn’t have the education to be able to track the conversation…
As to creative… ever watch a scientist groove with an artist? They grok each other quite well, because both are fundamentally about acts of creation. Engineers exhibit this characteristic somewhat less.
My essential point is this: no single skill is going to get you were you need to go, you need a toolbox of skills to thrive. Increasingly the *way* mathematical and scientific thought shapes your mind is an invaluable skill. It’s absence is increasingly like the absence of literacy. Sure, many jobs 50 years ago didn’t require much reading… but you still found a literate person more useful and easier to advance. A liberal arts education fundamentally fail to provide a broad education in the modern world because it neglects mathematical and scientific literacy.
The other skills I kill for in employees are writing/communication skills (which no one seems to teach anymore), people skills (which seem to *mostly* come through experience), and organization skills (I have no idea where these come from
).
Please note, I am NOT trying to knock on the liberal arts ideal here, it’s one I really like. The idea of getting a broad education that prepares you for anything deeply appeals to me. My beef is that I no longer feel liberal arts programs are meeting that ideal.
Yeah, I wondered if someone would check me on that gross generalization. I really dig the different perspective you offer.
And the thing is that you’ve caught me. I played the system so that I got out of taking any college-level math (did I mention that I really dislike it) and only took biology. Looking back, I WISH that I was forced to take a wider array of different subjects. It would have expanded my world, enhanced my thinking (yes, analytical skills), and probably made me a bit more marketable. Who knows…maybe I would be working in the tech field rather than the non-profit right now. So, I’ll agree whole-heartedly that there is much to love about the liberal art ideal and yet many programs don’t achieve it. Probably doing their students a great disservice at the same time.
The fact is so many college students don’t know what they want to do professionally; and no matter what they choose when they leave college, they’ll probably change career path at some point. All of this points to the need for our universities to prepare students with a broad, yet deep education. It’s curious…it used to be a world of specialization; now it seems that generalization is making a comeback.
Thanks for keeping the dialogue alive
I think a point where we can both agree is that you should go to college for an education, not vocational training. The world moves to fast for college to be worth the cost and effort for ephimeral vocational skills.
My basic thesis is that what constitutes an education is shifting, as it has historically. Understanding the world around you today requires a far greater mathematical and scientific literacy than is currently being taught.
Could I interest you in a collaboration on what would constitute an education that is true to liberal ideals?
My opening suggestion would be:
Every student should have minimally:
2 semesters of calculus
2 semesters of a hard laboratory science (chemistry or physics)
1 semester of proof intensive mathematics (this is frequently linear algebra or abstract algebra in todays curricula).
1 semester of statistics
The above would roughly be the equivalent for a liberal arts major of what a science major has to take of the liberal arts today.
Additionally I’d suggest:
2 semesters of calculus based economics
2 semesters of computer programming
I have some thoughts on what ‘liberal arts’ one should take, but I’d prefer to put them forth in augmentation to your thoughts, as I’m pretty sure you know that ground better.
Please feel free to suggest additions or ommisions… I’m quite curious to hear your opinions…
You bet. I’ll assume that a college student needs at least 128 credit hours to graduate. That might be 32 classes at 4 credit hours per. I’ll take some of your ideas with a few alterations:
2 classes of calculus
1 class of statistics
2 classes of laboratory science (bio or chem)
1 class of physics
2 classes of econ and business
3 classes of history
2 classes of english
3 classes of philosophy/religion
1 class of psychology
2 classes of social science
2 classes of performing arts
3 classes of foreign language
2 classes dedicated to internships/real world learning
6 classes dedicated to major
That should add up to 32 classes. It’s not as math-focused as your suggestions, but I’ll argue that a true liberal arts focus needs to include a wider array of subjects that aren’t necessarily hard science/math. Good social science should challenge research abilities, philosophy should challenge assumptions, history should challenge worldview, etc.
As I think about it, the real test comes in helping students connect all of these disparate subjects together and this is truly where most LA colleges drop the ball. Maybe there ought to be a bi-monthly advising program which focuses on bringing all the learning together.
Whatcha think?
Your 128 credits for graduation is in the righ ball park, but in my experience you are usually looking at 3 credits per class, rather than 4. This would put you in the neighborhood of 40 classes (presuming that you throw in a few stray credits here and there for things like labs).
OK… let me see if we can tally up the points of agreement. I believe we both agree on the following:
2 classes of calculus
1 class of statistics
2 classes of laboratory science (bio or chem)
1 class of physics
3 classes of history (I’m a big fan of history)
I’m made slightly nervous by your 2 semesters of econ/business for two reasons:
1) While I’ve seen some very good business classes, most that I’ve seen go by are junk.
2) If you aren’t doing a mathematically backed econ (which pretty much entails calculus) you are essentially telling people pretty stories, again, mostly junk. I counter with:
2 classes of calc based econ or accounting
On the english and philosophy requirements… hmm… I think you are overweighting here. I’ll merrily discuss philosophy from Aristotle to Nagel, but I’ve mostly found it of very little utility, other than to be able to chase down the ancenstry of various and sundry types of muddled headedness. I understand that philosophy should challenge assumptions, but *so* many of the assumptions *in* philosophy are so naive or wrong headed I have trouble taking it seriously as a source of that. If you want to challenge assumptions, put a freshman through an angular momentum lab, *that* will challenge his assumptions. So exposure is important, but 3 semesters seems excessive. I’m also extremely skeptical of what passes for english these days. I presume when you say english you primarily mean literature? Consider this counter proposal:
2 classes of philosophy/religion
2 classes of comparative literature or rhethoric
I tend to consider psychology a social science, why do you call it out here? (Note, question seeking to understand, not confront).
My tendency is to agree with your
2 classess of social science
but my past perception was that there were a lot of ‘fluff’ classes on offer in those fields, how would you suggest keeping the social science requirement rigorous? And why do you see social sciences as challenging research abilities? Most of my exposure to social sciences has been related to how amazingly unrigorous and poorly thought out a lot of it’s research is.
I see your
2 classes of performing arts
and raise you
2 classes of fine arts
Likewise, I believe the normal standard for foreign language today is:
4 classes of foreign language
While I appreciate the value of internships/real world learning, I tend to see those as strongly encouraged extracurricular activities rather than requirements. I’d tend to advocate dropping those from the curriculum.
I’d also argue strongly for adding back the
1 class of proof based mathematics
Until you get to that point, what you are doing in math is really more like spelling and grammar than literature.
I’d also argue for at least
1 class of programming
programming does interesting and valuable things to your mind. It changes the way you think about things.
This would leave (presuming I can count, which is always a dubious presumption):
13 classes dedicated to major or electives
you can’t even begin to get a degree in any technical field with only 6 classes to devote to your major, there just isn’t enough space.
This takes you to 40 classes total. Thoughts?
On the issue of pulling it all together… the best solution there seems to me to be an academic environment in which the faculty interact cross fields and collaborate. This will likely filter down to the students and spur collaboration.