The Death of Liberal Arts?

College Majors
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<p>Newsweek reports that the recession and high unemployment rates are putting pressure on liberal arts offerings at colleges and universities:</p>

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After the endowment of Centenary College in Shreveport, La., fell by 20 percent from 2007 to 2009, the private school decided to eliminate half of its 44 majors. Over the next three to four years, classic humanities specialities like Latin, German studies, and performing arts will be phased out. It's quite a change from 2007, when NEWSWEEK labeled Centenary the "hottest liberal-arts school you never heard of," extolling its wide range of academics. </p>

<p>...there's no denying that the fight between the cerebral B.A. vs. the practical B.S. is heating up. For now, practicality is the frontrunner, especially as the recession continues to hack into the budgets of both students and the schools they attend.

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<p>Full story: Jobs:</a> The Economy, Killing Liberal Arts Education? - Newsweek.com</p>

<p>Although the article doesn't mention the ever-rising cost of an undergraduate education, I have to believe that is a factor as well. If a student can major in Art History and graduate with zero debt, there's not much pressure to immediately earn a high salary. Add tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to the scenario, and majors that lead directly to well-paying jobs look a lot more attractive.</p>

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<p>As an international student, one of the appealling things about a US education IS the liberal arts feel-thingy.</p>

<p>What will this do to the revenue from international students paying substantial fee?</p>

<p>If this perpetuates, I might as well go to my own country’s respected, practical uni (which definitely doesn’t have the ‘coolness’ factor branding of a US college experience)</p>

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<p>I have always advocated that the best preparation for careers would be vocational types of majors ( i.e. accounting,math, acturarial studies, criminology, engineering, science, computer science or even applied arts) together with a strong liberal arts background.This can be achieved by having a very intensive general education requirement or having a minor in a liberal arts program such as english or philosophy etc. In fact, the only major that I generally wouldn’t recommend is general business unless it is from a schools such as Wharton or CMU.</p>

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<p>It may be time to revisit the core curriculum. Places like Columbia and UChucago have core curricula to their advantage.</p>

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<p>I am not an advocate for a strong core like Columbia (actually, it’s more that I don’t agree with Columbia’s staunchly Western approach) because I think it stifles a lot of freedom that the student has. </p>

<p>However, as a liberal arts major, this is saddening to me. Our educational system is based on the old liberal arts universities and many of the majors that universities were founded on are being snatched away. </p>

<p>What do they want? A generation of only doctors and mechanics with no idea what the real world is like? No base on how to deal with people? Nobody who understands history enough not to repeat it? So sad.</p>

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<p>@romanigypsyeyes your statement is true to some extent…but you don’t need college to understand all of those things…if you take the full IB diploma in HS, you’ll pretty much get the whole liberal-artsy-feel…because you are required to take 1 social science, 1 natural science, math, 2 languages, and arts/drama/another social or natural science…so it’s not the end of the world just yet :P</p>

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<p>No, the liberal arts as they are in universities are not obsolete. It does train for something: academic research. It’s just that we don’t need the number of academics we’re currently training. We still need/should have liberal arts majors and degrees, but I agree the numbers should be cut down significantly. </p>

<p>Nonetheless, it (as well as general business degrees) has been such a cash cow for so many universities, esp those less reputable, that it’ll take a lot for force major changes. The terrible economic/financial crisis may yet have one benefit from this point of view.</p>

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<p>I think it’s sort of counter-intuitive to encourage pre-professionalism as the job market becomes rougher. People are less likely to spend their lives in one job, or even one career, than they were forty, fifty years ago. A broad underlying education that requires kids to think innovatively rather than learn a skill that could very well become obsolete seems the smarter route.</p>

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<p>Sure glassesarechic, in principle I agree with you. Nonetheless, it certainly possible to argue that many BA programs are so poorly thought out, or because of bureaucratic/historical reasons, neither encourage pre-professional skills (which may indeed become useless in a few years) NOR creative thinking. So the worst of both worlds.</p>

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<p>I think that both students and universities need to be practical. Unless you’re independently wealthy whats the point of getting a degree in something that doesn’t prepare you for a career? </p>

<p>State universities could follow the example of the school in the article and eliminate impractical and unproductive majors.</p>

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<p>Technical training is great for teaching students how to do things. Knowing how to assess what things are appropriate, warranted, ethical, and wise for the long run, are things that the liberal arts help to develop. If the only tool in your belt is a hammer, all the world’s problems tend to look like nails. Lord help us if we become a society of one-tool technicians.</p>

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<p>People talk about a liberal arts degree as giving “broad based skills”. Today, employers don’t want “broad skills”, they want specific skills. Why do you think so many people are out of work while at the same time so many people still have their jobs? The 10% of americans don’t have a specific skill that they can utilize for a company. “Strong analytical skills, verbal skills, good speaking skills, etc.” these are all very vague. People need to study something practical that they can actually use to benefit an employer (or themselves) when they go to an undergrad college.</p>

<p>A liberal arts degree is useful for grad school or professional school like law or management, so I think we should definitely continue offering them in our colleges. Things like latin or asian studies are not useful from a common sense standpoint at all. An employer wants to ask what you can bring to the table…those kind of degrees do nothing. So to sum things up, liberal arts degrees are good choices for those that want to go to grad school. For those that only want to go to a 4 year college, they should look for something more practical.</p>

<p>I think colleges should incorporate liberal artsy courses into their other programs. You don’t have to study them for all 4 years to develop ethics, understand history, understand modern politics, etc.</p>

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<p>People can obviously spend their money for college as they choose. But I am glad that my college bound seniors have both chosen majors that are career-oriented. I just couldn’t see spending $100,000 or more and then having the kid come home, unemployed and disillusioned. </p>

<p>A degree in Latin is lovely. My mother got one. She taught it in high school. But high schools don’t teach Latin much anymore. Fluency in other languages, that are still spoken is obviously valuable in a global economy. </p>

<p>I loved my history degree. I still love reading history. But I went into history knowing that it was only a springboard to professional school. A history degree is fine if you want to teach.</p>

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<p>romanigypsyeyes notes,“Nobody who understands history enough not to repeat it?”</p>

<p>Response; You are obviously referring to the statement, “People who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it,” which is the main reason that history is taught.</p>

<p>However, frankly, it doesn’t work. Human beings have made the same countless mistakes for generations. The Spartans and Athenians tried to get wealthy through power and ruling the world. They eventually were taken over. The Romans did the same thing and were subject to the same fate. The same could be said for the Mongols, the French, even as late as Nazi Germany. I would bet that there will still be countries in the future that subscribe to the “Conquer the world” form of diplomacy</p>

<p>Moreover, scapegoats have always been shown to be false,yet it continues today. There are still racists who don’t get the fact that hate breeds hate and killing and usually will result in it backfiring.</p>

<p>Look at what happened to this country over the last 15 years as another example of ignoring history. The Republicans were in charge and subscribed to the “trickle down” theory, which tries to benefit the top 2% richest people so that the money would “trickle down.” Sadly, this has never worked historically. If it did, there would be no French or Russian revolution.
Time and again, both countries and leaders of countries make the same historical mistakes.</p>

<p>In addition, every successful country eventually tries to tax the rich and give more to the poor with inceased social programs to that countries eventual demise. It has happened thoughout history and continues today.</p>

<p>Teaching history really doesn’t work historically. Yes, in theory, teaching history to everyone should avoid historical mistakes,but it just don’t work that way historically. Again, since it doesn’t work and hasn’t worked, one would think that we should stop teaching it. However, we haven’t learned from this either.</p>

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<p>@BrownPennLover
The VAST, VAST majority of American students have no access to IB programs. So that statement cannot hold true for the typical American student. </p>

<p>@taxguy
I’m not saying that no one is going to repeat history, but it is still worth it to know. Just by the mere fact that you are able to point out all of these instances in history proves why it’s worthwhile to know what has happened before your time. Imagine a world where all we know about history is what is taught to us during Black History month infomercials.</p>

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<p>Thank you for putting it more eloquently than I ever could :). </p>

<p>I am sticking to my original point. Do we really want a world full of technical careers that are narrow and focused? Or do we also want and need musicians, philosophers, artists, historians, etc? It sounds so black-and-white, so colorless, so boring. Yuck.</p>

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<p>For entry-level positions they do. And then, the ones who can communicate, analyze, and synthesize insights from disparate sources are the ones that rise up the ladder and become leaders. According to Yahoo!, mid-career History majors earn more than mid-career lawyers.</p>

<p>People can parlay a bachelor’s degree into an entry-level job. In very few fields anymore can one parlay a bachelor’s degree into a long-term career with growth opportunities. It takes both the broad-based and the specific skills.</p>

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<p>The article is poorly written. It does not describe ‘the fight between the cerebral B.A. vs. the practical B.S.’ but instead focuses on business degrees. General ‘business’ degrees don’t really teach anything, and this is nothing new. I resent the implicit argument that technical majors are soulless and without societal value, especially given that the article fails to address the relative merits of a rigorous scientific or technical education.</p>

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<p>Random thoughts in reponse to this thread:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Teaching Liberal Arts effectively REQUIRES a class small enough to facilitate discussion between EACH student and each other/professor. This is why large public research universities fail their liberal arts students. How can there possibly be dialogue among 80 or 120 or 300 students in an undergraduate English or History or Sociology or Philosophy class?</p></li>
<li><p>Due to 1) above, a proper liberal arts education is expensive. The largest expense in most businesses is payroll. A professor teaching a class of 18 is <em>expensive</em>. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>An admirable, cross functional goal for any student entering college should be to learn to think clearly, critically, and relevantly. This skill can be achieved in most any major. In fact the most precise thinkers I’ve met in business have been math/physics types. What are the liberal arts without the support of the scientific method? Mythology, musings, impressions.</p>

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<p>^^^ Math and physics are at the heart of the liberal arts.</p>

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<p>^^ Uh… math and science ARE liberal arts degrees :rolleyes:</p>