Why Study the Liberal Arts?

"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

—Albert Einstein

Competition in the marketplace often leads us to question the value of studies that don't offer a direct track to employment. But a broad-based liberal arts education does more than prepare you for a job. It lays the foundation for a future career while also preparing you to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Whether you choose to read a poem, peer into a microscope, act in a Shakespeare play, decipher a medieval manuscript, or unravel the mysteries of the human brain, you learn more than facts: you learn to think independently and make sound judgments. You expand your horizons, discover new perspectives, and acquire the tools to defend your point of view.

To be liberally educated is to be transformed. A liberal arts education frees your mind and helps you connect dots you never noticed before, so you can put your own field of study into a broader context. It enables you to form opinions and judgments, rather than defer to an outside authority.

The foundation for a liberal arts education lies in a course of study that combines both breadth and depth, and few educational institutions in the world are better equipped to provide students with more breadth and depth than UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Science.

Reaching across the disciplines

Every field of study is but one of many ways of partitioning knowledge — a part of a much greater whole. A liberal arts education bridges existing divides by offering a curriculum that creates coherence and integrity in your intellectual experience. L&S puts great emphasis on interdisciplinary perspectives and gives you the option of pursuing either a traditional major or designing new ones that reach across the disciplines.

Universities offer degrees in a chosen field. But life is not divided into majors. Then why should an educational experience be anything less than a unified whole?

A moral and historic compass

No matter how advanced our society, we never lose the need to reflect on life, to distinguish good from evil, justice from injustice, and what is noble and beautiful from what is useful.

The tradition of asking questions and reflecting on such issues has its origin in the classical thought of Greek philosophers. But it was during the Age of Enlightenment that the scope of liberal arts expanded and turned into a core curriculum that still comprises the broad range of humanities and sciences that provide the moral compass the ancient Greeks sought and that we still strive for.

Building the foundations of a future career

A liberal arts education does not preclude specific career goals and vocations, but complements them by providing students with the skills and knowledge that offer access to many careers.

Employers increasingly realize that a liberal arts education prepares students for real life challenges in a way that vocational schools often cannot. In 2000, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) surveyed employers across the country to determine what they look for in new employees. What they found is that graduates with the right skills rather than the right major had the edge. Skills can be learned, but good thinking cannot.

In today's economy, employers also desire transferable skills — skills employees take with them to any job, such as written and verbal communication skills, the ability to solve complex problems, to work well with others, and to adapt in a changing workplace — all hallmarks of a liberal arts education.

A liberal arts education prepares students to assume positions of leadership and to be flexible in the marketplace. You may acquire specific job skills while in college or after you graduate. But with a solid liberal arts education you are not limited to a particular niche, but freed and qualified for a wide range of opportunities for the rest of your life.

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Những luận điểm cổ vũ mạnh mẽ cho Liberal Arts Education trên đây là từ trang web của University of California - Berkeley, một university hàng đầu. Nhận thức thông thường cho rằng các university là nơi chuyên về research và đào tạo các ngành nghề chuyên môn hay nói cách khác là đào tạo theo chiều sâu, sản phẩm là các professional employee, ngược lại với mục tiêu của các liberal arts colleges là đào tạo theo chiều rộng.

Điều này là cho thấy khuynh hướng liberal arts vẫn là một cách tiếp cận quan trọng trong giáo dục đại học ở Mỹ.

New Era Ahead for Liberal Arts Education

America's higher education system -- a world model for many generations -- is under siege.

Changes in economics, technology, demographics and attitudes regarding the relevance of a college degree are forcing many institutions to rethink the way they operate. These changes are likely to endure well beyond the eventual recovery of the overall economy. Not since the 1960s, when the number of students attending colleges doubled and all-male institutions began enrolling women, has there been such a paradigm shift in higher education.

But momentous challenges can be a powerful incentive to do things better. They can also force us to take a necessary pause from the status quo to explore new and creative ideas for future development.

This was the impetus behind a first-of-its-kind conference held this spring at Lafayette College.

Titled "The Future of the Liberal Arts in America and its Leadership Role in Education and Around the World," and supported with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the conference was cosponsored by Lafayette and Swarthmore colleges and drew more than 200 college presidents, provosts, faculty and foundation and association officers from around the country.

Three days of concentrated discussion reinforced our belief that the model represented by the small residential college offers undergraduates a highly personalized education, and is of enduring importance in the development of 21st citizen-leaders.

A recent survey by the Annapolis Group, a consortium of 130 leading liberal arts colleges including Lafayette, found that 77 percent of alumni from liberal arts colleges rated their undergraduate experience as "excellent" compared to 59 percent from private universities and 56 percent from the top 50 public universities. 

Alumni from liberal arts colleges also reported being more satisfied with their graduate experience and felt better prepared for life after graduation, changing careers and attending graduate schools than did their peers from other institutions.

While this study reinforces that what we do has value, value is a relative term if what we offer is not within the financial means of many families. So how do we control rising tuition without impacting the educational experience we offer?

Sharing academic resources with other institutions and the private sector is a start. The Associated Colleges of the South, a consortium of 16 liberal arts colleges and universities, is already doing this. Through the use of video conferencing, a student at one institution can take courses at another. The five undergraduate and two graduate institutions that comprise Claremont Colleges in California also share campuses and resources.

This approach allows colleges to focus and invest precious resources on their strengths or centers of excellence without sacrificing diversity of offerings. It also provides a path for controlling costs.

Eugene Tobin, program officer of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, pointed out at the conference that liberal arts colleges "struggle alone with faculty development, curricular renewal, globalization... and with a vast array of administrative and operational service." These are areas of operation ripe for collaboration. It's unsustainable to be all things to all students, even though many of us have tried, adding programs and initiatives in an effort to fulfill our critical mission more thoroughly.

We also need to make a stronger case for the liberal arts narrative, which sometimes gets lost amidst a perception that the 4,000 institutions within our system of higher education are all the same.

Public and private universities, community colleges, and online and for-profit institutions employ different models of education than small, residential, undergraduate colleges. These liberal arts colleges provide a hand-tooled education that requires students to work collaboratively in small groups to solve complex problems.

Conducted on close-knit residential campuses, this approach fosters intellectual confidence, a sense of community and the ability to assess risks and move forward with courage in uncertain times. These are skills of the type needed by 21st century citizen leaders who will face problems not yet defined. But when they are, solutions will not come from the narrow margins of vocational training, but the interdisciplinary crossover of fields.

A recent study by the Social Science Research Council found those who tested best at the liberal arts skills of critical thinking, thoughtful communication and broad-based problem solving were far more likely to be better off financially than those who scored lowest. They were also three times less likely to be jobless, live with their parents and far more likely to avoid credit card debt. In addition, a 2011-2012 College Salary Report by Payscale.com lists the median starting and mid-career salaries of graduates from national liberal arts colleges among the highest in the nation.

Despite our meaningful new dialogue that reveals common philosophies, values and shared challenges, it is also clearer than ever that no two colleges are the same -- and as we collaborate and fine-tune what we offer, each institution must understand and clearly articulate its own unique mission. At the end of the day, we must discover more efficient ways to do what we do while preserving the best of who we are.

by Daniel Weiss, Lafayette College President.

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