Does a Liberal Arts Education Prepare a Student for a Career or to Be Lifelong Learner?
Much has been written nearly the perceived value of a liberal arts education, particularly lately as some politicians have emphasized the need for colleges to graduate individuals who are armed with specific professional skills when entering the workforce. But equally the debate wages on, more than employers are beginning to weigh in, affirming liberal arts proponents' belief in the benefits of a broad didactics.
"[Business leaders and Hr directors] are frustrated because what you … major in doesn't tell them plenty about whether yous have higher-order problem-solving [skills], and that'south what they're looking for," says Debra Humphreys, PhD, senior vice president for academic planning and public engagement with the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). "They're looking for people who tin … deploy their cognition and skills in a fast-changing, innovation-driven surroundings. They don't care and so much what your major is, merely they do intendance about your ability to really take what you know, communicate it, and utilize it to solve bug."
These abilities are what many believe a liberal arts education provides students. In fact, 93 percent of employers surveyed by the AAC&U in 2013 agreed that "candidates who demonstrate a capacity to retrieve critically, communicate conspicuously, and solve complex bug [are] more important than their undergraduate majors." In addition, four out of five employers agreed that all students should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences.
Established 100 years agone, the AAC&U is defended to making a liberal teaching and inclusive excellence the foundation of higher education. Co-ordinate to Humphreys, "liberal instruction" is another chapter in the development of liberal arts education.
The liberal arts curriculum originated in Europe — with roots in the Roman Empire — where it was taught exclusively in Latin with the intention of cultivating a particular quality of mind and a larger worldview. In the 20th century, its focus shifted to producing a heart class of socially responsible, well-informed citizens with common values.
Rather than focusing on specific disciplines — which were historically part of the liberal arts curriculum — AAC&U'south interpretation of a liberal arts education underscores its results.
"There'southward a long history of the philosophy of a liberal education, and it emerges from a set of disciplines that were predominant in early years, but they've evolved over time," Humphreys says. "[At AAC&U], we're very careful nigh how we define a broad liberal teaching, which isn't for us defined exclusively by a set of disciplines or specific majors, but instead is divers by what the philosophy of education does for students, what their outcomes are."
Across critical thinking and problem solving, Humphreys says these outcomes include analytical and ethical reasoning, broader knowledge of the world and diverse perspectives, high-level intellectual and applied skills, and a strong sense of personal and social responsibility.
"If at that place'south anything that's consistently been a focus of a liberal education over the years, it's educating the whole person for a life of well-being and flourishing, which includes work, but likewise includes other aspects of 1'due south life: responsible citizenship, membership in a community, an upstanding life as a family unit member, and a spiritual life," she says.
This focus on the wider earth, and the sense of duty to that world that is instilled in students, may exist one reason why liberal education is and so tied to equity and social justice. A liberal education, Humphreys says, cannot be achieved without addressing these issues.
"Students [at liberal arts colleges] are more than likely to have been in an educational setting where they've been challenged to solve bug with people whose views are different from their own and to really grapple with multifariousness bug," she says. "I recollect, because of that, they volition exist ameliorate prepared to live and work and to hopefully solve some of the intractable problems in our lodge related to diversity."
Access to Liberal Arts Pedagogy
This type of education, which has historically been available just to those who could beget to attend private liberal arts institutions, is becoming more accessible to all students. The Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), an organization made up of mostly pocket-sized, public liberal arts colleges, is working to provide a liberal arts education at the public school toll.
"We're actually aspirational. Nosotros wait to prestigious privates that have been in the education landscape for centuries and try to model ourselves along those lines," says COPLAC Director Bill Spellman. "We don't have the financial resources that they practice, the endowments that they do, simply we aspire to the student learning outcomes they provide."
"Nosotros serve a very big number of showtime-generation higher students and nontraditional, older students," he adds.
As public institutions, COPLAC schools offer students an education infused with both the stiff foundational knowledge provided past a liberal arts educational activity and specific professional skills needed in the workplace. Spellman believes that incorporating liberal arts components into the public college experience will aid graduates throughout their professional person lives, specially if they change career paths.
"In an interconnected world, liberal sensation — at least an introductory understanding of other cultures.— is disquisitional for businesspeople in the 21st century; it's critical for all professions," he says. "… Those skills are going to reward our graduates when they brainstorm their careers and as they [piece of work toward] professional person goals throughout their lifetimes.— the ones who have those soft skills and can employ them in what we all know is a changing economic landscape."
Critics debate that a liberal arts educational activity fails to provide students existent-life, applied-learning experience and doesn't adequately prepare them for future careers. However, employment information show otherwise.
In 2013, the unemployment rate for people who held a available's degree in the humanities was 5.4 per centum, while the unemployment rate for available'southward degree holders across all disciplines was only slightly less at 4.6 percent. In addition, the median bacon for those with an undergraduate degree in the humanities was only $7,000 less than all bachelor's degree holders at $fifty,000.
Humphreys says that despite positive employment numbers, the AAC&U is encouraging its 1,300-plus fellow member schools to integrate more easily-on learning experiences into undergraduate curricula. And while liberal arts majors may never accomplish the aforementioned salary as students who study science or technology, Spellman says that, contrary to pop belief, graduates of liberal arts colleges are not at a disadvantage when it comes to finding employment.
"Nosotros seem to have to make this statement once again and again — it's near a generational thing — that there is no incongruity between arts and sciences and applied learning and job opportunities," he says.●
Alexandra Vollman is the editor of INSIGHT Into Diversity.
Source: https://www.insightintodiversity.com/the-liberal-arts-a-broad-education-for-lifelong-success/
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