importance of liberal education essay

The Life-Shaping Power of Higher Education

By  Marvin Krislov

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As I begin my first full semester as president of Pace University after serving for 10 years as president of Oberlin College, I find myself looking to the past and the things I’ve learned. I can’t help but reflect on the extraordinary changes I’ve witnessed in American higher education along the way.

This past decade has been one of transformation for our nation and our colleges and universities. Barack Obama was twice elected president of the United States. We experienced the Great Recession -- the worst economic downturn since the Depression. Income inequality has grown from a significant problem to a polarizing divide, with ripples felt in every corner of our society. The internet has become the newswire of the world and the center of our economic might, as well as a battlefield where terror is waged and democracy is tested.

Same-sex marriage has moved from limited recognition in a few states to the boldly embraced law of the land. Rather than evolving into a postracial society, we’ve realized we have a long, long way to go. And after a bare-knuckle election that splintered families and friendships, Donald Trump was elected president of our not so United States. In the words of the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

American higher education has also been on a journey. There have been many changes and challenges during my time as a college president. But one important thing hasn’t changed: the value of a college education and its ability to transform students’ lives.

That life-shaping power sometimes gets overlooked in the shifting landscape of higher education. Colleges and universities are facing an array of economic, demographic and sociopolitical challenges. Among the most significant is the public’s changing perception of the purpose and value of a college education. The short version: many Americans think a college degree should be a ticket to a specific job -- the cheaper the ticket, the better.

Campus climate issues have also changed dramatically since 2007. While many small residential colleges exist in a kind of bubble, many of those climate issues mirror what is happening in our society. Race is one example. The realization of a postracial society has not been achieved, and the nation has seen race become a much more contentious issue. The killings of unarmed black men by police officers spawned the Black Lives Matter movement and fueled student activism on campuses across the country. The hatred and bigotry displayed in Charlottesville, Va., undoubtedly will spark difficult conversations and more this fall.

Ensuring free speech is another campus issue that has grown more challenging over the past decade. In the classrooms and on campuses, getting students to discuss difficult issues freely and respectfully remains a challenge.

Of course, no reference to free speech is complete without also acknowledging the mechanism by which it is exercised. Social media and technology have been a decidedly mixed blessing in promoting civil discourse. Read the comments section on just about any news story having to do with one of America’s top liberal arts schools, and you’ll find no shortage of trolls and vitriolic anti-intellectualism.

Yet one thing hasn’t changed: the value of a liberal arts education. I received an outstanding liberal arts education as an undergraduate, and it continues to shape my career and my life. I firmly believe liberal education is the best preparation a young person can have for the job market and a rewarding, meaningful life as a citizen of our democracy.

Continuing the Great Conversation

Today, however, liberal education finds itself under fire more often than in the past. The primary reason for this -- to borrow a phrase from the movie Cool Hand Luke -- is a failure to communicate. Many colleges and universities that embrace liberal education suffer from a certain degree of self-satisfaction. We know our graduates do well in their lives and careers. We celebrate that within our own communities. But as a group we don’t do an effective job of communicating that success to the broader public. We need to better explain what liberal education is. We need to better articulate what we do -- and why it is so important for our country and the world.

That said, the value of liberal arts education can be hard to convey because it can’t be boiled down to a simple sound bite or an eye-popping starting salary. The mission of most liberal arts colleges is to educate the whole person rather than training graduates to succeed at specific jobs. Robert Maynard Hutchins, the great American educator who studied at Oberlin College and Yale University and served for decades as president of the University of Chicago, wrote in a famous essay on education titled “The Great Conversation” that the aim of liberal education is human excellence both private and public -- meaning excellence as a person and as a member of society.

Liberal education does that by teaching students to become lifelong learners who are their own best teachers. It enables them to take intellectual risks and to think laterally -- to understand how the humanities, the arts and the sciences inform, enrich and affect one another. By connecting diverse ideas and themes across the academic disciplines, liberal arts students learn to better reason and analyze, and express their creativity and their ideas.

College should do more than get you one job. It should prepare you to succeed in multiple careers. Studies show that current college graduates will likely change careers a dozen times in their lives -- and do so before turning 40. If all they learned in college was how to do one thing well, navigating those changes is going to be tough.

Successful careers and financial gain are just part of the value of a liberal arts education. Its true worth is measured not in dollars but in meaningful lives well lived. Through the years, the breadth, depth, flexibility and rigor of American liberal arts education has enriched countless lives in myriad ways. It has also produced many leaders in virtually every field of human endeavor. Other countries are now embracing the liberal arts in a bid to create employees who are not rigid technocrats but more flexible and innovative thinkers.

Given the global leadership of American higher education, and the global economy’s demands for flexible, adaptable employees, undergraduate liberal education is more than relevant. It remains one of our country’s great assets.

Is it for everyone? Of course not. But for those who pursue liberal arts education, it can be life transforming.

I see this life-transforming potential across all types of colleges and universities. Some people might consider Pace University an unusual next step for someone who spent a decade as president of a small, semi-rural school in a Midwestern state. Yet while Oberlin and Pace are vastly different institutions, they hold equally impressive records and embrace certain common values and concentrations of study -- and both provide an important liberal arts education.

Despite its modest size, Oberlin College has never had difficulty distinguishing itself from much larger, more recognizable metropolitan peers. It was established nearly 200 years ago with an abolitionist philosophy that challenged the conventional thinking of the time. It would become the oldest coed liberal arts college in the nation and the first to admit students of all races. It would see its first African-American graduate become the first black lawyer admitted to the bar in the state of New York and play an integral role in the early years of Howard University.

Oberlin continues to embrace a progressive legacy. Its campus community is known for its diversity and inclusion, its advocacy of LGBTQ issues, and its social and political activism. In addition, the college has distinguished itself for a commitment to arts and culture through the extremely selective Oberlin Conservatory of Music. It was also an early proponent of study in sustainability and effective environmental stewardship.

With a total enrollment of 13,000 students across three campuses, Pace is significantly larger than Oberlin. Its students hail from all 50 states and 109 countries around the world. Two-thirds study at the university’s flagship location, a textbook metropolitan center in lower Manhattan, while the rest opt for its Pleasantville and White Plains campuses in Westchester County to the north.

Long regarded as a commuter accounting school, the university now offers over 100 majors and degree programs and encompasses six schools, including a law school consistently ranked third in the nation for its environmental law program, plus ultracompetitive undergraduate and graduate performing arts programs.

Despite their differences, diversity and gender equality are hallmarks of student populations at both Oberlin and Pace. Pace, like Oberlin, was ahead of its time and admitted women and minorities from the beginning, in 1906. Today, nearly two-thirds of students are women and more than half self-identify as a minority. Unlike at Oberlin, many Pace students are the first in their families to go to college. And while income is just one outcome by which to measure the value of a college education, a study by the Equality of Opportunity Project ranks Pace first in New York -- and second in the nation -- for economic mobility based on students who enter college at the bottom fifth of income distribution and end up in the top fifth.

That’s just another example of the life-transforming potential of the liberal arts. I am inspired and energized by the changes I have witnessed in American higher education over the past 10 years. As I look to the future as president of Pace University, I am excited by the promise and possibility of things to come and the impact the university will have on the lives of current and future generations of students.

The past decade is proof that higher education is more relevant and essential to our modern world than ever before -- and the value of a college degree has never been greater than it is today. Providing access to such an education for any student who wishes to pursue it strikes me as a goal that any great nation should and must embrace.

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Here are some more reasons why liberal arts matter

Associate Professor of History, Assistant Dean of Faculty for Pre-Major Advising, Dartmouth College

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Cecilia Gaposchkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Lately, in the heated call for greater STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education at every level, the traditional liberal arts have been needlessly, indeed recklessly, portrayed as the villain. And STEM fields have been (falsely) portrayed as the very opposite of the liberal arts.

The detractors of the liberal arts (who usually mean, by liberal arts, “humanities”) tend to argue that STEM-based education trains for careers while non-STEM training does not; they are often suspicious of the liberal political agenda of some disciplines. And they deem the content of a liberal arts education to be no longer relevant. The author of a recent article simply titled, “ The Liberal Arts are Dead; Long Live STEM conveyed this sentiment when he said, "Science is better for society than the arts.”

I see this misunderstanding even at my own institution, as a humanist who oversees pre-major advising and thus engages with students and faculty (and parents) from all over the university. The idea that STEM is something separate and different than the liberal arts is damaging to both the sciences and their sister disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Pro-STEM attitudes assume that the liberal arts are quaint, impractical, often elitist, and always self-indulgent, while STEM fields are practical, technical, and represent at once “the future” and “proper earning potential.”

STEM is part of liberal arts

First, let’s be clear: This is a false and misleading dichotomy. STEM disciplines are a part of the liberal arts. Math and science are liberal arts.

In the ancient and medieval world, when the liberal arts as we know them began to take shape, they comprised grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy (the last three we would count as STEM disciplines today; and music, dealing mostly with numerical relationships through sound, was really more akin to what we would today call physics).

Advocates of STEM are missing the point. The value of a liberal arts education is not in the content that is taught, but rather in the mode of teaching and in the intellectual skills that are gained by learning how to think systematically and rigorously.

These intellectual skills include how to assess assumptions; develop strategies from problem solving; test ideas against evidence; use reason to grapple with information to come to new conclusions; and develop courses of action to pursue those conclusions.

Yes, some disciplines might prepare for certain types of problem solving (how do I get a computer to integrate information from two different consumer data platforms in the most elegant fashion?) more strongly than others (what do I recommend to investors based upon my French-language research of markets in Madagascar?).

And some areas of knowledge might be more useful than others in certain industries.

But in all cases, the point of the liberal arts approach is to learn how to think, not simply what to know – especially since information itself is now so easily acquired through Google and the smartphone. If anything, content is too abundant for any single individual to master. What is much more important is knowing what on Earth to do with the glut of information available in most situations.

And here is where the liberal arts training comes in.

A liberal arts education (STEM-based or otherwise) is not just about learning content, but about knowing how to sort through ambiguity; work with inexact or incomplete information, evaluate contexts and advance a conclusion or course of action.

In other words, it is not about learning the prescription to achieve a textbook result. It is about having the intellectual capacity to attack those issues for which there is yet no metaphorical text or answer.

Is liberal arts the choice of the elite?

Now, let us take up the elephant in the room. Many people would argue an engineering degree balanced with some English courses might be a nice idea.

But for a student to major in English or studio art is sheer craziness. What does one do with a studio art degree except become a starving artist? What does one do with an English degree except wait tables?

Those who make such arguments usually conflate “liberal arts” with “humanities,” those disciplines that do not have an obvious “end career goal” or a “remuneration outcome” at the other side of the college degree.

When detractors hear educators like me say that “the liberal arts” are valuable, they understand us to mean that they fulfill something in the core of our souls. That is, that the humanities are personally and intellectually valuable, but not remuneratively so.

They hear us acknowledge that the humanities are decidedly not practical, and are thus are the purview of the elite and privileged who can afford to indulge in them. But, of course, the idea that the only remunerative professions out there are in science and technology is silly.

Whole industries do in fact exist that are not based on STEM premises: media, consulting, fashion, finance, publishing, education, government and other forms of public service are just a few.

And even those reputedly “tech” industries that STEM advocates see as our future (IT, health, energy) require all sorts of nontechnical employees to get their companies to work.

Further, basic communication, speaking and writing skills are absolute must-haves of anyone who is going to climb the ladder in any high-tech industry .

What defines success

That said, the so-called “practical” major (and I reject the designation) might have a more obvious, path to the entry level job of a solid career. This is only because the major has an apparently known professional pathway.

But that does not guarantee success in that field.

In fact, those other disciplines that detractors of the liberal arts (read: humanities) assume are dead ends could well be fantastic springboards to amazing professional lives.

They are not a guarantee of one – and neither is a STEM degree . But they give those students who have committed seriously to the study of excelling within their college discipline (be it classics, anthropology, or theoretical physics) the capacity and the ability to achieve one.

Some people talk about this as critical thinking; some as the ability to think outside of the box; some as “transferability” – the ability to carry critical intellectual skills from one challenge or industry to another.

In my view, done right, liberal education makes one smarter and more able to be successful and innovative on the path one embarks on. And although we can all point to exceptions (would that Bill Gates had graduated from college!), for the most part, it is those who know how to think nimbly, creatively and responsibly that end up building extraordinary careers.

Why we need a liberal arts education

Let us return to my earlier point about STEM disciplines.

We should not only accept that they are part of a liberal arts education, but we must understand that teaching them within a liberal arts framework makes the financial investment of learning them of greater value.

Peter Robbie , an engineering professor at Dartmouth College who teaches human centered design, explains why liberal education is so critical to engineering training. He said in an email to me that:

creative design process of engineering provides the means for complex, multidisciplinary problem-solving. We need to educate leaders who can solve the ‘wicked problems’ facing society (like obesity, climate change, and inequality). These are multifactorial problems that can’t be solved within a single domain but will need liberally-educated, expansive thinkers who are comfortable in many fields.

As we know, an engineer who has basic cultural competency skills (honed, for instance, through cultural studies) will be an attractive asset for an American engineering firm trying to branch out in China.

Likewise, a doctor who knows how to listen to patients will be a better primary care doctor than one who only knows the memorizable facts from medical school. This is one reason that medical schools have recently changed the requirements of application to encourage coursework in sociology and psychology.

It is the ability to use these skills honed by different types of thinking in various contexts that allows people to build beyond their particular ken.

And that is what a liberal arts education – science, technology, humanities and social sciences – trains. It prepares students for rich, creative, meaningful and, yes, remunerative, careers.

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Why Liberal Education Matters

The true aim of the humanities is to prepare citizens for exercising their freedom responsibly...

• MAY 15, 2010

The true aim of the humanities is to prepare citizens for exercising their freedom responsibly.

By PETER BERKOWITZ

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Life & Letters Magazine

The Value of the Liberal Arts

By Hina Azam September 20, 2022 facebook twitter email

Those of us who teach in liberal arts colleges are passionate about the value of a liberal arts education. But for those outside of academia – even for those who might have received a degree in UT’s College of Liberal Arts – the precise meaning of “liberal arts” can be murky.  What, exactly, is meant by the “liberal arts”? What is the history of the idea, and how does it translate into the educational concept we know as a “liberal-arts curriculum,” or, more broadly, a “liberal education”? What is the value of a liberal arts education to both individual and collective life? This essay presents a brief overview of the idea, history, purposes, and values of liberal arts education, so that you, our readers, may understand the passion that inspires our faculty’s teaching and scholarship, and be similarly inspired.

What are the Liberal Arts?

The idea of the liberal arts originates in ancient Greece and was further developed in medieval Europe. Classically understood, it combined the four studies of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music – known as the quadrivium – with the three additional studies of grammar, rhetoric, and logic – known as the trivium . These artes liberales were meant to teach both general knowledge and intellectual skills, and thus train the mind. This training of the mind as well as this foundational body of content knowledge and intellectual skills was regarded by scholars and educators as necessary for all human beings – and especially a society’s leaders – in order to live well, both individually and collectively.

These liberal arts were distinguished from vocational or clinical arts, such as law, medicine, engineering, and business. These latter were conceived as servile arts – i.e. arts that served concrete production or construction. These productive/constructive arts were also known as artes mechanicae , “mechanical arts,” which included crafts such as weaving, agriculture, masonry, warfare, trade, cooking, and metallurgy. In contrast to the vocational or mechanical arts, the liberal arts put greater weight on intellectual skills – the ability to think and communicate clearly, and to analyze and solve problems. But more distinctively, the liberal arts emphasized learning and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, independent of immediate application. The liberal arts taught not only bodies of knowledge, but – more dynamically – how to go about finding and creating knowledge – that is, how to learn. Finally, the liberal arts taught not only how to think and do, but also how to be – with others and with oneself, in the natural world and the social world. They were thus centrally concerned with ethics.

Notably, the term “liberal arts” has nothing to do with liberalism in the contemporary political or partisan sense; the opposite of “liberal” here is not “conservative.” Rather, the term goes back to the Latin root signifying “freedom,” as opposed to imprisonment or subjugation. Think here of the English word “liberty.” The liberal arts were historically connected to freedom in that they encompassed the types of knowledge and skills appropriate to free people, living in a free society. The term “art” in this phrase also must be understood correctly, for it does not refer to “art” as we use it today in its creative sense, to denote the fine and performing arts. Rather, from the Latin root ars , “art” is here used to refer to skill or craft. The “liberal arts,” then, may be thought of as liberating knowledges, or alternatively, the skills of being free.

What is a Liberal Arts Education ?

A liberal (arts) education is a curriculum designed around imparting core knowledge and skills through engagement with a wide range of subjects and disciplines. This core knowledge is taught through general education courses typically drawn from the humanities, (creative) arts, natural sciences, and social sciences. The humanities include disciplines such as language, literature, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, religion, history, law, geography, archaeology, anthropology, politics, and classics. Natural sciences include subjects such as geology, chemistry, physics, and life sciences such as biology. Social sciences comprise disciplines such as sociology, economics, linguistics, psychology, and education. Through a core curriculum or general education courses, students gain a basic knowledge of the physical and natural world as well as of human ideas, histories, and practices.

A liberal arts education comprises more than learning only content, but also honing skills and cultivating values. Intellectual and practical skills at the heart of the liberal arts are reading comprehension, inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, information and quantitative literacy, teamwork and problem-solving. Values that are central to liberal education are personal and social responsibility, civic knowledge and engagement, intercultural knowledge and competence, ethical reasoning and action, and lifelong learning.

Why a Liberal Education? Purposes and Values

Four overarching purposes anchor the idea of an education in the liberal arts. One of those is liberty . As mentioned above, the traditional idea of the liberal arts was an education that befitted a free person, one who was fit to participate freely in the life of society. The modern casting of this idea is that a broad education does not limit one to a particular profession or occupation, but rather, is meant for any life path – it prepares the mind for a variety of possible futures and for constructive participation in a civil democratic society. The interconnection between liberal education and human freedom cannot be over-emphasized, and it was at the forefront of the minds of the great political theorists and educators of the western tradition. Those with insufficient knowledge and skills would easily fall prey to demagogues and agents of chaos, and pervasive ignorance and lack of intellectual skill would eat away at a polity’s foundations. Only an informed citizenry – who had familiarity with and foundational understanding in the major areas of knowledge, and who had the requisite skills to both process existing information and seek out reliable new information – would be able to uphold and maintain a democratic society and stave off a decline into tyranny and despotism. As Thomas Jefferson, a major architect of the American public university, held, “Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” [1]

Another central purpose of a liberal arts education is the inculcation of the principle of human worth. This purpose is built on values collectively known as humanism : the idea that human life, individual and collective, has intrinsic value; the idea that human beings are endowed with rights to life, liberty, property, and a number of other rights that we know as “human rights”; that human beings are fundamentally equal, even if they are not the same, and that that equality should translate into both political and legal equality. This ideal of humanism is not in opposition to religious beliefs and practices; however, it regards the public sphere as one in which all should be able to participate regardless of religious beliefs and practices. Humanism mirrors the principle of a common or shared humanity, even while recognizing differences of experience, perspective, and resources. This vision is at the heart of that facet of liberal arts known as the humanities . Writes Robert Thornett, “Humanities is, in fact, education in how to be a human being.” [2] A liberal arts education exposes learners to diverse types of knowledge – which allow for understanding and empathy with others – within a humanistic framework that aims for deeper unity and synthesis. This approach to knowledge serves as a bulwark against social, political and ideological forces that seek to drive wedges between human beings, and that all too often culminate in violence and oppression.

A third purpose of liberal education is to provide a space for contemplation of truth and virtue , based on the conviction that such contemplation is necessary for the free mind, and that  informed explorations of these notions lead to the formation of better human beings. The liberal arts are where students have opportunity to consider the “big questions”: What is true? What is good? What is just? What is beautiful? This contemplation is what fires the imaginations of our students, and what makes the liberal arts curriculum unlike any other curriculum. Vartan Gregorian explains the unique character of liberal arts education, writing that “the deep-seated yearning for knowledge and understanding endemic to human beings is an ideal that a liberal arts education is singularly suited to fulfill.” [3]  

A fourth value of liberal arts education is its emphasis on the skills of learning , and of constructing knowledge out of information. We live in an increasingly complex information environment, where the sheer quantity of information – and its intentional manipulation into disinformation – overwhelms people’s abilities to make sense of it all. Without sufficient training, people are less equipped to find reliable information, to understand what they encounter, and to process that information, mentally and emotionally, into rational knowledge that can form the basis of ethical evaluation and action . This is a matter of grave importance for all human beings – in their capacity as students, citizens, consumers, workers, and people in relationships. Gregorian long ago identified the problem of information overload, and the function of education, in an interview with Bill Moyers: “Unfortunately, the information explosion … does not equal knowledge. … So, we’re facing a major problem: how to structure information into knowledge. Because … there are great possibilities of manipulating our society by inundating us with undigested information… paralyzing our choices by giving so much that we cannot possibly digest it.” [4]

Given this paralyzing deluge of information, he continues, “The teaching profession, the universities, have to provide connections … connections between subjects, connections between disciplines … to provide some kind of intellectual coherence.” In the final analysis, suggests Gregorian, “Education’s sole function is now, possibly, [to] provide an introduction to learning.”

The purposes and values outlined above cannot easily be fulfilled outside of an intentional liberal arts curriculum.  One does meet people who are driven to read widely and to pursue lifelong learning; to develop skills of information critique and lucid oral and written communication; to hold steadily to the vision of a shared humanity and humane ethical conduct; to undertake the ethical burden of preserving political liberties and civil rights; to engage in sustained contemplation of truth and practice of virtue; to perceive the interconnectedness of different spheres of knowledge and therefore of our world; and to develop the facility to synthesize chaotic data and irrational information into rational and cogent knowledge. But these goals are far more difficult to achieve outside of the structured, collective, and compulsory activities of the college classroom and away from teachers whose minds are perpetually set to these concerns. For too many, such integrated learning is out of reach or undervalued. Meanwhile, the insufficient attainment and integration of broad knowledge, intellectual skills, and ethical reflection is wreaking havoc on our society and national culture; on our quality of life morally, intellectually, psychologically, and physically; and finally, on our planet, which is increasingly unable to withstand humanity’s relentless onslaught and is fast losing the capacity to sustain its assailant.

Liberal-arts education is not found in any one course, classroom, or teacher.  It is a composite formation, attained over time through series of courses and learning opportunities that together coalesce in the minds of students. Each instructor, and each course, contributes elements that are oriented toward the purposes identified above. It is through the process of seeing the interconnections between different areas of knowledge, using diverse intellectual skills, that the human mind gains the capacity for liberation.

[1] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/genesis-university-virginia

[2] Robert Thornett, “What Are College Students Paying For?” at The Quillette , June 2, 2022 [ https://quillette.com/2022/06/02/what-are-college-students-paying-for-the-stephen-curry-effect-and-getting-back-to-basics/

[3] Historian and former Brown University President Vartan Gregorian, in his essay “American Higher Education: An Obligation to the Future” at https://higheredreporter.carnegie.org/introduction/ .

[4] “Vartan Gregorian: Living in the Information Age,” interview with Bill Moyers, at https://billmoyers.com/content/vartan-gregorian/ .

American Academy for Liberal Education

Advancing Excellence in Liberal Education

What is Liberal Education?

The American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) welcomes readers to its on-line resource, What is Liberal Education? ,  a collection of essays and commentaries on topics of interest pertaining to the value and practice of liberal education and addressing the question: What is liberal education?

Current Topic: Liberal Education and the K-12 Curriculum

Jacques Barzun. “Why We Educate the Way We Do”  

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), one of the founders of the American Academy for Liberal Education, is recognized internationally as one of the most thoughtful commentators on the cultural history of the modern period. After receiving his PhD from Columbia University (NY) in 1932, Barzun was appointed to the history faculty. During his tenure at Columbia, he served as Dean of Faculties and as Provost. He was granted the title of University Professor in 1967.

Barzun is the author of over 30 books and countless essays on historical, cultural and educational topics.  Among his writings are Critical Questions (a collection of essays 1940-1980), The Use and Abuse of Art (1974), and From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Life. 1500 to the Present (2000). The American Scholar called From Dawn to Decadence a “masterwork” by a “man whose entire life has been spent acquiring the perspective that only wisdom, and not mere knowledge, can grant.” His works on education include Teacher in America (1945) and The American University:  How it Runs and Where it is Going (new ed. 1993). Barzun’s professional activities included membership in the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Arts. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. 

Jacquez Barzun was interviewed by Ruth Wattenburg of the American Educator in 2002 on the subjects that form a K-12 education. The interview is reproduced here with permission from the Fall 2002 issue of American Educator , the quarterly journal of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, under its original title: Why We Educate the Way We Do .

Why Is Liberal Arts Important?

Written by Scott Wilson, B.A. English

Why is liberal arts important? The liberal arts help provide a fuller, more global perspective on just about everything, including socio-political ideas that are part of modern discourse. A background in liberal arts also improves critical-thinking, reasoning, enquiry and communication skills. The liberal arts offer context for understanding modern society, which helps us both appreciate and improve the world we live in.

We don’t use broad strokes to paint the picture of why liberal arts is important because it makes it easier to cover everything. It’s actually the best way to discuss an area of study that is broad by its very nature. We talk about big ideas like ethics, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication because that’s what the liberal arts are all about.

Narrow perspectives and rigid thinking, in the broad span of human history, have almost always led to bad things. Adaptation, on the other hand, the flexibility to adjust and to succeed through creativity and innovation, is the hallmark of humankind.

You Appreciate the Importance of Liberal Arts When You Imagine the World Without It

It’s sometimes useful to look at why liberal arts is important by looking at situations where a lack of liberal arts training has led to massive failure.

Understanding Cultural Nuance is About More than Just Being Cultured

The company failed to account for any cultural differences between German and American markets. The ubiquitous Walmart greeter, stationed at the door to welcome every customer, made Germans uncomfortable right at the outset. Unlike Americans, who browse stores, many German customers preferred to get in and get out, and were not susceptible to the stocking strategy that spread preferred products out in hopes of striking impulse buys.

The company also blew cultural connections with their own workforce, requiring public expressions of corporate morale that were seen as rude and inappropriate. Worse, the company imported a mandatory policy requiring employees to report coworkers who violate company rules. With the specter of Gestapo informants and neighborhood spies still hanging over the country from the Second World War, local employees had little stomach for it.

In less than ten years, the company abandoned their German experiment, leaving behind a whole lot of money and fodder for business school case studies that will last for decades. The whole German effort collapsed both inside and out.

A professional education focused on economics, business organization, and markets by itself didn’t prevent Walmart executives from making such an expensive blunder. But a liberal arts education would have told them they needed to expect some cultural conflict.

What Does it Mean to Have a Liberal Arts Education?

How could those Walmart executives have gotten that cultural perspective they so badly needed? Maybe less time in MBA programs and more time studying history and culture, for starters.

A liberal arts education hands you the knowledge to compare situations to analogous events from a wide range of fields and trains you in the analytical skills you need to assess and decide on a response. Rather than cramming facts and figures into your head, liberal studies teach you the tools for finding the facts on your own through research, logic, and observation.

There’s a strong element of experiential learning in liberal studies programs that also gives you real-world experience and enough confidence in your own skills to make those decisions.

Maybe above all, liberal arts teach you that there are always options. You have a toolbox with more equipment in it than people who have only had a specialized education. Your ability to look at the world through more than one lens will let you see things that other people won’t.

Why Liberal Arts Is Important For Individuals and For Society

Liberal arts is important for creativity. Creativity is a mysterious subject but it’s thought to involve making obscure connections between different fields of knowledge. It goes without saying that you have to have access to those different fields of knowledge before those connections can be made. Liberal arts, by spreading itself across disciplines ranging from physics to politics, is an excellent way to equip yourself for creativity and discovery.

Liberal arts is important for context. Like Walmart, many failures in modern society result from a lack of context. An education in liberal arts is a constant reminder that our individual experiences are grains of sand in the bigger picture. Learning to place our own perspectives in the broader context is invaluable for understanding others.

Liberal arts is important for self-confidence. Liberal studies also force you to think through your own ideas and reasoning. You’re constantly confronted with other examples, with challenges to facile thinking, with new information that can change your mind. Far from discouraging most students, this constant loop of taking in new information and dealing with the implications helps build confidence in your ability to apply logic and cope with any new situation the world throws at them.

Liberal arts is important for learning. Learning, the act and ability to take in and apply new information, is innate in human beings. But at the same time, it is a skill that can be practiced, improved, and honed. Liberal studies do all those things, pushing your brain to absorb and reflect on new inputs all the time. That makes it easier for the next batch of new data to come in and incorporate itself into your knowledge base.

Liberal arts is important for humanity. Understanding and empathy are key pieces in determining how people treat other people. A course of study in liberal arts forces you to put yourself in the shoes of others, to consider their lives and actions in light of your own perspectives and culture, to reflect on both differences and similarities. Exposure to art, writing, and history offers an appreciation of others in a way that a professional or vocational education never even attempt.

Liberal arts is important for communication. An ability to express yourself accurately and concisely is an act of empowerment. Communications skills are not something we are born with, however. By exposing you to great literature, rhetorical devices, and methods of elocution, liberal studies help you share your own humanity, your own ideas, in ways that strengthen your place in the human community.

Those are all valuable traits not just for individuals, but for civilization as we know it. The humanities brought the Enlightment, an end to slavery, and an awakening to environmental catastrophe. When you need big picture thinking, you need liberal arts. And there’s always a need for big picture thinking.

The Importance of Staying Flexible and Nimble in the Marketplace

Each Blockbuster could store only a limited number of videos. They had to pressure customers to return them. Even then, popular films were often unavailable.

With a centralized, online model, combined with a new, cheaply-mailed video technology (the DVD), Hastings and Randolph realized they could stock and ship enough films that customers could be allowed to basically return them on their own schedule. It was a killer application of two unrelated trends.

During a rough patch in the early 2000s, Netflix offered to sell to Blockbuster. The CEO, with a technical background in business administration, saw only the numbers and not the human elements of the model. He declined to buy.

Today, Netflix is a $200 billion business and Blockbuster no longer exists.

It’s ultimately up to every student to ask themselves – what is the purpose of liberal arts in my own education? It’s an enormous field, and an evolving one too, so the answer to that question can change over time.

It’s easy to see why liberal arts is important in the context of human history, and not too difficult to understand how it can serve society well into the future.

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The Value of Liberal Arts Education in College or University Essay

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Introduction

The value of liberal arts, works cited.

A key component of our modern society is its educational system. Through this system, individuals are provided with the tools necessary to play a part in the growth and ultimate advancement of the society. Citizens and governments all over the world have recognized the value of education.

The number of institutes of higher learning in the country has increased significantly and efforts have been made to ensure that more students attend college and university. However, the cost of higher education has risen significantly and students are pressured to focus on courses that promise high returns. The demand for career-related education has led to the undervaluing of Liberal Arts Education by most parents and governments.

Instead, emphasis has been given to science and business related courses, which have an obvious economic payoff. This paper will argue that liberal arts education should be encouraged since it adds value to society by offering the ideal college experience that promotes intellectual growth, personal development, and the acquisition of a wide range of skills by the student.

Liberal arts promote the development of higher-order intellectual skills in students. The student acquires intellectual capacities such as the ability to solve problems with multiple solutions, critical thinking, and skillful use of technology. Good thinking habits are acquired by the student and he/she is able to identify and grasp new concepts.

The ability of an individual to engage in problem solving activities is sharpened by liberal arts education. Harris documents that a liberal arts education assists the student to think in an ordered fashion therefore increasing his/her ability to do intellectual work (1). An important fact is that this skill can be used in a wide range of settings since the knowledge of organized solutions is not confined to any specific discipline.

Liberal arts education helps students avoid the narrow vision that overemphasizes specialization causes. Career driven education often leads to compartmentalization as students are made to focus entirely on their expert courses.

This specialization is caused by the idea that students only need to undertake the courses that lead to work and money. This habit leads to the development of narrow world-views and a tunnel vision (Kazanjian 59). Students who are subjected to this form of education lack the fundamental skills that can make them ready for new challenges that might arise in their profession.

Hart asserts that employers are against education that only instills specialized skills and knowledge in the college graduates (1). Instead, they prefer education that is well rounded in nature and enhances the intellectual skills of the student. Liberal arts education provides this well-rounded education since it recognizes that a student might have to deal with issues that are not related to his/her area of specialization.

A liberal arts education offers practical intellectual foundation necessary for students to be successful in the modern work environment. Today’s workplace is complex in nature and the worker is required to have some critical knowledge and skills in order to be more productive.

Forest demonstrates that managers in major corporations are looking for employees who can communicate efficiently, solve problems independently, and show effective use of technology (402). This wide range of traits cannot be acquired through education that only focuses on career driven courses. A liberal arts education provides the student with all these desirable traits therefore making them competitive in the work environment.

The liberal arts education gives the student a global perspective and promotes effective citizenship. The knowledge of human cultures provided by this education is especially significant in today’s globalized world.

The career-driven education provided to most students does not prepare them to be successful in the global economy. Research by Hart indicates that most recent college graduates lack the skills necessary to operate at the level of global economy (6). The liberal arts education offers the solution to this by providing college and university students with global competence.

A liberal arts education enhances innovation and creativity in the students. A key characteristic of liberal arts is providing knowledge in a wide variety of subjects. Harris asserts that the wide range of knowledge stimulates creativity in the student (3). Students are able to come up with ideas inspired by a wide range of materials.

The knowledge on many subjects also acts as motivation for the students to be creative. For this reason, graduates who have a liberal arts education program are more likely to contribute to innovation in the workplace environment. Hart suggests that employers are keen to find such innovative graduates (7).

Liberal arts education promotes happiness and the enjoyment by life. This education recognizes that life is rich and that education can be a source of pleasure for the student. It therefore encourages students to appreciate art and see beauty in humanity. By studying poetry, literature, and historical characters student develops a deep appreciation of life.

Harris demonstrates that the enjoyment and happiness fostered by liberal art education are beneficial to the individual and the society (6). Happier individuals are more satisfied with their lives and are more likely to engage in activities for the good of their community. Happiness also contributes to higher work productivity since a happy person will have lower rates of depression and mental illnesses.

Liberal arts education helps in the development of good communication skills by the individual. Effective communication is the foundation of all relationships since it is the means through which human beings interact.

Good communication skills enable people to properly communicate their ideas and relate with others. Kazanjian asserts that for an organization to achieve its goals workers must learn how to communicate with each other effectively and treat each other with respect (62). The acquisition of good writing and reading skills is deemed integral to the future success of the individual. Students in liberal art programs are required to develop skills in writing and making oral presentations.

Forest reveals that students are helped to acquire the needed self-confidence to communicate effectively (402). Such students are better equipped to handle different situations in the real world environment. Hart declares that employers are looking for graduates who have good communication skills that will promote success in the work setting (7). These are the kind of graduates that liberal arts education produces.

Liberal art education enhances social skills of the individual and these social skills are integral in all social settings and work environments. Forest notes that liberal arts makes an emphasis on the significance of human relationships in all settings (402). Students are taught to demonstrate respect in all relationships.

This leads to the development of good personal and work relationships. Forest reveals that students with a liberal art education background show greater sensitivity to their fellow human beings and co-workers (Kazanjian 62). The liberal arts also encourage the individual to develop a sense of social responsibility. Exposure to a wide range of cultures promotes the appreciation of diversity.

Students are taught to not only respect differences but also appreciate them. By learning about various cultures and traditions, students develop an appreciation of diverse cultures. The moral standing of the individual is also promoted by the liberal arts. By studying the early philosophers, the sense of ethics and integrity in the student is promoted.

This paper is set out to argue that a liberal art education provides value to the student and the society. It began by noting that the perception that a liberal arts education leaves a student with few career options has contributed to the negative view of the value of this education by many members of the public.

The paper has demonstrated that liberal art education promotes the intellectual growth of the individual and encourages creativity. Contrary to popular belief, liberal arts education equips the student with the skills needed in the modern work place. The paper has revealed that liberal arts education is not concerned with developing skills that are focused on a particular career.

Instead, the education offered leads to the development of a well-rounded individual who has general knowledge and the intellectual skills necessary to function in a wide range of environments. The education also promotes personal growth and development of the student. Considering the many positive values of liberal art education, the public and governments should promote these programs in all institutes of higher learning.

Forest, James. Higher Education in the United States: An Encyclopedia . NY: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print.

Hart, Peter. Should Colleges Prepare Students To Succeed In Today’s Global Economy? Washington, DC: Peter Hart Research Associates, Inc., 2006. Print.

Harris, Robert. On the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education . 1991. Web.

Kazanjian, Michael. Learning Values Lifelong: From Inert Ideas to Wholes . Amsterdam: Rodipi, 2002. Print.

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The Value of a Liberal Arts Education in Today’s World

By an IvyWise College Admissions Counselor

The growing cost of college combined with the increasing demand for students in career-ready fields such as engineering, finance, computer science, and medicine has left many people challenging the liberal arts. Much of the conversation surrounding higher education is focused on value and ROI. What majors earn the most right out of college? Which institutions produce graduates with the highest salaries? When deciding how to choose a major , students might run into some difficulty. So as you approach your college search you may find yourself asking: Is a liberal arts education still relevant in the 21st century?

In short: yes. In our rapidly changing global economy, with millennials averaging five to seven career changes in a lifetime, one could argue that a liberal arts education may be more valuable than ever before. In fact, a 2021 study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that the majority of employers nationwide value employees with a well-rounded liberal arts education.

Why Consider a Liberal Arts Education? 

A liberal arts education is intended to expand the capacity of the mind to think critically and analyze information effectively. It develops and strengthens the brain to think within and across all disciplines so that it may serve the individual over a lifetime. Students choose a specific major when they attend a liberal arts college, but they are also required to take courses in a variety of disciplines, where there is a heavy focus on writing and communicating effectively. The depth and breadth of a liberal arts education results in employees with strong research, creative problem-solving, and analytical reasoning skills — all skills that are highly valued in multiple industries.

Liberal arts colleges also tend to be smaller institutions that focus on undergraduates and teaching. The hallmarks of liberal arts colleges, such as Bowdoin, Williams, and Amherst, are small class sizes, close access to professors and undergraduate research opportunities, and a broad-based academic program in in the core subject areas of mathematics, the social sciences, and the hard sciences.

Art History Professor T. Kitao of Swarthmore delivered an address with a poignant summary of the value of a liberal education:

“The knowledge you learn about the subject of the course is its nominal benefit. It is like the stated moral at the end of a fable. The real substance of learning is something more subtle and complex and profound, which cannot be easily summarized — like the story itself. It has to be experienced, and it is as an experience that it becomes an integral part of the person. Learning how to learn by learning how to think makes a well-educated person.”

A Liberal Arts Degree is Not Useless in the 21st Century Job Market

In our increasingly evolving, globalized world, liberal arts colleges produce critical thinkers who have the confidence and flexibility to continually learn new skills and material. In his book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century , Thomas Friedman states that “in an age when parts or all of many jobs are constantly going to be exposed to digitization, automation, and outsourcing… it is not only what you know but how you learn that will set you apart. Because what you know today will be out-of-date sooner than you think.”

Even if you are certain about a career path you want to pursue, a liberal arts background can help you make it to the top of your field. For example, a student who is certain she wants to be a doctor could attend a liberal arts college pursuing a major in psychology and minor in economics before attending medical school. As a doctor, she could call upon her psychology degree to better understand and relate to her patients. The strong writing skills gained from her liberal arts background would help her to effectively communicate her research findings through publications. Her economics minor would help her to be successful if she decided to start and grow her own private practice.

It’s also important to note that while many families are concerned with immediate ROI and degrees that command high starting salaries right out of college, AAC&U’s “How Liberal Arts and Sciences Majors Fare in Employment” report found that by their 50s, liberal arts majors on average earn more annually than those who majored as undergraduates in professional or pre-professional fields. While STEM majors tend to earn the highest salaries out of college and typically earn more overall, liberal arts degree holders are seeing a great ROI — it’s just not as immediate.

Steve Jobs once said, “Technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing.” It’s important to remember that, while there is a demand for STEM students and specialized degrees, it is possible to pursue a liberal arts education with intent and create multiple paths to career success in the process.

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Home » IvyWise KnowledgeBase » IvyWise Resources » All Articles » The Value of a Liberal Arts Education in Today’s World

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What Is Liberal Education?

Liberal education is an approach to undergraduate education that promotes integration of learning across the curriculum and cocurriculum, and between academic and experiential learning, in order to develop specific learning outcomes that are essential for work, citizenship, and life.

What Liberal Education Looks Like

In distilling the principles, practices, and contemporary challenges of liberal education, this signature AAC&U publication presents a clear vision of the learning all students need for success in an uncertain future and for addressing the compelling issues we face as a democracy and as a global community—regardless of where they study, what they major in, or what their career goals are.

Key Components of a Contemporary Liberal Education

Essential learning outcomes.

The Essential Learning Outcomes define the knowledge and skills gained from a liberal education, providing a framework to guide students’ cumulative progress. Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies, students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:

• Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts— focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring.
• Intellectual and practical skills, including inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, quantitative literacy, information literacy, teamwork, and problem solving—p racticed extensively , across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance.
• Personal and social responsibility, including civic knowledge and engagement (local and global), intercultural knowledge and competence, ethical reasoning and action, and foundations and skills for lifelong learning—a nchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges.
• Integrative and applied learning, including synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies—d emonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problem.

High-Impact Practices

Because they have been widely tested and shown to be beneficial for all students, including and especially those from demographic groups historically underserved by higher education, the eleven teaching and learning practices listed below have been designated as high-impact practices , or HIPs:

• Capstone courses and projects
• Collaborative assignments and projects
• Common intellectual experiences
• Diversity/global learning
• ePortfolios
• First-year seminars and experiences
• Internships
• Learning communities
• Service learning, community-based learning
• Undergraduate research
• Writing-intensive courses

Signature Work

In Signature Work , students pursue an individual project related to a significant issue, problem, or question they define for themselves—immersing themselves in exploration, applying what they learn to real-world situations, and preparing to explain the significance of their work to others. Called “Signature Work” to reflect the high level of personalization and individual initiative involved, such a project bears the distinctive imprint of the interests, commitments, and cumulative learning of the student.

Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is a distinctive approach to learning outcomes assessment that uses rubrics to evaluate the work students produce across their diverse learning pathways and whose results inform efforts to promote student success. This approach is embodied in AAC&U’s VALUE initiative .

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A Shared Commitment

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Natalie Davis ’26 awarded with runner-up honors in ASIANetwork’s nationwide essay contest.

Expansive transformation of Mabee Commons honored for outstanding renovation project in national competition.

Nineteen students participate in seven thought-provoking projects funded by King Creativity Fund grants.

Alumnus debuts performance to complete masters of music composition program at Texas State University.

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Jihan Schepmann ’24 will attend UT Southwestern this fall to begin organic chemistry Ph.D. program.

Relive moments from the commencement ceremony for the Southwestern University Class of 2024. 

12 Benefits of a Liberal Arts Education

A liberal arts education prepares students to examine ideas from multiple points of view, solve problems, adapt, and collaborate.

January 17, 2020

Marketing and Communications

Open gallery

Liberal Arts. The term itself conjures up a wide range of definitions - ask 20 people what it means and you’re likely to get 20 different responses.

For some, the term “liberal” is a roadblock they can’t get past. Which is unfortunate, because although it includes the word, not all liberal arts students are liberal in their political views. Some are. Others are ultra-conservative. The rest fall somewhere in between. A liberal arts education is not rooted in politics, but rather the desire to broaden the mind.

Of course, there are others who zero in on the term “arts” and assume that a liberal arts education excludes STEM and business fields. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Naturally fine arts, including music and theatre, play a major role in a liberal arts education. But so do science, math and computer sciences and many others. In fact, plenty of tech industry leaders have been quoted touting the benefits of a liberal arts education. Turns out developers that can code AND have an eye for visual details – or engineers that can analyze data from multiple points of view – are much better positioned to truly innovate and create real change in their industry.

Benefits of a Liberal Arts Education

A liberal arts education prepares students to examine ideas from multiple points of view, solve problems, adapt, and collaborate. By combining multiple disciplines of study, liberal arts colleges expose students to a wide range of subjects, encouraging them to think outside a narrow focus and contribute to original solutions – all skills that are highly valued by top employers.  

To help outline some of the pros of attending a liberal arts school, here is a list of 12 benefits of a liberal arts education:

1). Interdisciplinary approach to learning – A liberal arts education intentionally integrates different areas of study, exposing students to a wide range of subjects. Business majors will have classes in the arts, while pre-med majors may get a taste of sociology. This broad education prepares students to succeed in whatever career they choose. People that can view things from multiple perspectives, no matter their field, provide greater value to employers.

2). Relatively small size – The majority of liberal arts colleges are small, at least in in comparison to major public universities. In addition to creating a more intimate, “family” feel of camaraderie on campus, the smaller size creates multiple opportunities for personalized, individual learning experiences.

3). Get to know faculty – The professors not only get to know their students’ names, but their strengths, challenges and passions. They provide mentorship in a way faculty at larger institutions can’t always offer due to the sheer volume of students.

4). Interactive classes – The classes at liberal arts colleges provide a huge benefit. Rather than massive lecture halls with 200+ half-dozing students, students are more likely to find themselves in a small, interactive environment. A low student-faculty ratio and small class size allows for deeper connections and true learning. Student engagement is expected and questions are encouraged.

5). Exposure to cool things – Students are constantly exposed to interesting ideas, creative concepts and new experiences. Whether it’s studying abroad, community engaged learning or conducting peer-reviewed research with a professor (an experience often reserved for graduate work at other schools), students continuously have the opportunity to explore, take risks and try new things.  

6). Teaches critical & innovative thinking skills – Through intentional experience and exposure, liberal arts colleges provide students with the all-important problem-solving and critical thinking skills. They focus on how to think, not what to think. Instead of memorizing facts and then forgetting the information at the end of the semester, students learn to examine, think and connect ideas. These valuable skills, practiced and reiterated throughout the entire college experience, are the skills necessary to innovate and create meaningful change in the world.

7). Strong alumni – Liberal arts colleges tend to have very active and involved alumni. While on campus students build lifelong friendships, and they continue to remain involved as mentors, donors and school supporters throughout their careers and life.

8). Financial Aid Opportunities – Liberal arts colleges often have generous financial aid options available for students.

9). Post-Graduation Jobs - Liberal arts colleges have some of the very best job placement rates, and for good reason. Graduates leave armed with the skills that employers value most – critical thinking, communication and the ability to view ideas from multiple perspectives. Best of all, they actively contribute to developing real solutions to real problems.

10). Graduate Program Acceptance - The idea that liberal arts are too, well, “arty” to be taken seriously is long gone. Today liberal arts have higher than average numbers of graduates being accepted into top graduate schools including medical school, law school, vet school and engineering programs. Why? Because the best schools know that liberal arts students are prepared to think, create, connect and come up with original solutions.  

11). Prepares for Jobs Yet to be Created - Perhaps this should have been first on the list, because it’s arguably the most important. Not only do liberal arts colleges prepare students for their first job out of college, but they prepare them for future jobs that aren’t even jobs yet! It’s eye-opening to realize that according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 65% of current students will eventually be employed in jobs that have yet to be created , and 40% of current jobs will soon be a thing of the past. In twenty-five years, many of today’s college students will be in their mid-40s, working in jobs or fields that don’t yet exist. What is going to help them succeed in an ever-changing world? The ability to think, create, collaborate and adapt. These are classic liberal arts skills.

12). Social Responsibility – With an emphasis on civic responsibility and opportunities for community engagement, liberal arts students spend more volunteer hours than those at public universities. They open their eyes to the world around them, and how certain actions affect others. Whether it’s a service trip abroad during spring break or a class project working with a local non-profit, liberal arts students are engaged and committed to making the world a better place.

If you’re considering attending a liberal arts college, it pays to do your research and truly think about the relevant skills for the future. Not just your first job out of college, but the one you’ll have 20 years from now. Ask employers what they look for in employees, or what the most valuable skills are. The list often includes transferable skills such as the ability to collaborate, view things from multiple perspectives, adapt to changing demands and analyze and interpret data.

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The Importance of Liberal Arts Education

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Published: Nov 26, 2019

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Students answer: Why the liberal arts?

Excerpts from three outstanding L&S student submissions to the UW-System’s 11th annual Liberal Arts Essay Contest reveal unique insights about the value and importance of a diverse and varied education.

The storytelling scientist

Humans are social beings and our ability to relate to and connect with one another is our most valuable skill. Drawing upon past interactions and experiences, we can make sense of the world and find creative ways to act within it. 

The strength of a liberal arts education is not that it is training for the jobs currently in demand today, but instead teaches students to interact with and continually learn from the people and world surrounding us, preparing us to tackle jobs today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our careers.

Beginning college, I knew where I could apply my calculus and biology classes as a scientist, but wondered what the application of my Scandinavian Tales and Ballads course would be. On the first day of class, we went around the room and stated our majors. 

Afterward, our professor said how excited he was to have such a variety of majors in the class because each background would bring a different and unique perspective to the table. 

As the extension of that, he said his goal for the class was not to make everyone a Scandinavian Studies Ph.D., as that would flood the academic market. Instead studying these tales and ballads would help us become better computer scientists, marketers or whatever passion we were pursuing. 

Instead of seeing a diversity of backgrounds as a hindrance, he saw it as an advantage because each class member could contribute a separate source of value to the whole.

– Bill Mulligan, senior, Biochemistry (L&S), First Place

Value of a liberal arts education

I found that setting aside time to practice an instrument required discipline and self-motivation. Making sure I knew my part in choir and listening to those around me to achieve the best sound required effective teamwork skills. 

Befriending and convincing performers to play my pieces required top-notch communication. Building creative models of solo flute pieces in my composition course taught me how to extrapolate data from sets and think outside the box. Picking a piano piece to arrange for orchestra and meticulously proofreading each part showed me that the more time and effort I put into a project, the more pride I’d take in the final result.

Even if I don’t ultimately become a composer, I know I’ll approach my work creatively from an interdisciplinary standpoint, communicate effectively with those around me and be able to find and succeed at a job I truly enjoy, even if it doesn’t exist yet. 

My life’s path will ascend, descend and meander back and forth. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I can’t wait for the ride ahead.

– Yasha Hoffman, sophomore, Russian and Music Composition, Honorable Mention

Dad says, "get a job!"

The importance of a multi-faceted personal development, with elements of liberal education, life experience and specific training, was made clear during my recent Macroeconomics 102 class. I learned about structural unemployment (unemployment due to industrial reorganization) and how the lack of liberal education negatively impacts individuals, families and the economy. 

In addition to this eye-opening Economics class in my first semester, I studied Environmental Change Literature, Japanese, Psychology and Integrated Learning Seminar. These courses, although unrelated, helped me zero in on my interests, passions and career path. 

I am grateful for such liberal arts educational opportunities, but this education alone is not enough. In today’s world, specific training is now and will always be needed, as well as a broad range of life experience. I do not agree with the argument that liberal arts education is more or less necessary than specific training — based on my experience and that of my mentors, it is clear that successful people strive for and achieve a successful balance between liberal education, training and experience in life. 

–   Jennifer Morris, freshman, Psychology and Neurobiology

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