Liberal Arts and Jobs

With the economy in the tank and the class of 2009 hanging out in their Mom's basement, or wearing a bright orange t-shirt and visor that say "Dunkin Donuts" instead of a power-suit to work everyday, colleges and their students are starting to rethink the traditional liberal arts education, for better or for worse.  A piece in the New York Times reported that:


Even before they arrive on campus, students — and their parents — are increasingly focused on what comes after college. What’s the return on investment, especially as the cost of that investment keeps rising? How will that major translate into a job?

The pressure on institutions to answer those questions is prompting changes from the admissions office to the career center. But even as they rush to prove their relevance, colleges and universities worry that students are specializing too early, that they are so focused on picking the perfect major that they don’t allow time for self-discovery, much less late blooming. The piece then goes on to talk about how numerous colleges are focusing on providing majors and programs that are more relevant in the job market, and dropping majors that don't typically result in jobs and that have become unpopular in recent years.  For example, the University of Michigan recently created 100 entrepreneurial classes while it simultaneously dropped its classics major.  

 All of the educators interviewed in the New York Times piece seemed to think that adding more job-market-relevant courses was a good thing.  But there were some reservations.  The Dean of St. Michael's, a liberal arts school in Vermont highlighted the value of a liberal arts education when he said: “The humanities tend to educate people much farther out. They’re looking for an impact that lasts over decades, not just when you’re 22.”  I personally am glad that liberal arts colleges are starting to diversify in a skeptical manner.  I think that the liberal arts education--which teaches how to think critically and analytically as opposed to how to perform a particular job--is the cornerstone for a well rounded person.  But it also has its setbacks, especially when--for the classes of 2009--real jobs are harder to come by than a strip club in Saudi Arabia, and recent graduates are earning less than ever.  In most liberal arts majors you learn a lot of amazing information, but often times this information is hard to apply to the real world. Take me, for example.  At the liberal arts school I attended, my major was a mix of environmental science, economics, and politics.  In my economics classes I learned tons of information about markets and how economies function as a whole, but I didn't learn a damn thing about my own money.  I can tell you what will happen to the price of a can of Coca Cola when there is an aluminum shortage, or the tenets of a Marxist economy, or why many of the U.S. trade policies are disadvantageous to the economies in the developing world.   But let's say I were to win a million dollars in the lottery, even after all those economics classes I took, I wouldn't have the slightest idea about how to invest my money.  I'd either A. have to do some serious research or B. hire someone who majored in business at a non-liberal arts school to invest it for me.  This is problematic, and a happy medium between learning about the flow of revenue into a random Asian company versus the flow of revenue into my own wallet should be struck. The liberal arts education is great, unless you're a philosophy or ethno-musicology major making the same amount of money by mowing lawns with your B.A. as you did mowing lawns in high school.  Which is why I think it's great that liberal arts colleges are starting to give a greater focus on relevant courses.

Maybe something good will come out of the current economic downturn after-all--liberal arts majors who not only know how to think, but also how to function in a real life work place.