Years ago I sat at another boring business dinner. One of my colleagues, a president of one of our larger subsidiaries, leaned over and asked me what her freshman son at the University of Texas-Austin should major in to get ahead in the business world. I was surprised at the question and even more surprised at my response. I replied that he should get a well rounded, liberal arts education and major in something he loved.
Higher Education at the Crossroads
While no one wishes for bad economic times, these events have a way of provoking thoughtfulness, values clarification, and ultimately a crossroads. Many pundits now question the value of a college education. With the cost for higher education rising dramatically, some professionals in the education and business communities now question its value. Are students wasting their time taking art history or gender studies? Should emphasis be on skill-specific, career-oriented majors that will result in good jobs and rapid loan payback? Should we be guiding young people into applied scientific, computer and accounting majors rather than the traditional liberal arts?
The Meaning and Purpose of Education
Like many high school seniors, I had no real idea about what I wanted to do. I did know that I wanted to go to a four-year college, and I attended and graduated from the large state university where I was resident. Luckily, the school had distribution requirements (a few colleges refer to these as core courses) which required freshmen and sophomores to complete two full years of a foreign language, basic science and mathematics, humanities, English, the social sciences and the history of western civilization. I clearly remember not having elective courses until my junior year.
College is not a trade school. A good college education exposes a student to a broad range of intellectual thought and dialectic. Knowledge of art and its context, the rise and fall of governments and cultures, nuances and idioms of English and a foreign language, creative and expository writing, economics, mathematical history and theory and various theories of science all contribute to the thinking of an educated, well-rounded individual.
So why is this valuable? Because all this teaches a student to think critically about issues. It emphasizes written and oral communication skills, and the ability to express ideas in clear and concise language. Context and nuance matter when discussing an idea, and great ideas did not just spring forth in the last fifty years. We are part of an inexorable march of history, culture and progress. Translate all this to the adult working world, and we have critically thinking and appropriately expressive citizens, parents, executives, and employees. In essence, this type of education should be the first act in the play of lifelong learning.
What Should I Major In?
The answer to “what should I major in” is “anything that is a pleasure to learn.” My daughter recently graduated from a prestigious eastern college, magna cum laude. She majored in history. Her history department, one of the great history departments in the country over the past one hundred years, invited parents to a post graduation collation. The head of the department earnestly thanked the parents for permitting their children to major in her department. She clearly had had experience with parental resistance, mild disdain and at best rolled eyes when students declared a history major. After the speech, I went up to this noted professor and thanked her for teaching my child. To me it was a privilege to be a history major in this prestigious program. Moreover, my daughter excelled and thrived; she was mentored, she learned much about many things, and she learned to create, criticize and be criticized for her ideas and writing. What more could a parent ask for? What we saw for ourselves, and what her professors all said, was that she had grown into a thinker, a writer and a scholar. As an aside, she has not had a problem obtaining several excellent job offers upon graduation.
Education for the Workplace and for the Self
The benefits of a liberal arts education became obvious only when I entered the workforce. When I went to school, with a major in economics and labor studies, computers were for a select group of scientists working in the computer science labs. However, from my math and science background, I was able to teach myself computer skills, perform actuarial calculations although I was not an actuary, and master complex industrial processes. I learned management, accounting and business processes although I never had a college business course. In contrast, most of the practical subjects I learned in college and even in law school were outmoded within five years of working. Without the ability to learn new ideas, the specific processes, equipment and modalities of the workplace would have been much more difficult to master. Learning the new was all grounded in a solid liberal arts education.
In the midst of a recession, with college costs soaring to more than $200,000 for a four year private college, the temptation is to gravitate to a “practical major” such as applied engineering, accounting or computer science. In a rapidly changing economy, I would suggest that even the most career oriented students would profit from the broader perspective obtained from knowledge of history, foreign language, mathematical concepts, English and humanities. The essential paradox is that a narrow, technical, vocationally oriented education may provide the skills for today’s job, but not for tomorrow’s careers.
For those who are intellectually talented, a liberal arts education is a great boon to future business or government pursuits. It can also provide the intellectual underpinnings of all kinds of professions: medicine, nursing, law, architecture, engineering, education and others. As we enter this challenging environment we need more leaders who can think critically and communicate clearly. Perhaps we all need a more liberal definition of what constitutes a good education.
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