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Keep an Open Mind about Liberal Arts
By Michael A. MacDowell, President, College Misericordia
(PA)
Published in the Times Leader, January 13, 2004
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania plays host to more colleges and universities
per capita than any other state in the nation. Because there are so many
of them, the lamentations of our combined faculty, staff and alumni about
the "demise" of a liberal arts education is often heard. Those
institutions which maintain a core curriculum believe that the liberal
arts are important because they instill within graduates different ways
of thinking, along with the ability to analyze situations and communicate
both in writing and orally.
Together, these skills create "effective habits of the mind."
The core courses in the liberal arts, such as English, history, the sciences
and philosophy also cultivate the development of an individual's values
and attitudes or "the habits of the heart."
The fact of the matter is that the liberal arts prepare students for their
entire lives, not just for their first jobs. This is important because
most will change careers - not just jobs - two or three times during their
lives.
While these goals are laudable and in many instances hardly disputable,
the core of the liberal arts continues to wane on many campuses in favor
of job-specific and technically-oriented courses.
Perhaps such a trend is inevitable in a society that places heavy emphasis
on "what you want to be when you grow up." Parents, grandparents
and the schools themselves sometimes imply that youngsters are failures
if they have not mapped out at least the first 20 years of their careers.
In fact, according to a poll designed by George Dahne & Associates
and released last May, "From as early as their freshman year in high
school, prospective college students are focused on what they will do
when they go to work full time." In a volatile economy where businesses
are less willing to train college graduates because of the competitive
financial constraints, there is more pressure than ever to emerge from
college with a baccalaureate in as specific - and hence "as employable"
- a field as possible.
The irony, of course, is that most business and professional leaders continue
to exhort the values of a liberal arts education for undergraduates. They
want - and in many instances insist upon - the reasoning, oral presentation,
analytical skills and broader-based understanding that a core curriculum
in the sciences and math, social sciences and humanities provides. During
their freshman and sophomore years especially, college students need the
breadth and depth of a liberal arts core in order to better choose a major.
Why then is there a disconnect between what business and professional
leaders say is important, namely a liberal arts education, and many students'
and parents' marginal belief in one? A recent symposium, attended by college
presidents and CEOs of a variety of companies and organized by the Council
of Independent Colleges with support from the Kemper Foundation, addressed
this question and found that: colleges offer fuzzy definitions of and
rationale for core courses; faculty whose advanced degrees often result
in them "learning more and more about less" add to the problem;
colleges lack data showing that liberal arts students in the long run
obtain higher-paying and/or satisfying jobs.
Even if these questions are answered, they still may not overcome the
entrenched belief that colleges and universities exist primarily to train
students for a career. Of the 21 responsibilities of a college or university
listed by Dahne, the most important for parents and students answering
his survey was to "prepare its undergraduate students for a career."
Perhaps the problem can best be addressed if colleges and universities
strive to demonstrate the utility of the liberal arts by more explicitly
tying them to the future aspirations of students. Institutions must prove
that a good liberal arts education leads to a good job.
At College Misericordia, the Insalaco Center for Career Development helps
all students, regardless of major, explore career opportunities early
through a series of shadowing experiences, internships, computer competency
skills, cultural competencies, and even training in business etiquette.
These co-curricular and extracurricular activities are designed to link
the liberal arts with applied learning and intentional career exploration.
In fact, Misericordia guarantees the outcome to those students who collaborate
with the Insalaco Center during their college experience. If after six
months Misericordia graduates are not offered a job in their field or
a spot in graduate school, we provide them with a paid internship which
almost always leads to employment.
We have never had to make good on our guarantee because all College Misericordia
graduates who possess the guarantee received quality job offers or are
in graduate school. And by the way, 80 percent of those graduates are
working in Pennsylvania and most of them in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
A few other colleges offer a similar guarantee. Other colleges have developed
effective ways to emphasize the liberal arts.
Promoting the efficacy of the generic "liberal arts" to today's
career-minded high school students and their parents is difficult. But
we can specifically demonstrate how a liberal arts core curriculum can
benefit a student and his or her career aspirations.
Today's businesses and professionals know that teaching people how to
think, not what to think, is more important than ever, and that is the
role of the liberal arts.
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