We're entering commencement time, which means all kinds of notable people (the President and First Lady included) will be giving well-crafted speeches about the importance of education and a college degree. But is one kind of degree better than another? Much has been said about the importance of science and technology degrees in terms of keeping the U.S. competitive with the rest of the world. And as the economy has worsened, and fears of joblessness have risen, the voices advocating pursuit of more "practical" degrees have grown in both number and volume.
A recent New York Times article noted that Humanities now account for only 8% of all college degrees, and that proponents are having to work harder than ever to justify the worth of a humanities, or liberal arts, course of study. The article quotes Anthony T. Kronman, a Yale law professor, as saying, reluctantly, that the essence of a humanities education may become "a great luxury that many cannot afford."
I passionately disagree. (Full disclosure: I graduated from an Ivy League university with a liberal arts degree in Semiotics, which most people would consider a highly frivolous subject. Although I have to say, the degree did turn out to be useful in getting me job interviews in all kinds of fields, simply because nobody knew what the word meant.)
However. Three points worth considering in the debate:
First ... I figured out the true value of a college degree not in the lofty halls of Brown University, but in a corrugated cardboard factory in New Zealand. I'd taken a "leave of absence" as they call it, after my sophomore year, to figure out if I really wanted to pay all that money learn things that seemed, well ... a tad non-essential, at best. I packed a backpack and took off for the romantic frontier-land of New Zealand with nothing but $500 and a working visa in my pocket. The six months I spent there were a far cry from what I thought the adventure would be, but it was educational. Culminating in my job at the cardboard factory--where I was surrounded by people who hated their jobs but had no other viable option.
In a flash, I grasped the true value of a college degree. It didn't matter what I majored in. It didn't even matter all that much what my grades were. What mattered was that I got that rectangular piece of paper that said, "Lane Wallace never has to work in a corrugated cardboard factory again." A piece of paper that was proof to any potential future employer that I could stick with a project and complete it successfully, even if parts of it weren't all that much fun. A piece of paper that said I had learned how to process an overload of information, prioritize, sort through it intelligently, and distill all that into a coherent end product ... all while coping with stress and deadlines without imploding.
I also realized that I'd do far better at all that if I studied what I was most passionate about learning, practicality be damned. Hence my switch to Semiotics (which, for anyone wondering, is a four-dollar word for communication). If you want to be an engineer or physicist, you'd better major in the subject. But only if that's what you truly want to study and do. Pro forma dedication is discernible from 100 paces away.
Second ... In an increasingly global economy and world, more than just technical skill is required. Far more challenging is the ability to work with a multitude of viewpoints and cultures. And the liberal arts are particularly good at teaching how different arguments on the same point can be equally valid, depending on what presumptions or values you bring to the subject. The liberal arts canvas is painted not in reassuring black-and-white tones, but in maddening shades of gray.
What's the "right" solution to the conflict in Sudan? What was Shakespeare's most important work and why? Was John Locke right in his arguments about personal property? Get comfortable with the ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education, and you're far better equipped to face the ambiguities and differing viewpoints in a complex, global world. (The late David Foster Wallace expanded on this point in his acclaimed 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, which, if you missed it at the time, is worth taking the time to read.)
Third ... Yes, the U.S. needs technical expertise to keep pace, economically and technologically. But we also need innovators and entrepreneurs creating break-through concepts and businesses. And while knowledge in an area is important, I'd argue that the most important trait a pioneering entrepreneur needs is the confidence to buck convention; to believe he or she is right, despite what all the experts say.
Last year, I interviewed Alan Klapmeier, founder and CEO of the Cirrus Design Corporation, which revolutionized the piston-airplane manufacturing industry with its composite Cirrus aircraft (discussed at length by James Fallows both here at The Atlantic, and in his book Free Flight. I asked Klapmeier what gave him the idea, back in the mid-1980s, that he could take on an industry as conservative and entrenched as general aviation. His answer:
"I think it was my college education. I went to Ripon College, which was a liberal arts school. And that kind of school teaches you how to think for yourself. My professors didn't tell you you were wrong. They convinced you you were wrong. And if they couldn't, you might end up changing their minds on something. Figuring out for yourself what right and wrong is builds a huge bit of confidence. The kind that makes you think maybe we can take on an industry."
Worth thinking about.
Looks like Alan Klapmeier WAS indeed WRONG - his little plane idea was a failure.
The studies of Humanities should be done only at night school; only after one has been trained for a practical profession like engineering, medicine, carpentry or better yet - making bicycles like the Wright brothers did.
Yes, Alan Klapmeier's idea has been a TERRIBLE failure. It's only been the best-selling plane in its category, in the world, for the past six or seven years straight. We all should be so "WRONG."
Not everyone can be a scientist, because there are varying levels of ability. And there are other things in the world than making money and being competitive in the market - things that make for a meaningful human experience. Let those who are good at math and science do so. But we need artists, musicians, historians and writers to feed the soul. I would trade my stupid cell phone for a great book any day.
I've written a similar piece for myself about all the reasons you don't need college at all.
Hell is being logged out when you click the submit button.
Anyways . . .
I disagree (A blogger! Disagreeing! Self-importantly! Gaspshock!). Your first comment is a false argument - no one is saying that a liberal arts degree is useless. They're simply saying that, if you're going to pay the tuition, you might as well pick up a degree which has more value than the paper it's printed on. You could have attained the same lifestyle-sans-cardboard-factory you crave by getting a science degree, with have additional career options besides.
Secondly, is there really any evidence that a degree in the sciences strangles innovation like you suggest it does? Most of the physicists I've met are hugely ambitious, driven people, and the difficulty of making a name in that profession means that they're constantly questioning orthodoxy. Quantum mechanics wasn't developed by a slavish regard to Newtonian physics - it grew by accidental, but driven, push against the boundaries of knowledge.
I found some liberal arts classes to be really rewarding when taught by motivated individuals, but I still can't shake the impression that I got in college. That is, the best did sciences. Often, the scientists read a book a week. This was their liberal arts education, and many were more literate and intelligent than liberal arts students. Most liberal arts students spent a lot of time playing Halo. Myself, who stupidly did liberal arts and has been regretting it for the past three years, not only found that I myself could find more rewarding reading on my own by browsing the nytimes book section than I could by college syllabus lists...but I also graduated to unemployment and a degree which had negative value. I would never advise someone to major in a liberal art.
What a delightful combination of elitism and faux egalitarianism we have here. Lane helpfully informs us that her college degree was from an Ivy League school, while eliding the signaling value of an Ivy League degree in any major. Just because a semiotics degree from Brown worked out for her doesn't mean that a communications degree will work out for an alumna of Ramapo or Cal State Chico. No, those women probably won't end up working in a corrugated box factory, but they probably won't end up writing for the Atlantic either. Atlantic editors won't assume these women have a high talent for relativistic sophistry because of their liberal arts degrees. These women will probably end up working at Starbucks while studying for their teaching licenses and hoping someone in their district goes on maternity leave so a spot opens up. Our hypothetical alumnae would have been better off majoring in accounting or nursing.
Faux egalitarianism hurts more than it helps. Save the sophistry for those who have a hope of getting paid to engage in it. Everyone else has to figure out how to make a living.
I ended up studying history in college because I was told that to get into law school, "it didn't matter what you might as well study something you enjoy." I did enjoy myself but didn't end up in law. I ended up becoming a financial analyst. What landed me my first job as a financial analyst wasn't that I had a liberal arts degree from UCLA but that I had taken enough courses to sit on the CPA and knew Microsoft Excel backwards and forwards. Later I changed to teaching after I became a father, and the training I received from my masters and teaching credential was much more useful. Now I'm seriously considering a PhD in something more related to the hard sciences (computational linguistics) because the value of a liberal arts degree is not recognized by the economy as a whole.
A liberal arts degree will get you an interview, but I suspect that the people who are successful with a liberal arts degree would be successful in pretty much whatever field they would chose to pursue, whatever they would study.
Wow, there are some passionately negative responses to this article. Elitism and sophistry?? It's The Atlantic...what do you expect? You yourself engage in elitism and sophistry with the rest of us just by reading it in the first place. It's not a mindless rag like Newsweek or Time.
The purpose of higher education: learn how to think critically and communicate in speech and in writing. That's it. If your critical thinking leads you to a specialized degree because you feel it will help you reach your personal goal of getting a job, so be it. If your thinking leads you to studying 19th Century Russian Lit because you like it and learn how to communicate articulately by studying it, so be it. Education is never a waste of time.
So if the number of graduates in humanities is 8%, what is the percentage in the sciences? From this article we have no idea if more students are going into "useful" technical fields, or (as I suspect) getting undergraduate degrees in Business Management and Communications-- two majors at the public university where I work that dwarf all other majors. Neither of these degrees is technical.
I hold a science degree in Math from a world top 20 University and I absolutely believe a Humanities degree is a luxury most cannot afford. I wish I could have studied 19th century German Philosophy or Japanese Poetry etc.; I know that kind of creative thinking training would lead to fantastic career opportunities and personal growth down the road, but here, in the short term I still have to manage the student loans and personal finances that a technical degree creates a better safety net for.
As John Adams said, "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
I disagree that a liberal arts education makes the most sense for everyone, but it certianly makes sense for some people. I have a degree in a foreign language, which has opened up all kinds of doors in business and study. A foreign language education opens up a new world to you, gives you opportunities in government and trade that you wouldn't have, and mastering a difficult language another way to make yourself interesting and demonstrate to others that you are intelligent.
At the same time, as others have mentioned, those without the means or pedigrees may have a lot to lose. Prestigious publications such as The Atlantic, NYTimes, Newsweek, etc only have a certain number of jobs available, and my gut tells me they'll be hiring Princeton grads way before people from North Carolina State. A technical or vocational degree, if you want to call it that, gives people an in-demand skillset, a defined career-track, and puts them on the conveyer belt into corporate America. From this point of view, the ability to spend four years reading about Plato and Heidegger is a luxury.
Debate surrounding this question has always frustrated me, and I think it's because there's a simple confusion about the justification of a liberal arts education. There are two ways you can justify the value of something: either it's valuable as a means to an end or it's valuable as an end in itself.
Most people who denigrate the value of a liberal arts education focus on its value as a means to an end. To what degree does a liberal arts education help me find a job, put food on the table, or increase the value of my bank account? As far as I'm concerned, this is strictly an empirical question. Let's just look at comparably qualified students, some who go into the sciences/pragmatics and some who take liberal arts, and then measure the results. Which group has more employment prospects at graduation, ten years after graduation? It's a factual question, and we don't need to fight about facts.
Most people who argue in defense of the liberal arts do so vociferously because they think it's valuable as an end in itself, to which I'm inclined to agree. This is not to say that sciences, for example, aren't valuable as an end in itself (the value of understanding the origins of the universe, for example), just that there's intrinsic value in the humanities as well (coming to love Yeats's poetry, for instance, or Kant's categorical imperative). If people are only capable of seeing the consequential value of a discipline (like the technology or medicine that the sciences give us rather than the understanding of the universe or the human body), then I just feel sorry for that person. This person still needs to find things they think are valuable for their own sake (presumably pleasure), but they're just missing out on a lot of value that the world has to offer.
"Most people who argue in defense of the liberal arts do so vociferously because they think it's valuable as an end in itself, to which I'm inclined to agree."
That's not the question. The question is whether it makes sense to spend four years of time, go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and incur the opportunity cost of not studying something more practical in order to major in liberal arts in college. I don't think anyone's arguing that there is no value in reading Yeats, but you don't need to get a BA in English to do that. In fact, as another commenter upthread noted, many folks who major in science or technical fields are also well-versed in literature and other humanities.
I don't think anyone's arguing that there is no value in reading Yeats, but you don't need to get a BA in English to do that.
This is a fallacy. Just because something is written in English doesn't mean you can automatically read it well without assistance. Come to think of it, math and science textbooks are written in English too!
Parents hate it when I say this, but it doesn't matter so much what major you choose in college as that you choose something to which you can give your whole self; and that may not be apparent to a first-term freshman. Lane's most salient point is that the specific undergraduate major means less, is less directive of your future, than the passion or gusto with which you embrace/attack/devour your education and how that education manages the juggling act between depth of field and breadth of inquiry. Good data from the Association of American Colleges and University's Project LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise -- see http://www.aacu.org/leap/index.cfm) suggests that employers in even very technical fields are looking for the qualities associated with the classic liberal arts student-- such as creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, adaptability. There's no one major that guarantees those outcomes, but English and Engineering both have a shot at it if properly constructed and, most importantly (as Lane suggests), taken up with vigor. On a side(stick) note, I've had the pleasure of flying a Cirrus (Alan Klapmeier's invention, referenced above) and it's a pretty great gizmo-- and a commercial success in a tough industry. His description of his Ripon education resonates with my experience (I went to Lawrence, just up the flyway in Wisconsin); it describes critical thinking in action. My daily work now includes engaging this very conversation at a large, state-assisted, increasingly research-intensive university (George Mason in Virginia), so I am grateful to Lane for raising the issue in this forum.
I am confused by all this handwringing about liberal arts degrees versus science degrees.
To my mind the only real liberal arts degrees are ones awarded by actual liberal arts universities or colleges. I studied music theory and 19th century intellectual history for my BA but I was also required to take courses in literature, foreign languages, social sciences, mathematics, and hard sciences in order to graduate. All told out of I think 32 courses over 4 years. I think about 12 had to come from specific learning areas outside your own major(s) and meet certain criteria. My partner who has a hard science degree (molecular biology and bio-chemistry) similarly had to take courses in humanties, arts, social sciences, etc. That is to my mind what a liberal arts degree -actually- is. We both graduated with BA's. And in addition to our major's we graduated with the ability to converse intelligently on a variety of topics, and more importantly to critically analyze, to write proficiently, and to question. That is the actual point of a liberal arts degree whether you choose to study science or humanites.
Perhaps we should more clearly define what a liberal arts degree actually is before we sling mud around at those who obtain them.