The New York Times is the latest publication to call our attention to the pressures that liberal arts colleges are facing as they try to attract more students to non-applied majors. Let’s face it–times are tough. More than ever parents are asking the “what are you going to do with that” question. Career centers are becoming increasingly more important on college campuses these days. Kate Zernike of the The New York Times writes:
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.
Education for self-discovery? Now that is a novel idea.
Actually, it is not. The purpose of a liberal arts education has always been about learning how to think critically, write clearly, express oneself effectively, and grow intellectually, morally, and perhaps even spiritually. Such skills were supposed to be absolutely essential in the job marketplace. And, as both the Times article and Derek Thompson note, they still are.
As Thompson puts it over at the Atlantic’s BUSINESS blog (yes, you read that correctly–what you are about to read appears on a blog devoted to “business”):
At Northwestern, I was a journalism/political science major because I wanted to be a journalist in Washington, DC. But not all of my friends’ majors and dream careers lined up so cleanly. I knew theater majors who wanted to be travel writers, and history majors who wanted to work in public health in Africa, and psychology majors who wanted to be sports agents and so on.
One of the nice things about college is that you don’t have to plug into a pre-med or pre-law streamline if you don’t want to. If you want to study novels for four years, or study philosophy, or learn to write in ancient Greek, you can do that and graduate with the same degree as somebody who’s laser-beam focused on turning college into a pre-professional career tutorial.
Like the Times article, Thompson continues:
But in these economic times, with money tight and parents looking harder for a return on investment, schools are feeling the pressure to make college relevant for careers. Is that a good thing?
One part of Thompson’s post caught my attention. He writes:
I generally think the “American” approach to liberal arts college education is a little weird. We expect our colleges to be intellectual playgrounds and professional factories. They’re designed to touch on a diverse range of material (my distribution requirements mandated at least one Statistics course and one Art History course) and also allow students to dive deep into their major. But trying to instill expertise in this system is a bit like trying to get somebody to eat a lot of one kind of vegetable by putting them in front of a buffet.
And yet. To a certain extent, expertise isn’t the point of college at all, and it’s not necessarily what employers are looking for.
From the [Times] article: The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing.”
I am intrigued by what Thompson calls the “American approach to liberal arts college education.” Since its founding, America has been a place of upward mobility, climbing the “ladder of success,” and “improving oneself.” All of these phrases I just used to describe the American dream are connected to finding a job that will allow one to be economically comfortable. For most Americans, a college education is the first step on the road to this kind of happiness. As a result, despite all the positive news to report about what employers say about the marketability of liberal arts majors, the myth that a student should choose a college major based on “what they are going to do with it” continues to persist.
It is time that faculty members, administrators, and career services personnel work to dispel this myth. What can we do about it?
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