How Many Friends Do You Have With A Liberal Studies Major? Essay

In the shifting landscape of higher education today, questions continue to be raised about the value of a liberal arts education. It is constantly claimed that subjects like science, technology, engineering, and math, are more valuable in today’s economy and culture than a liberal arts major such as philosophy or history. In the essay “Tuning in to Dropping Out” Alex Tabarrok argues that majors in the STEM field are worth more than those in the liberal arts. He claims that “It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most” (Tabarrok 17). He even goes as far as to say that “An argument can be made for subsidizing students in fields with potentially large spillovers, such as microbiology,

Mark Edmundson speaks out about the apparent decline of college level education in his article, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students”. Edmundson believes liberal education is declining due to students losing passion and colleges selling students what they want: a good time.

Higher education in modern day America has become a debated topic, with some saying that it is not worth it due to the debt it leaves upon leaving, and some saying that it opens opportunities that surpass the results of obtaining one. A resulting view from this conflict is that certain forms of education aren’t as beneficial as others. A primary example of one of these less valuable educations is the study of Liberal Arts. Author Sanford J. Ungar discredits this view in his article The New Liberal Arts where he discusses the many misconceptions that have come to form this interpretation. To convince the reader of these misunderstandings, Ungar uses the appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, with heavy appeal to logic (Logos) over the other two. Each misconception uses and focuses on more of one appeal than others, and by doing this, he is very successful in influencing the reader into considering that these misunderstandings are present.

Published in Harper's Magazine’s September 1997 issue, Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” presents a very personal argument for an apparent crisis in liberal education–the lack of passion in students. According to Edmundson, a professor at the University of Virginia, “liberal-arts education is as ineffective as it is now…[because] university culture, like American culture writ large, is, to put it crudely, ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment, to the using and using up of goods and images” (723). He believes that consumer culture is responsible for students’ dispassionate attitude towards his class because they view liberal education as a paid service or product that should cater to their wishes. Further, he writes that universities feed into consumer culture, maintaining a “relationship with students [that] has a solicitous, nearly servile tone” (725). In this way, Edmundson lays out the reasons for why he thinks liberal education is failing.

Sanford Ungar still believes in the liberal arts. He writes this essay with hopes that the reader will begin to understand why he believes this, and maybe choose a liberal arts path for themselves. A degree in the liberal arts may include, but are not limited to, majors in fields such as social sciences, philosophy, history, English, French, and humanities. Ungar is aware of the many misperceptions as he calls them, of society today when it comes to earning a

“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things” (Jean Piaget).

To discuss the value of liberal education, there should be a mutual understanding that investing in college means to invest in oneself. Furthermore, while some consider this investment to be a critical stepping stone to success, others dismiss it, explaining that school simply cannot prepare someone for the “real world.” Sanford J. Ungar and Robert Reich explore both of these subjective values in their essays “The New Liberal Arts” and “College is a Ludicrous Waste of Money.” Ungar, the president of Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, discusses why a liberal education should be sought after; he does so by introducing common misconceptions about liberal arts and, using argumentative persuasion, proves their insignificance. On the other hand, Reich, the former secretary of labor, argues against the conventional belief of college being the only road to financial wellbeing; rather, he explains why a two-year education may better accommodate many college students, especially those in need of immediate work or those that simply cannot afford a four-year education. In all, although both Reich and Ungar generally discuss liberal education, their perspectives differ when it comes to its practicality in the current economy. Also, to express their different views about liberal arts, the authors use contrasting tones to present their ideas to different intended audiences.

Sanford J. Ungar’s article “The New Liberal Arts” identifies multiple misperceptions there are about earning a liberal arts degree, showing the inaccuracy in each.

Fareed Zakaria’s In Defense of a Liberal Education, is as the title suggests, a book in support of liberal education. The first chapter provides a brief and comprehensive history of the author’s own background in India and America. Of the six chapters, this one, is perhaps, the one wherein Zakaria most closely discusses his personal experience by reflecting on his life and how he gained an understanding of what “liberal education” truly means. More so, prior to coming to America, Zakaria tells of his education, in the 1960s and 1970s, in India, one which was skill-based as that was seen as the only path to a “good” career, essentially, either engineering or medicine (23). Zakaria explains the determination of what higher education one would

Throughout childhood, most have been told that they need to go to college in order to receive a well-paying job. Therefore, students immediately decide to major in something that will help them either get a job that pays very well and many of their courses are targeted at their major of choice. However, another route that many students don’t consider is a liberal arts education. Many believe that liberal arts is a waste of time and doesn’t truly prepare them for a future career.

For the first Common Hour President Porterfield spoke to the student body and faculty assembled about the value of a liberal arts education and defended it against the growing number of critics. The critiques came from many different voices, from education experts to entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban; however, their message is the same. A liberal arts education is for the rich and wealthy. Studying a range of topics from philosophy to sociology doesn’t help put people into the jobs they need to survive in this economy. A liberal arts education is an extravagance that belongs to the generations that came before. President Porterfield went on to discuss

Leading actors get the spotlight, and the rest of the cast then gets shadowed. These supporting actors may be just as, if not more, important than the lead, but the attention the lead gets dwarfs the attention that should be given to the supporting actors. This analogy is a representation of the role of liberal arts in the STEM majors. Liberal arts are often pushed to the side to make way for multiple calculus, science, and technology courses, effectively reducing both the room and need for liberal arts, and this trend is perpetuated as our world shifts to be more technology dependent. This shift is not only detrimental to the students that it restricts from obtaining a liberal education,

A liberal arts education is one that, by definition, focuses not on one specific subject, but rather prepares its student by giving them knowledge in many areas and developing the student’s critical thinking that will allow them to adapt to an ever-changing world. Naturally, this means students at a university that employs a liberal arts education take classes outside their major. Students of the humanities or social sciences must enroll in courses of mathematics and natural sciences, and while many find no joy in such requirements, they better the individual and are helpful in everyday life, as well as in larger issues. As Crane and Chiles so eloquently write, specifically of science, “Science matters at a liberal-arts university because the problems facing our global community will not be solved by scientists alone.” Mathematics as a subject acts in a similar way, giving skills to students, non-mathematics majors included, to help in their everyday lives or potentially to help the world.

Liberal education enables people and sets them up to manage multifaceted nature, differing qualities, and change. It gives understudies wide information of the more extensive world (e.g. science, society, and society) and in addition top to bottom study in a particular range of hobby. A liberal instruction offers some assistance with developing a feeling of social obligation, and solid and transferable scholarly and down to earth aptitudes, for example, correspondence, explanatory and critical thinking abilities.

“Oh, you are a liberal arts major. Doesn’t that mean you are working at a coffee shop?” and “You should probably have a backup plan” are only two of the hundreds of mocking phrases heard by students studying in the liberal arts. The public has this misconception that majoring in the liberal arts is a mistake, and a degree in this field correlates directly to low job prospects and an even lower income. In comparison to STEM majors of science, technology, engineering, and math, who appear to offer more to society, the humanities and social sciences are perceived as unimportant and negligible. As a result, the liberal arts bear constant ridicule in the United States exemplified by the public’s mockery of the false perceptions of vocational failure surrounding the program of study. Nevertheless, Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, states that it is the liberal arts—most notably the humanities and social sciences—that offer the necessary background knowledge to improve society. Through the rise in liberal arts, students will begin to formulate new ideas and values that will resurrect the country’s impoverished souls and values. Similarly, Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, asserts that comprehending the liberal arts and correctly applying the major ideas of philosophy, history, and various social sciences is