The Importance of Liberal Arts Education in 21st Century
Over the past week many people take asked me to comment on Adam Harris' recent Atlantic commodity, "The Liberal Arts May Non Survive the 21st Century." Often they asked me to respond to the title or the conclusions they drew from the piece, rather than to what Harris actually wrote.
And so let me explain.
(And permit me also preface this with a confession of bias. I like Adam Harris' writing, especially because he conducted a very generous interview with me.)
Start, "The Liberal Arts May Non Survive the 21st Century" is a strange title, and one I'd bet applied by an Atlantic editor, rather than Harris. The article isn't most the liberal arts per se but about the case of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Bespeak campus and its decision to terminate some majors. This may seem familiar to y'all, dear readers, as I've been writing about it from fourth dimension to time. Liberal didactics appears every bit 1 theme, merely we only leave this Wisconsin case for a unmarried, last sentence:
The national chat effectually higher didactics is shifting, raising doubts about whether the liberal arts—as nosotros have come up to know them—are built to survive a tech-hungry economic system.
And that's a not bad question. However, information technology brings me to a second point. Much depends on what we mean by "liberal arts" or "liberal education."
I don't mean to be pedantic. I mean that people have very different models of higher education based on what they accept in heed when they say "liberal arts" or "liberal education." Y'all tin tease out those models with a few questions. And now we must digress. We'll render to Harris, I promise.
So what is liberal education? Dorsum in 2006 my colleague, friend, and heroine Jo Ellen Parker outlined those models with typical clarity and nuance. She gave a talk on this topic, based on her experience working throughout liberal education, then published an commodity at the Academic Eatables. Let me summarize quickly – but I strongly recommend her commodity.
Learning for its ain sake: this is an undergraduate experience complimentary of professional expectations. Students (and faculty members) follow their curiosity where it leads them without worrying if a new topic will toll them a chore. They are like the inquiring reader using Vannevar Bush'southward Memex (too published in the Atlantic, back in 1945), moving from topic to topic depending on the unique contours and contents of their mind.
A kind of teaching: liberal education involves a certain way of teaching. Parker describes information technology every bit "operating from a pedagogical methodology that emphasizes active learning, faculty/student collaboration, independent enquiry, and critical thinking." More,
The defining characteristics of liberal educational activity in this logic are not disciplines but practices — practices like group written report, undergraduate inquiry, kinesthesia mentoring, student presentations, and other forms of active learning…
Civic appointment and political activism: this is the liberal arts as school for intervening in a society, or for becoming a well prepared member of thepolis. Jo Ellen Parker finds this to exist in part a curricular style:
In terms of curriculum, this approach tends to value the development of skills specifically believed to exist fundamental to effective citizenship — literacy, numeracy, sometimes public speaking, scientific and statistical literacy, familiarity with social and political science, and disquisitional thinking. It tends to value curricular engagement with current social and political issues alongside the extracurricular evolution of ethical reflection and socially responsible character traits in students, seeing student life as an educational sphere in its own correct in which leadership, rhetorical, and community-building skills can exist proficient.
The liberal arts college: now we're talking well-nigh a very specific sort of American campus, ane of maybe lxxx to 300 or so, depending on i'south criteria and zipper to rankings. These are the Bryn Mawrs and Vassars, the Williamses and Middleburies.
Sometimes this model can include other institutions that do liberal didactics. Call back most how large universities tin set up modest mini-colleges on campus that aim to function similar liberal arts colleges. My own alma mater offers a good case of this. The University of Michigan is a massive, public research university, but for decades it has maintained its Residential Higher as an internal liberal arts entity. Or consider Due west Betoken, which teaches in some of the ways outlined to a higher place. The American Association of Colleges and Universities has hundreds of fellow member institutions, each joining to proclaim their support of liberal education.
Permit me add two more senses to the listing.
Interdisciplinary written report: the term "liberal arts" is inherently plural. Information technology does non guild in a single academic department or major, but instead assumes a multiplicity of fields. There's a hint of learning for its own sake here, as information technology allows students to trace ideas across intellectual boundaries. There's also the acknowledgement that students are better prepared for the world in one case they larn how to navigate across those boundaries, especially equally workers are increasingly likely to accept ii or more very different jobs in the course of adult life. This sense of liberal pedagogy opposes itself to the preprofessional degree or the shaping of an undergraduate feel so that information technology largely focuses on a single major.
The humanities: listen carefully to the academic fields a speaker mentions when they refer to liberal education. They will usually mention humanistic fields. Do they and then add the sciences? Exercise they include the quantitatively intensive social sciences, such as economics? Oft they will non, and you tin can deduce that for the speaker the liberal arts, or liberal didactics, means the humanities. (Y'all can press this still more closely to get a sense ofwhich humanities, and so the speaker'south politics usually appear quite clearly, especially given their tone. Conservatives will often praise history and faith but disdain women'due south studies, for example.)
We can go further and tease out still more meanings and variations. We could talk about the role of religion, for example, or delve into the history of how America invented the liberal arts higher. I'1000 always fond of the Latin roots for liberal arts, as in the arts (skills, knowledge) needed by a free person. But let'southward pause at that place.
I find that outside the academy the humanities sense is a pop 1. Inside the academy, nosotros're all over the map, including within liberal arts colleges and universities.
Now we can at last loop dorsum to the Adam Harris article. The Stevens Point campus is not a classic liberal arts college in the usual sense, but is an AAC&U member. Information technology may teach according to Parker'due south pedagogical models; the Atlantic article doesn't address these.
Instead, "The Liberal Arts May Non Survive the 21st Century" seems to be virtually mostly interdisciplinary study and the humanities. Those are the majors to be cutting: "six liberal-arts majors, including geography, geology, French, German, two- and 3-dimensional art, and history…" The last four are humanities, and the first i – geography – might tread in that domain to the extent classes involve cultural geography.
The article goes on to focus on history, and in opposition appears the sciences. For example, "[b]y that point, administrators had already broken down the number of students enrolled as majors in each department—at to the lowest degree those aside from the STEM fields, Willis said." Added to the sciences are professional tracks. The 2 combine in opposition to the liberal arts – i.e., the humanities:
The changes would reflect "a national motility amidst students towards career pathways," administrators argued. The proposal planned to add together majors in chemical engineering, computer-information systems, conservation-law enforcement, finance, fire science, graphic design, management, and marketing. By focusing more on fields that led directly to careers, the school could better provide what businesses wanted—and students, in theory, would accept an easier time finding jobs and career success.
To be fair, the administration wasn't talking about catastrophe humanities instruction, merely canceling several majors. Those units – history, geography, etc. – would still teach. Indeed, the strategic language framed the Stevens Point shift as a synthesis rather than deletion:
"We remain committed to ensuring every educatee who graduates from UW-Stevens Betoken is thoroughly grounded in the liberal arts, besides equally prepared for a successful career path," Bernie Patterson, the establishment'southward chancellor, said in a message to the campus.
So volition liberal education in the Stevens Point sense survive the 21st century?
If the core sense here is "the humanities," so it seems probable information technology will do so. The humanities seems likely to keep shrinking in terms of student involvement for a variety of reasons, as I've noted. Adam Harris mentions the perception that the humanities have fiddling economic benefit, which is certainly one major rationale for enrollment decline. I'm non sure how much farther these "liberal arts" will compress before the twelvemonth 2100. Nosotros tin can imagine different forms of consolidation, some already practiced, such equally merging English and comparative literature.
Personally, I take a hard time shaking the thought that the humanities will in many instances become service departments. That is, they won't offer as many majors as they used to, simply volition instead devote themselves to general education, to the core curriculum. Harris' commodity references this at ane betoken:
even if the country were to miraculously open the coffers for state institutions, [Greg Summers, the provost and vice chancellor at Stevens Point] said he would likely notwithstanding eliminate the history major and others in favor of more focus on stem fields bolstered past a broader general-education curriculum.
This is an important stardom. Information technology doesn't mean colleges won't teach history. It means they volition teach it entirely to nonmajors. Students will be exposed to the topics, if somewhat less often in the aggregate, depending on how a given establishment structures its core curriculum.
A "liberal education" bounceback for the humanities is possible if some of the fields can modify their reputation. This may require a massive increase in public intellectual work, a political shift, and a cultural transformation.
As for the other senses of "liberal teaching," as Joe Ellen Parker laid them out? There are so many factors driving these changes – and such a long time remaining in this century! I can offer a few thoughts.
The pedagogical model is very powerful. It is, however, expensive to offer as it typically does not scale well. The ideal is a seminar, non a lecture hall. This is one reason for its scarcity. Now, adjuncts – the bulk of American instructors – can teach this style, if their institutions support them. Down the road is the possibility (perhaps not too likely, pace the historical piece of work of Audrey Watters) that we tin automate such pedagogy. Unless we realize that, it will be hard to scale up this pedagogy beyond where it is now.
The politically engaged model is, of grade, controversial. Many campuses I've worked with are increasingly interested in offering social justice programs, while the American right wing fulminates against the very thought. This model may persist as long equally Generation Z continues its activist plow, and mayhap longer. The thought that dealing with climate change requires unusually high levels of political knowledge and practice may as well drive this educational model into greater practice as the planet heats and the waters rise.
The liberal arts college model: the common wisdom I've heard from public and private conversations is that the top tier of such colleges – Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Bowdoin, Carleton et al, according to the widely disliked and universally attended United states News ranking – are invincible, given their endowments ($2.seven billion for Williams; $2.248 billion for Amherst), reputation, and alumni networks. However, lower tier liberal arts colleges may face closure, merger, or transformation into a very different blazon of campus. Geography may inflect this sharply, every bit those that are regional in the range of students they draw, rather than national or international, tin can get hitting badly past demographic changes. Similarly, the general plow towards cities and abroad from the countryside will not help most rurally-based campuses.
Interdisciplinary studies: currently this bookish way is controversial. On the one hand we take many academic leaders, funders, and researchers who celebrate the benefits of crossing betwixt departments. Indeed, many new departments emerge from such intersections. On the other, academic disciplines remain strong, fifty-fifty violent social constructs. They are the training beds of faculty-to-be in graduate school and the departments that dispense promotions and punishments in employment. They are the master professional publication and development channels. Disciplines, well, subject. I am non certain how the residue will tip over the next 71 years, merely I would not be surprised to see the struggle persist, even as we develop new disciplines.
Equally for learning for its own sake? I fear my answer may be darker than usual. I am typing this under the influence of a battery of medications as my body struggles with a ferocious cold/sinus infection/some kind of rhinitis. It is also but about the longest night of the year, upward here in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere. Darkness and gloom are, shall nosotros say, very attainable moods for me. So perhaps take this with a grain of table salt, only: I think macroeconomics will take this kind of liberal teaching to the aristocracy and restrict it there.
Consider that income and wealth inequality are rising, as my listeners and readers know well. Gilens and Folio helped usher in the return of the Gilded Age term oligarchy, and a full general sense that American lodge'southward inequalities are rising seems widespread, if unmet by mitigating policies. At the same time our culture has securely embraced marketplace logic in much of life, viewing ourselves as our own CEOs engaged in continuous transactions with customers and other businesses. As long equally these 2 trends continue to flourish learning for its own sake will become scarce. Increasingly only those who tin can afford to clear out several years purely for the complimentary play of intellectual exploration will be able to do so. The residuum of the student torso will accept other priorities and options.
My thanks to Adam Harris for offering a provocative commodity. Information technology'due south a fine historical document of this moment in American bookish history.
Source: https://bryanalexander.org/future-of-education/on-liberal-education-surviving-the-21st-century/
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