NEWS: Notes on the Death of Liberal Arts

CULTURE: Notes on the Death of Liberal Arts

A liberal arts education was once considered the rule at the university. A student entering college could be expected to know something beyond their major—they had to be exposed to history, literature, mathematics, and science. They had to have a basic understanding of rhetoric and be able to communicate what they’ve learned through a variety of methods. Now, as universities have become focused on student's career needs, the model of a liberal arts education has begun to dwindle in the face of undergraduate business schools, specialized trade schools, and the growth of specialized cultural studies departments that supplement the notion of a “life-long scholar.”

Indeed, while an undergraduate degree in business can get you a job in middle management, it is almost impossible to enter into a M.B.A. program with a Bachelor of Business degree: most of the respected M.B.A. programs consider you “ruined.”

people seem to focus on SAT and IQ scores so much... they fail to forget that it has been proven that we have 7 basic intelligences

body kinesthetics

musical ability

those are just two examples of intelligences not taken into account.

read "multiple intelligences" or "emotional intelligence" to get a better idea of the subject

our focus isnt broad enough to help EVERYONE be the best at the particular intelligences they are most proficient in.

: (

i'm confused as to what this has to do with the liberal arts...

Well
Ill give you an example
those engineering students and mathy comp sci types usually BLOW at history fine arts political science or similar coursework
(not always but I did notice it often)
And us who majored in that are still for the most part under/unemployed because we dont have some fancy specialized degree for some particular field/applicable major.

Get the association yet?
Its merely that there are different types of smart so to speak
and that companies and universities alike are only placing an extremely high value on a small rare portion of it.

I have always been saddened by the job-driven sentiment in university.

ok, that clears it up...sort of. i can see the point, but i just didn't catch it from the quote. thanks.

M.B.A. programs stress a large theoretical base (history, or math) so that they can specialize (you know, like any master's program does). If you get a specialized degree, you have no theoretical background that a liberal arts program gives you.

see, now this really clears it up.

i thought you were making the claim that somehow an B.B.A. was a liberal arts degree and that was why an M.B.A. program wouldn't take you.

good. now that's sorted, onward to discussion!

Or so goes the stereotype .

I think one of the real problems facing higher education is the notion that education is a commodity rather than a goal worth pursuing for its own sake. The universities are partly to blame for this - the steep rise in the cost of tuition and other expenses at many schools have placed such a burden on middle and low income families that many expect to get a more tangible reward for their time in school than knowledge and the ability to think critically. People then take this to its logical extreme by demanding that universities act as job placement agencies after graduation and by using statistics like average graduate salary as a benchmark of educational quality. In essence many people have changed their perspective and would prefer to treat universities as overpriced trade schools only fit to pump out graduates with "useful" (read: leading to a profitable career) knowledge rather than institutions of higher learning.

I think if I won the lottery I would begin to collect degrees. I got the biochem one, but would I go for history or english next??????

Most people don't like learning. This, I feel, is a big problem with my country...

awesome! you just justified my seven-year stint!

Don't you need some kind of a bachelors of business degree (be it management, or entrepeneurialship, et cetera) degree to even be considered for an MBA program? As a business student, I've continually been told I need a B.A. in business to even apply for an MBA program because an MBA is a master's degree (i.e. Master's of Business Administration).

Admittedly, this is less of a concern since I started my own business and am doing good for myself, but still, I want that piece of paper so I can always leave my business behind and become a corporate whore.

Also, I fail to see the need for advanced mathematics as taught at the university level. I've had every job from working in the world's premier mould laboratory to residential construction to civilian police work to customer service management and I've never needed math more advanced then finding out the volume of an object, or the square footage of a room.

So I never understood why someone like me needs to take these useless math classes. I call them useless because all I do is bust my ass for a semester (usually spending more time on one class then I do on all my others combined) just to get a passing grade, and then immediately forgetting it the day that semester is over. Some of us just don't have the mind for it. I have a MENSA level IQ and SAT scores that were some of the highest my school had ever seen, but I just don't understand numbers. I didn't when I was six, and I don't sixteen years later (and you know what they say about being younger and remembering more). However, I understand the most obscure philosophical ideas imagineable.

Wouldn't I be getting a better, more enjoyable, and more economically agreeable, education if I were studying what I'll need in the future then what some guy thought up sixty years ago when setting up what is now generally accepted as the basic college educational requirements for a Bachelors degree?? Why waste time and energy and emotion on learning about something I'll never remember, and never use, when I could be devoting those same energies to more advanced english and philosophy classes??

Sorry if this is a bit muddled, but it's late and the cigarettes are almost gone.

Best school ever for your liberal arts kung-fu

http://www.sjca.edu/asp/home.aspx

No, that's nonsense. All you need is a degree, business experience and rudimentary calculus and statistics. And sometimes not even that. I know business managers who have gotten into MBA programs using years of equivalent experience to substitute for a college degree.

After all, the biggest moron in the world has an MBA from Harvard. How hard could it be?

[Edited on Nov 22, 2004 by stockula]

No. You need good GMAT scores, good essays and letters of recommendation and experience, which it sounds like you already have.

That depends on how you define advanced mathematics. I'm assuming you mean calculus, which is really the only math course that most universities require. And while working out taylor expansions and integrating by parts may seem useless to you, calculus is actually used quite often in the formulation of things like economic models, which are of immediate importance to business, not to mention its myriad other uses.

Because the purpose of a college education is not to prepare you to become a corporate slave (the high school indoctrination system seems sufficiently adequate to that task) but to mould you into a well rounded, thinking individual. And part of that process includes at least an exposure to a variety of different areas of learning, including those which you may not necessarily enjoy. The rigorous and systematic application of logic found within math which itself may not be immediately applicable to areas of your life, develops a way of thinking that you will hopefully carry with you long after you've forgotten what the derivative of ln(x) is.

Obviously, I need to explain.

Some people are just inclined towards math. It's a biological fact; right brain v. left brain development.

For example, I'll never be a brain surgeon. Watch me build a house, or repair a broken electronic circuit, and you'll be amazed. But I haven't the finesse of a brain surgeon. As such, I'll never try to become a brain surgeon.

Also, I don't have the mental capacity to handle higher level math and, as such, I won't ever take a job that requires me to be proficient in math.

So why should I be required to do something that I am just not capable of? Or, more importantly, why need I pay to take a class that is required to get a degree, when that class will do nothing but help put a new wing on my college? It won't benefit me, as time has proven, and will actually detract from my other classes (i.e. lost study time).

I'm not saying abolish all math, or english even, classes in college. Hell no! But why make it a requirement for someone when it will do them no good?

I understand the argument about it exercising thought and brain capacity and whatnot, but that's not true in every individual.

So what's so wrong in giving a student a choice? Don't want that math class? Are you sure? OK, take two literature courses, or two science courses (something I'm inexplicibly good at), instead and we'll count it towards your degree requirement as equivalent to that one math class.

Keep in mind that there's a lot more to the professional business world then pie charts and profit equations and such. There's administrative duties, managerial duties, motivational duties, et cetera. That's the kind of stuff someone like me is interested in.

Also, consider if you will, that most businesses, especially private ones, contract out the math intensive work to other companies. Want to know what part of Oklahoma City to build your next store in? Consult a demographic consultant firm. For about ten to a hundred grand, they'll tell you to within an inch where to build your business for maximum profit. And, in so doing, they'll save you thousands of man hours that can be better spent preparing to open a new store sooner and to allow the profits to begin quicker. This is something I know first hand, I did a little constultant work for a friend a while back who'd just opened a store in Oklahoma City, and she'd taken a weekend to show me, step by step, how all of it went.

That's when I first saw, in such clear terms, that there are several types of businesspeople, and that one does not need to be a good mix of all of them to thrive. This woman could barely do more then work a calculator, math wise, yet has a company making upwards of eight figures a year of solid profit.

I, too, have a business (though much smaller) where I handle about seven figures in income a year, for other people (I get a certain cut), and despite the daily influxes out outfluxes (is that even a word?) of cash, I'm thriving. My math skills, I'm ashamed to admit, probably aren't enough to get a high school diploma anymore, yet I'm business saavy enough to have a privately owned business generating a very healthy income. Why? Because, for one, I'm good with people (only in person...on the phone I'm a prick, and online I'm much worse), and, secondly, I have a mind for real estate and how to rent it. Why should I waste my time studying something of no use to my future when I could spend that time exercising and increasing the skills I have?

Unfortunately, most of you would say just go to a tech college or something like that, but I'm already past two year colleges in many respects. I need the cirriculum afforded a four year university to gain anything of use to my future.

Again, I need to clarify.

I understand the importance of an MIT student learning basic english skills, and an English Lit. major learning basic math skills, but there has to be a compromise.

What I forgot to add in the above comment was my suggestion that they have a remedial path in most big state universities where a handful of math teachers teach the same way. My biggest problem is retension. This is aggrevated in a big way by the fact that every time I change classes, I change teachers, and no one teacher seems to teach in a way even remotely similar to the other.

So why not just have a handful of the faculty teach their respective levels of classes in the exact same manner, so that people like me can have that much of a step up. Let the rest of the teachers teach as they will for people without this problem. This is a problem I see in every class, but especially in my math classes - there is no stability in the teaching style, and this leads to confusion, which leads to anger, which leads to resentment, which leads to indifference.

Sorry for the additional post, don't know how that got deleted.

He even has an undergraduate degree in history. That always gave me the giggles.

hasn't this been debunked?

Another step in the commodification of everday life. The expectation that we have a niche to fill, that we should become a cog in a corporate machine. And that this is necessary for our own happiness, ends up in a focus on the monetary payback that we could get if we go into a certain field.
In a way its quite reasonable that the most intangible field of philosophy and arts, which are almost entirely abstract concepts and thinking, are the hardest hit by todays society. In a world where everyone wants concrete results leading to a job, some people find it hard to reconcile an arts degree that is more liberal than able to give you a career.

but wasnt grade school and high school exposure? i udnerstand getting a well-rounded education, but it's true... when you're learning something you son't understand and never have, you forget it the second that class is over. i know exactly how it is, because i've always been that way about math. i took college algebra in high school to prepare me for college. no good! when i took placement testing, i was forced into matht 050, where i relearned fractions, decimals, and other such nonsense.

i forget as soon as i learn; i am not a math person.

forcing me to take MORE math classes at the college level that is irrelevent to my major only causes a lot of stress and the possible lowering of my high gpa. i focus so much on passing math that i may neglect the classes where my true skills lie.

i remember basic math i use everyday, and if i don't, theres a calculator there to help me. in my art major, whatever math that will be used in my work will be learned quickly and practiced so much in a way thats useful that i'll definetly remember it.. but for now, god, LEAVE ME ALONE! no more math, please. it's doing nothing but wasting my credits.

No way, I tried it. It's all about Reed College for your real liberal arts kung-fu. I guess St. John's is okay if you want liberal arts kickboxing or something.

TexaSGuy, I am curious just what science classes you have done well in and what obscure philosophical concepts you have mastered without being able to, as you put it, "understand numbers." After all, mathematics is quite literally the language of science: it is the symbol system in which the observations and conclusions of science can be most clearly and powerfully codified. And I would argue strongly that no philosophy is worth studying that is not grounded in mathematical thinking. (It was not for nothing that the inscription at the entrance to Plato's Academy read, "Let no one who is ignorant of geometry enter here.")

Thank you Howard Gardner

The intelligences of Gardner are Musical, Mathematical/Logical, Spiritual, Linquistic, Body-Kinestetic and Personal (Intra-intelligence).

[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 4:08AM]