"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." –Albert Einstein (1921)
Higher education made a roundabout maneuver over the last twenty years. College liberal arts offerings have declined, chiefly humanities programs, yielding to job-related and nontheoretically applied courses. Occupational practicality is responsible for many students shifting majors from traditional coursework to career related programs, i.e., engineering, manufacturing, and trendy STEM vocations. The shift, broadly, in the mission of higher education has moved from emphases on critical thinking and human values to technocrat job training, from teaching substance to coaching skills. Core subjects: English, math, social sciences, humanities, and science no longer are predominant supporting pillars of higher education. While employers have long favored hiring college graduates with a liberal arts background, candidates with communication and analytical skills, these same graduates come to first-time jobs with generalized abilities rather than specific job proficiencies. They have theoretical rather than practical talents to present to an employer. A graduate in music theory, for instance, may have little to offer the business world and have a narrow path to apply that degree in any real-world livelihood. As a result, it should come as no surprise that a steady decline in humanities majors has given way to market forces. Many students opt for majors that lead to attractive starting salaries, pushing aside courses of study they may have instinctively desired. It’s all about money, isn’t it?
Add disquieting changes caused by pandemic restrictions, and a significant shift in the value of college degrees, many would-be students are opting out of college altogether. And why not? Why spend all that money on four years of college, perhaps over $100,000.00, when many employers are willing to train applicants directly out of high school for good paying midlevel jobs? The need for a college degree has become less important, even considering long-term monetary advantages of a college degree after paying about hundred thousand dollars on tuition, books, and room and board. Regardless, eight straight years of decline in humanities majors (The Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay, November 22, 20121) have shown that free market forces have overtaken the idea that college training as human development trumps career-focused preparation. “Show me the money,” has become the shrewd, if hackneyed request, from high school graduates.
The mission of college education has changed from developing critical thinking skills and acquiring how-to-learn proficiencies, as liberal education has in the past, to a job training enterprise. College has always been a training ground for creating workers, but now the specification of college programs suggests that training workers is more important than developing values and problem-solving in people. Training the mind rather than job training, that’s the difference between what a college degree once represented and what it is becoming. What is at stake is the remainder of the humanities and liberal arts altogether. Is it possible that the future of higher education will promote little or no humanities at all? If so, what will result?
Our lives are data-driven, subsumed by computer code and analytics, algorithms and statistical tables. Are we disengaging our humanity in favor of rubrics? In favor of AI chatbots? We are entertained by robots, GPS devices tell us where to go, and smart phones serve as arbiters, guides, and problem-solvers. Go ahead and Google it.
Trends shown by students and college administrators as they select areas of study are precursors to what education and our future will become. That prospect is frightening. But the educational future nevertheless promises to be humancentric. It must be for our survival.
“What are you going to do with that?” That question is naturally asked of the philosophy graduate shortly after she or he throws her or his mortarboard cap into the air. Perhaps the answer is—save us from ourselves?
The challenge for the Arts and Sciences will be to accept changes in its traditional roles, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication, adding an emphasis of inclusion and a dash of empathy.