Should Universities Give Liberal Arts Programs?

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps I should rather place exceptions who are NOT representative of modern academia, such as Roger Scruton.

I don't know. Maybe? You'd have to explain to me who Scruton is and why he's significant before I could tell you.

In general, discourse in social sciences and liberal arts can be summarised as something happens, therefore "Oh noes! Oppression! Patriarchy! Racism!". Once something is no longer considered PC, it cannot be studied in a dispassionate manner, only as an object of hostility.

Well, that isn't my personal experience. Maybe it's because of the particular fields or institutions I've been exposed to, maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but what I'm asking is that you show me, in sketch if nothing else. I'm not even asking for proof, at this point, I'm just asking you to explain what it is you're actually saying. All you're doing now is generalising vaguely, and generalisations don't become more enlightening just because you pile them on top of each other.

 

[Hygro]

I seem to remember my liberal artsy professors marking essays down for treating the Oh noes of oppression/patriarchy/racism as an object of hostility rather than dispassionate study. Then they would remind the class that we're studying something and not to do that.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yeah, that's been my experience. Scholars are usually very big on understanding and explaining which requires a certain level of detachment, even if the ultimate purpose is critique, even impassioned critique. (Look at Marx: he wrote a thousand-page analysis of capitalism, where simple moral outage could have been contained in a pamphlet.) Some scholars aren't so great at separating the two, to be sure, but that's bad scholarship, and if Kaiserguard wants to contend that there's a general culture of bad scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, he's going to have to go into a little more detail than simply stating it to be the case. Like I said, I don't even want conclusive proof, I just want to know what the actual criticisms being made are.

 

[Traitorfish]

Also, @OP:

I am taking a political science class, and I found that all I am really doing is reading a book and taking down notes. I read ahead of class, and I often find that the lecture content is just a dumbed down version of what I was expected to read. I can say with confidence that I can pass this class without attending a single lecture. However, I paid for the lecture, so I am going to attend it.

I've had that experience. It's certainly true that some courses do not seem to consist of much more than an elaboration on a textbook. I remember a class I took in my first year, "political ideologies", which was a series of weekly lectures summarising a textbook chapter, and tutorials which tried to see if any of it had sunk in. It wasn't great! It felt like the only stuff I actually learned was through independent reading, and as you say, I could have done that anyway. But the next year, in the same school, I took a class on comparative politics, looking at the democratisation of Spain and Russia. That was a different story altogether: the lectures were much tighter and more focused, the class was taught with specialists in Spanish and Russian politics, the tutorials were much better structured and really forced you to think about and respond to the material. I certainly could not have taught myself all that, or at least not very quickly or very well. The key shift, I think, is that they stopped simply telling us about political science and actually asking us to do some, even if only at an absolutely amateur level, where in engineering and sciences you'd be doing that sort of thing from the start.

So I think maybe the problem you're hitting is simply that entry-level classes aren't always that great. Often they're very general and a bit rushed. They don't always go into a lot of depth, because the size of the classes means they're anxious to keep everyone on the same page. The interesting stuff comes later, especially as classes become more focused and you get more choice. You also get a lot more contact with actual scholars, where earlier on a lot of your contact time is with postgrads, and that's important because you're actually dealing with an expert in the field, so you are going to be challenged.

That's not really a response to the rest of the criticisms, which have been addressed elsewhere in the thread, but it does seem to be what provoked this particular crisis of confidence in liberal arts, so I thought I'd add my two cents.

 

[Arwon]

Universities are to expand your mind, thinking capacity, and intelligence. In many regards they are supposed to be opposite of practical, because they are, improving your ability to think beyond what's already in practice.

Did it really take until the second page for someone to point this out?

I always find this topic weird every time it comes up. I've got a bachelors which is basically an Arts degree with some extra letters, I work now in a statistics based field, and I simply don't feel my degree was a waste.

You learn how to think, how to write and how to identify and organise information and evidence. The actual topics you study are really pretty secondary to the skills you develop. I'm not sure I'd be better at my job if I had either studied the topic area I now work in, or if I'd gotten a mathematics degree.

The thing with Arts degrees is there's not really a defined career track laid out for you to simply have your hand held as you walk into. But then, if you want a false sense of certainty about life, become an engineer.

 

[BvBPL]

Yes, they should have liberal arts programs.

First off, you express the notion that liberal arts programs are useless. This is far from the case. Liberal arts support, at a minimum, language and communication competencies. These competencies are too rare in American society and in the American employment pool. By supporting and growing these competencies, liberal arts educations prepares students for employment in a broad array of fields,

Secondly, liberal arts programs expand the cultural knowledge and understanding of students. This too is not without value. A shared cultural knowledge floats all our boats. Similarly, liberal arts requirements can open students up to new areas of interest.

Thirdly, there is a significant value in a shared classroom experience. Forums are nice, but there are not classrooms. The two serve different purposes.

Fourth, there is value is being provided direction from an instructor. While it is true that you could teach yourself a variety of disciplines, receiving critical feedback from an instructor is very helpful. What’s more, having an instructor curate a course means that you are learning (generally) from a variety of texts and getting a broad view of study subjects. An instructor also helps to ensure that the information you are learning is contemporary, rather than reading Adam Smith, say. Finally, an instructor can provide valuable insight into contemporary industry practices that are not presented in texts.

 

[Zack]

Did it really take until the second page for someone to point this out?

I'm pretty sure that's what JR was getting at in post #5, albeit expressed in JR form.

For what it's worth, I agree, and I'm a STEM major who goes to a university which is overwhelmingly STEM-oriented. College is more than simply a means to an end (the end here being employment).

 

[Angst]

Warpus.

Liberal arts programs encompass a wide variety of topics, from actual art and architecture to soft sciences such as political science and economics. It also covers languages, literature, history, women's studies and the like.

So all the internet noise about liberal arts being useless is the very same noise about the humanities being useless? Good to know, I know what articles not to take seriously.

The problem is that when people choose for Liberal Arts programmes, they are teached such Critical theory BS disguised as "critical thinking against authority", which in reality unwittingly seeks to destroy the very fabric of society. Individual choice may and should be restricted if society at large is at risk.

What a load of noise.

How about my argument that one can learn any of these arts subjects by themselves? Do you guys believe that it is possible, or must I attend classes to be proficient in a topic like history?

You can learn mathematics or engineering by reading books too, you know.

 

[Sanguivorant]

A lot of interesting opinions. I will answer to a few which caught my attention.

The problem with eliminating liberal arts is that we'd all be engineers, and how long do you think that can last before we all just murder each other?

I'm not really sure what this implies actually. I'm assuming this means that if all people are engineers, then we would have a surplus of engineers and harsh competition.

Universities are to expand your mind, thinking capacity, and intelligence. In many regards they are supposed to be opposite of practical, because they are, improving your ability to think beyond what's already in practice.

That is the function of Universities, you are correct.

If you think political science or economics is too basic to take classes for, wait how numbing your accounting classes will be No firm worth their salt is going to prefer an accounting major to an economics major, unless you want to be their accountant and only their accountant. And even still, an economics major can get a job as an accountant without much extra work.

I can assume that accounting is no easy thing, but it is a practical profession.

You are right, an accounting degree on it-self is probably not that marketable. I could major in accounting and minor in economics, and that way I cut a competitive edge in that job market. My university currently does not offer a minor in accounting, or I would have considered that.

I can give you plenty of reasons to not become an accountant.

My mind is open. I'd like to know your reasons.

Likely the worst uni fields (by now) are political ones, cause chances are the lecturers there are little more than paid ideologues.

Most professors are objective in their teaching, but liberal arts are weird in that there is no absolute way to see something, or there is an assumed perfection.

If we are talking about political science, it basically goes down to these few points:
-Democracy is the best political system
-You are going to spend time studying why every other system fails.
-These are countries that are attempting to adopt democracy, and you are going to analyse that.

In my opinion, a university that deserves this name should eliminate its accounting program before it eliminates its liberal arts programs. Historically, liberal arts were the only thing universities were for and it is only a very recent (and worrying) trend to see universities as some kind of glorified trade school that should only impart economically useful skills. We certainly need schools for that, but that is not the task of universities.

You were right. In the beginning, Universities were only accessible to the absolute rich who had the time and wealth to study something that they did not need to rely on to earn a living.

People in the past did not attend Universities because they did not have the money to, or could not rely on that knowledge to earn their bread. What you have now is a bunch of people who really need to learn a trade and earn some real money, and instead of doing that, they take a loan and learn something in the liberal arts. Then they leave the University with debt.

The generation of today is much different. If I took anything from my readings, this generation is post-materialist. The most important things that matter to most people today are self-fulfilment and self-expression in the Western world. This is prioritized over physical and financial security, because it is often taken for granted.

Anyhow, this is why I believe that one should not be allowed to take a loan to do a liberal arts degree, because it is an invest that has questionable outcomes.

It looks like all of your points are reasons to study disciplines such as engineering and accounting as opposed to liberal arts. None of them seem to be reasons why universities should not be offering liberal arts programs. Your final question is if you should switch your major or not.

I guess you are right, that is what I am looking for.

The thing with Arts degrees is there's not really a defined career track laid out for you to simply have your hand held as you walk into. But then, if you want a false sense of certainty about life, become an engineer.

Only death is a certainty. And I can expect the oil engineer market to be affected if whatever is going on in Iraq and Syria manages to spread any further.

Fourth, there is value is being provided direction from an instructor. While it is true that you could teach yourself a variety of disciplines, receiving critical feedback from an instructor is very helpful. What’s more, having an instructor curate a course means that you are learning (generally) from a variety of texts and getting a broad view of study subjects. An instructor also helps to ensure that the information you are learning is contemporary, rather than reading Adam Smith, say. Finally, an instructor can provide valuable insight into contemporary industry practices that are not presented in texts.

True, true and true.

You can learn mathematics or engineering by reading books too, you know.

That's true actually if I critically think about it.

Something like engineering or the sciences though is based a lot on scientific experiments. Universities excel in creating an environment that helps people in those fields have what they need to conduct their experiments, because let's be honest, having a "Cold Room" is no easy task (Just kidding, any house without a heater in Calgary is a cold room). Sometimes, only universities have the license to own a certain material.

But you are right. If I really wanted to study anything, I could do it independently.

 

[BvBPL]

I like how you came at this from the angle of "why should I learn liberal arts in university" rather than simply "why should I learn liberal arts."

 

[Sanguivorant]

Liberal arts do encourage one to think critically and to provide an in depth analysis of the world around us. Having knowledge of the liberal arts is a fine addition to other professions of society, and someone knowledgeable in one of its disciplines generally has more to say about the world and is a well-informed, well-rounded citizen, if they are seriously pursuing their discipline and didn't just come to University to attend parties and entertain themselves.

I just believe that it is easier to get this kind of education independently, without the assistance of a University.

 

[BvBPL]

Here's the thing:

Liberal arts is pretty nifty. It teaches you great communication and critical thinking skills, among other things.

University liberal arts programs aren't the only way some people can learn these skills, but for many people a liberal arts program is the easiest and best way to earn those skills.

Plus, a liberal arts degree gives you a really broad ability to do a lot of stuff, both professionally and otherwise. You might not be the best at any one thing useful, but you will have a journeyman's ability at many.

The question of whether or not to pursue a liberal arts degree is best seen as a question of opportunity costs. If you know what you want to do, and if that is something that is outside of a liberal arts field, then it pays to spend your time pursuing that. If you don't know what to do then you can do far, far worse than getting a liberal arts degree.

 

[KMRblue1027]

@Angst: Don't even bother trying to argue with Kaiserguard involving anything with authority. He's playing a straw monarchist.

 

[Gucumatz]

If you don't know what to do then you can do far, far worse than getting a liberal arts degree.

With increasing student debts that axiom might be changing. And while I am not sure what Kaiser is on about at the moment, he did bring up the good point that in several European countries there is a much bigger focus on trade schools/STEM programs than there is here. Relatively its therefore easier for graduates to find work in Germany, partly as a result of this increased proportion of trade schools (which benefit those who study liberal arts therefore as well)

Also I am not convinced universities do that great of a job of providing lessons in "communication" overall.

 

[Hygro]

And yet in Europe their economists are in general far worse than ours, resulting in a worse overall economy. Econ degrees in Europe are generally 3 years and are not actual lib arts degrees—there's no study outside the orthodoxy. So while its cool people are getting certified to do advanced stuff with less hassle, there seems to be a fundamental lack of widespread leadership training. Strange, imho, coming from Hegel's home.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Yeah, that's been my experience. Scholars are usually very big on understanding and explaining which requires a certain level of detachment, even if the ultimate purpose is critique, even impassioned critique. (Look at Marx: he wrote a thousand-page analysis of capitalism, where simple moral outage could have been contained in a pamphlet.) Some scholars aren't so great at separating the two, to be sure, but that's bad scholarship, and if Kaiserguard wants to contend that there's a general culture of bad scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, he's going to have to go into a little more detail than simply stating it to be the case. Like I said, I don't even want conclusive proof, I just want to know what the actual criticisms being made are.

Also, in my experience, given the trend in modern liberal arts, scholars tend to be outraged by bizarre minutiae, rather then some vast, political concept.

 

[caketastydelish]

One thing I've neglected to add is that for whatever reason, most people aren't doing what they should do: double major, one in something technical/stem related, the other in a humanities. What I don't understand is most double majors either do so for both of their degrees to be in humanities, or both to be in STEM. Personally I think someone with one STEM major and the other humanities major would be more interesting and well-rounded.

 

[Tahuti]

And yet in Europe their economists are in general far worse than ours, resulting in a worse overall economy. Econ degrees in Europe are generally 3 years and are not actual lib arts degrees—there's no study outside the orthodoxy. So while its cool people are getting certified to do advanced stuff with less hassle, there seems to be a fundamental lack of widespread leadership training. Strange, imho, coming from Hegel's home.

While I wouldn't say European economists are worse than American ones, the reason why European economists are more classical oriented is that economics departments are generally isolated from humanities and other social science departments. They have a life of their own. Economists here are loathe to work with other social scientists and historians.

When European economists go out of the mainstream, they generally align with Math geeks than historians. Which is why you have much more students of econometrics than political economy (which isn't even an available major here in the Netherlands AFAIK).

 

[Hygro]

One thing I've neglected to add is that for whatever reason, most people aren't doing what they should do: double major, one in something technical/stem related, the other in a humanities. What I don't understand is most double majors either do so for both of their degrees to be in humanities, or both to be in STEM. Personally I think someone with one STEM major and the other humanities major would be more interesting and well-rounded.

I mean, it's cool when people can manage that... I'm a 27 y/o undergrad finishing one major while dipping in and out to work on music and explore life and it's like, there is not enough adderall in the world to get me to finish two majors in four years. Maybe if I had hired help to literally task-master and pump me up all day every day.

While I wouldn't say European economists are worse than American ones, the reason why European economists are more classical oriented is that economics departments are generally isolated from humanities and other social science departments. They have a life of their own. Economists here are loathe to work with other social scientists and historians.

When European economists go out of the mainstream, they generally align with Math geeks than historians. Which is why you have much more students of econometrics than political economy (which isn't even an available major here in the Netherlands AFAIK).

I don't mean they lack the same talent or aren't as good at working through the discipline. I mean basically what you say, their silo'd existence stuck in an unchallenged orthodoxy means they are literally talented folks learning bad economics. This makes them really good at being really bad.

The UK has political economy at cambridge under the name Politics, Philosophy, and Economics so I think it's a bit more English-speaking countries vs mainland traditions.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm not really sure what this implies actually. I'm assuming this means that if all people are engineers, then we would have a surplus of engineers and harsh competition.

Nah, just playing on the stereotype that engineers can try the patience.