Posts Tagged ‘Critical thinking’

Liberal Arts

As lower national economic performance begins to ripple through higher education, some administrators are taking alarming measures. This year, Wisconsin Lutheran College went so far as to eliminate the study of political science altogether. The decision was the byproduct of a cost saving staff reduction for the college, but what is the price for students themselves? According to Michael Brintnall, executive director of the American Political Science Association:

“It would be thought to be a central component of a liberal arts education,” he said. “The subject matter is too central to civic life and understanding where we are going in the world to not offer the content.”

Healthy civic life depends on independent critical thinking and these cuts in areas traditionally associated with the liberal arts do not bode well for those students unfortunate enough to be caught in their university’s financial crisis. This is not only true for students who choose a “liberal arts” major, but students in other departments as well. Newsweek’s recent story on the Death of the Liberal Arts sums up the situation:

Among liberal-arts proponents, the concern is that students who specialize in specific careers will lack critical thinking skills and the ability to write, analyze, and synthesize information. While business education tends to prepare students to work well in teams or give presentations, it often falls short in teaching students to do in-depth research or to write critically outside of the traditional business communiqués of memos or PowerPoints. “I think you need to have both liberal-arts and pre-professional classes at the four-year level,” says José Luis Santos, assistant professor in the Higher Education and Organizational Change division at UCLA. “People need to graduate with critical thinking skills because most workplaces retrain individuals for the needs of the industry.”

There is good news for those fortunate enough to attend America’s most elite institutions:

While the tradition of the liberal-arts education may be on the wane nationwide, the most elite schools, such as Harvard, Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Williams, remain committed to its ideal. These top schools are not tweaking their curriculums to add any pre-professional undergraduate programs. Thanks to their hefty endowments, they don’t have to. As the economy rebounds, their students, ironically, may be in the best spot. While studying the humanities has become unfashionable and seemingly impractical, the liberal arts also teaches students to think big thoughts—big enough to see beyond specific college majors and adapt to the broader job market.

The real question remains, however, as America’s smaller colleges and universities are cutting the very courses that are the calling card of places like Harvard and Williams, what is the cost for the students in places like Wisconsin Lutheran? What is the future of civic education for our nation as a whole?

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