The Relevance of Discussion on Liberal Arts Relevance
In January, I will serve as a panelist for the Council of Independent
Colleges Presidents Institute on the theme of "Building Value--Linking
Classroom to Career." The seminar is designed to illustrate ways in
which the kind of education offered by Bethany College and other national liberal arts colleges can translate into real value for our graduates.
It's a conversation that I welcome having with veteran and newcomer
college presidents alike. After all, we work hard to ensure the
continued vitality of our institutions. We devote many hours to student
recruitment and retention, fundraising, the formation of parents'
associations, alumni engagement, career counseling and much more. And
when we talk about "real value" for our grads, we're really referencing
successful career placement in those first critical jobs that bring with
them healthy starting salaries and abundant opportunities for rapid
advancement.
Given the cost of college these days and the growing sense of
entitlement that students and parents have about the value of their
tuition dollars, we as educators need to think and plan strategically to
position our colleges for success beyond the current career climate.
That climate, like that of the Earth, is volatile and not always
predictable. There are things we need to do as institutions to prepare.
A recent article in the Leadership Exchange publication of NASPA, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, puts it
bluntly: "In the minds of many critics and supporters of higher
education, getting a job has become the ultimate measure of both student
and institutional success in today's turbulent economic and employment
climate." The authors of the article conclude that "the highest quality
liberal arts education" is the way to go for achieving lifetime, as well
as career, success.
I couldn't agree more. The challenge, of course, is to match
students' career plans and expectations with relevant experiential
learning. Although a workable and desirable concept, it can be
labor-intensive. But it often offers the best formula for matching
liberal arts skills of communication, research and synthesis of
information with practical career applications. Think study-abroad
opportunities that enrich students' understanding of the global
community they will join as career professionals. Our students at
Bethany College consistently rank international, academically oriented
travel as the single best learning experience of their four years with
us.
Yet apart from the obvious excitement of hiking through the Amazon or
strolling in the world's greatest museums, defining exactly how a
liberal arts background can be useful to career-focused graduates is
more than an exercise in college marketing. It's the key to our
survival as institutions.
This means that many colleges and universities -- especially those
embracing traditional liberal arts missions -- will not only have to
rebrand themselves in a promotional sense; they'll have to redefine
their operational model.
The new calculus for such institutions will rely on career-enhancing
skills of information gathering and synthesis of data; analysis and
problem solving; team dynamics in non-traditional work environments;
networking and career-centered communication and social interaction; a
working knowledge of languages, and a practical understanding of world
cultures within a business context. And guess what? All of these
recommend a liberal arts approach.
Yet higher education can be slow to change and adapt, even when its
survival is challenged. Moreover, college curricula can be confusing in
providing the kind of foundation students need. Writing in Forbes (November 7, 2013), George Leef points out
that "at many schools, the curriculum has become so unwieldy that it is
possible for students to graduate without ever taking any of the
courses that we would formerly have regarded as pillars of a college
education." He suggests that useful general-education requirements that
give students a broad, critical-thinking foundation may be absent or
compromised by what is more fashionable or appealing to students.
I believe that the classical, liberal arts genre of education should
survive, that it deserves the best kind of critical and creative
thinking that can save it (perhaps even releasing it from embedded
tradition and practice) and that having a radical discussion on its
future possibilities should go forward -- urgently. The residential,
personalized, professor-intensive model has unlimited value, as well as
diverse implications for our society and the demands that confront our
next generation of leaders.
If we do not act to save the liberal arts, if we do not employ the
most sophisticated tools at hand to broaden our students' intellectual
experience which should also be enriched by a secure foundation of the
liberal arts, we will pay heavily as a society. We may have a
hardworking, talented, enthusiastic but one-dimensional workforce to
whom the most complex issues of our time, and theirs, will be deeply,
and perhaps unnecessarily, frustrating. They will miss out on the life
pleasures of general knowledge. We will miss out because of their
unrealized intellectual capacity to solve problems.
We deserve better than that and, frankly, so do our students whom we are entrusted to teach.
Dr. Scott D. Miller is president of Bethany College and M.M.
Cochran Professor of Leadership Studies. Now in his 23rd year as a
college president, he serves as a consultant to college presidents and
boards.
