Point-Counterpoint: Liberal Arts Education

It was about two years ago, and I was a terrified freshman, along with roughly 1,600 classmates. We had just come to college, and already our professors, our parents and the New York Times were telling us that we should not be looking forward to getting a job immediately after graduation.

The students who looked the most scared, I noticed, were the business students. Wearing black suits more appropriate for funerals, they went to job fairs that looked more desolate than Manhattan in I Am Legend. Suddenly, their dreams of BMWs and corporate expense accounts had dropped out from under them.

Without criticizing the motives of then-CBA undergrads, the economic climate of the past few years has made me realize how valuable a liberal arts education truly is. When you think about it, every good job requires the same skill set: an ability to read, write and use logic. This is what, at its very core, a liberal arts education is about.

Think about it. Can any college class give you specialized training for a career without limiting you to that same career? Can any job really train you in critical thinking and communication? No! Each has their place. One who majored in business with a focus in finance could probably be a good accountant or stockbroker. Those are two careers. One who majored in English and graduated with the ability to think and explain is, when you really think about it, infinitely more marketable.

In fact, it is well-known that the average college graduate today can expect to change careers several times in his or her lifetime. Why should one, then, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to limit oneself to one or two careers?

I hate to toot my own horn, and I probably will end up as a stereotypical broke writer traveling the country in a '98 VW, but I believe in my choice of major, theology. It is a subject that best suits the fact that I, along with probably many 20-year olds, do not really know what I want to do with my life, and would like to be educated in a way that will give me the most potential. This, of course, has led to some strange looks from my relatives and acquaintances, asking me what on earth I plan to do with my major. Their instant assumptions, of course, are entering academia (relatively unlikely) or the priesthood (not entirely out of the question). However, I have heard this question enough times to have a quick response at hand, which goes something like this: "I am a theology major because the subject focuses entirely on comprehending and synthesizing arguments, which is a skill I can use in several careers I am considering." 

You do not have to believe me. Take the advice of one of my theology professors who explained the benefits of his subject that should make everyone take notice. His wife, he explains, works for a major software company whose policy is to lay off and then outsource 10 percent of their workforce. People in China, India or a myriad of other countries will work for much less money than those in the Western developed world. He explained that the only reason his wife is able to hold onto her job and good salary is that she has a firm grasp of the English language.

This is the world in to which we will graduate. Major companies that we have dreamt of working for are outsourcing everything from stock trading to research and development. We cannot market ourselves on the basis of the career-specific skills we learned here. Someone overseas solely can present that same resume and ask for a 10th of what we would expect. Something has to set us apart.

Not only does the job market recognize the need for skills beyond whatever one specific career requires. According to a New York Times article from January of this year ["Multicultural Critical Theory. At a Business School?"], more and more MBA programs are realizing that these same ideas; thinking critically and synthesizing arguments to solve problems, ought be an essential part of the curriculum. The Stanford MBA program, for example, has a mandatory first-year course called "Critical and Analytical Thinking."

So remember this idea when you are sitting in your Composition and Rhetoric class, your Intro to the New Testament class or your English Literature class. There are reasons that Fordham has mandated them, and we're not alone. The idea comes from the Ancient Greeks and led to the development of several disciplines that took the name "liberal arts;" grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Philosophy and theology were subjects encompassed in the first three studies, known as the Trivium. Ben Franklin took those ideals in the 18th century and established the Academy and Charitable School of the Province of Pennsylvania. This became a small, unremarkable school called the University of Pennsylvania.

The value of a liberal arts education has been demonstrated over thousands of years. In our fast-paced age, it may seem like it is time to throw it all out and replace it with vocational training in order to prepare this generation for the careers of tomorrow. But some skills never disappear: the ones that Fordham and other liberal arts colleges teach us so well. I am proud to say that the value of my education will not dry up until the benefits of good communication and problem solving do.