Benefits of a Liberal Arts College Education
April 26, 2024
Early childhood education taught me what to think, whereas my college education taught me how to think. I attended college in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Those were the days when undergraduates were encouraged to take courses in philosophy, history, psychology and sociology – and we were challenged by professors to examine a host of conflicting ideas, attitudes and beliefs. It was called a "liberal arts education", and we who participated were being liberated from passively and unquestioningly accepting all the ideas and prejudices we had been exposed to since early childhood. We were being asked to consider the opinions of others, including those with whom we would not normally associate. Hence the dictionary definition of the word liberal: "Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas." We were taught the art of "critical thinking" -- the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication. And this education provided us with talents that are so critical in society today -- the ability to discern the subtle lies and distortions of those who wish to manipulate us for their own benefit, and the skill to respond with clariity and sound reasoning to those lies and distortions.
That discipline has also benefitted me in my career as an IT professional, with the willingness and ability to recognize that there may be multiple solutions to a given problem, and recognizing the importance of sufficiently understanding a problem at a macro and micro level before defining and coding an appropriate solution.
Many of the rich and powerful leaders in business and government today are critical of colleges that provie a liberal arts education. Perhaps this is because many of those "liberal" graduates have become their most vocal and effective critics. Is it any wonder that many of those leaders frequently denegrate graduates as "woke" rather than "educated" and "aware", and seldom express concern that a college education has become unaffordable for most Americans? And perhaps it for that reason that colleges have become increasingly the training ground for their descendants and others who major in economics and business administration, whose goals are to become successful in business, advance quickly up the corporate ladder, and become the next generation of rich and powerful leaders in business and government.
