Liberal Arts Education: Useless Today?

"What are you going to do with that?"

That is the question that is constantly thrown at me when I tell people I want to major in either philosophy or history in college. A huge percentage of college students are majoring in business, pre-law, pre-med, pre-engineering; you know, the practical majors. The ones that will actually give you a life and a job after college that makes more than a pathetic five figures. But what people have seemed to forgotten is that college should not be primarily concerned with specializing you in a field in order to get a job. College should be, and was for centuries, a continuation of true education. College was there for those that wanted to take their mental growth to the next step. It was all about developing the mind and the soul, not skills for your future vocation.

But you ask, again, the practical question: "Okay, so your mind and soul are stretched, broadened, deepened, etc. But when you get into the real world, how does that help you?" The truth is that it will help you more than everyone realizes. Learning how to think and how to make decisions and evaluate situations is a direct result from a liberal arts education. So many people graduate with a business degree these days. They know all the ins and outs of the business world, they know the economy, they know what they need to do. But you do not learn how to problem solve in business school. So in the end you are left with a large group of men and women, minds packed full of information, who are helpless because they don't know what to do with it. But when studying history, philosophy, theology, or even a foreign language, you are taught how to think. When I say that, I do not mean that in the broadest sense. Everyone knows how to think. We do it every second of every day. Our mind is always working. But a liberal arts education forces one to think critcally and analytically. When studying Plato, you don't just simply accept everything that you read in his "Republic" as the truth; you have to analyze it, compare it to a standard, evaluate, and make a decision. The same goes when studying Thomas Aquinas for theology, the Venerable Bede in history class, or even when conjugating verbs in a foreign language. In business classes you are fed information, in liberal arts you are given understanding.

So now you have completed your college education. You have a B.A. in History. Your mind is developed and you are ready for either grad school or a career. For the sake of the point, we will pick the latter. In almost every single job situation, you are first interviewed, and if you get the job, you are taught your duties on site. So whether you become employed as a teacher, carpenter, corporate business manager, or a pilot, you know how to evaluate situationsand problem solve, two of the highest criterion for hiring in todays workworld. The basics are set. Everything else follows in order. And all with a liberal arts degree.

(And I haven't even mentioned how a study in liberal arts can grow you spiritually. :-) )