CASL: A Value Added Proposition

It has become something of a standard paradigm for critics of contemporary higher education or those who favor particular educational reforms to lambast the liberal arts as irrelevant indulgences that do not prepare students for the realities of today’s workplace. All of us can undoubtedly recall some news report or dinner conversation where someone jokingly references some seemingly silly academic study about why people blush or where some unfortunate student who obtained degrees (often multiple degrees) in the humanities is mired in unimaginable debt and struggling to eek out a living and pay off their loans working three jobs in the service sector. Indeed, recently, some state legislatures have debated the merits of charging a higher tuition rate for “extraneous” disciplines such as Philosophy, Art History, or English. Why encourage students to waste their time (and money), the argument goes, in classes that will not prepare them for the world of work? Such thinking, I would contend, is both shortsighted and ill informed. “Of course you’d say that,” I can hear many of you mumbling. “You are the Dean of a college of liberal arts. What else are you going to say?” I’d respond this way no matter the context because I absolutely believe in the value of a liberal arts education as do most of the nation’s employers. Year in and year out, surveys of the nation’s employers reveal that they are seeking potential employees who can think critically, who can communicate in both written and verbal form, and who are comfortable with ambiguity and creative problem solving; the precise skills that the liberal arts inculcate within our students. Working in messy disciplines where definitive answers are impossible to identify and having to marshal evidence and carefully construct and articulate a thesis are at the heart of what we do. When I think back upon my own academic training (I am an historian) and professional life, I know that these are exactly the skills that have enabled me to adapt to, and navigate, any number of widely diverse circumstances. They are also skills that I employ daily. It gives me great pride to know that the students in CASL are being provided with these necessary skills and that the college is positioning them to thrive in their professional lives. So like Henry David Thoreau, I would encourage all students who are considering a liberal arts education to “go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life that you have imagined.”