The Liberal Arts Lie

There is a growing trend to view higher education as a value-adding commodity. You go to school and you expect to come out employable, with marketable skills. Surely, education is an investment in human capital, but an overly commodified view has its drawbacks. If you view education as a value-adding transaction, then you tend towards vocational training, which adds value in concrete, measurable ways.

Liberal arts institutions fight this trend, a worthy fight in my humble opinion. Rather than cranking out employees, liberal arts colleges try to nurture thoughtful citizens, armed not with skills but with critical thinking. And this is the liberal arts pitch: at our institution, you will learn how to think, you will learn how to learn, and that is the most transferable skill possible. You will receive a broad-based, holistic education that will enable you to pursue any profession you desire. At our institution, we take a broader view of "value."

This is all nice and dandy. I enjoy learning and thinking, and my Swarthmore education cultivated my curiosity and, cliche as it might sound, a lifelong love of learning. Things get a bit messy, though, when you transition from an institution that fights against the value-added view of education to the job market. In the vagaries of the marketplace, it is unreasonably difficult to translate thoughtfulness into social contribution. I see so many of my classmates--who are smart, thoughtful, motivated and filled with good intentions--struggle to find employment where they are happy and feel as though they are contributing real value to society, or at least on their way to doing so.

I am unemployed right now, and I am sleeping on the couch of a high school friend who studied Business for his undergraduate degree. He is an investment banker taking in a handsome salary, and he just finished reading a book, titled Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker. The author of this obnoxious book ends the preface with this sentence: "Dad, thanks for not letting me study liberal arts."

I am not complaining. There are things in my life that I value much more highly than a bank statement. And I think the liberal arts pitch is ultimately true. I am merely commenting on the difficulty of the transition from a liberal arts education to a nonacademic pursuit. And I think that it is something of a shame.