By Editorial Board
Fordham University has initiated a liberal arts task force in order to assess the value of a liberal arts education, and the findings of this report are slated to come out later this year.
According to Inside Fordham’s article “Task Force Charged with Defining Liberal Arts Skill Set,” “Fordham has launched an effort to deeply examine liberal arts education and articulate its value for students.
At the request of Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the university, Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost of the university, convened the Fordham Task Force on the Future of Liberal Arts Education.”
Eva Badowska, Ph.D., is now acting dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and chairs the task force. The task force is “grappling with how to address the liberal arts, given the businesslike language that more people are applying to higher education,” according to Inside Fordham.
The task force is primarily looking at defining a liberal arts education in terms of “soft skills” such as public speaking, writing and critical thinking. It is mainly responding to questions from politicians, including President Obama, about the power of a liberal arts degree in today’s economy.
Some politicians are suggesting that universities should actually charge less for math, science and technology degrees than for humanities degrees. They see STEM degrees as more valuable and marketable. In an economic climate particularly hard on young graduates, the earning potential associated with a degree is becoming more and more important.
What does this mean for students? Sophomores are getting to the point in the year when they need to think about declaring a major; should they choose majors associated with high post-graduate salaries? The majority of this editorial board consists of declared humanities majors. We do not know what Fordham’s task force on the subject is going to say, but we clearly see the value of our degrees. Yes, we have developed “soft skills” like critical thinking and writing, but we find the conversation the task force wants to engage in a little ridiculous.
It should be obvious that a liberal arts major develops marketable skills. By creating a task force to defend the liberal arts, Fordham is giving credence to all of these politicians (the vast majority liberal arts majors themselves) who are saying that anything but a STEM degree is self-indulgent.
Our degrees have value.
We are interested in our respective disciplines, and not everyone can be a plumber or a computer programmer.
Higher education certainly has its issues, and the price of a liberal arts degree, or any degree for that matter, is out of control. However, that does not mean that the world does not need philosophy majors, history majors or English majors.
After all, the study of such humanities is what the ancient societies focused on and held most dear and through which they created the ideals that contemporary society has been founded on.
As an intellectual community, let’s stop defending what we do and just do it. We know what we do has value; we do not need to label “soft skills” like reading and writing to know that we contribute to society.
To the next generation of students currently earning their liberal arts degrees: remember that the skills you are learning now do have value. Let’s end this conversation.
