Liberal-Arts Education: The Dialogue Continues Learning Process

Liberal-Arts Education: The Dialogue Continues

Written on November 14, 2010 – 11:10 am | by Justin Fraser

Emily Noonan’s Nov. 2 post, “Is a Liberal-Arts Education Worth It?” drew this response from Katherine S. Brooks, director of Liberal Arts Career Services at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career”:

Thank you for the great post on liberal arts and careers. As someone who has specialized in helping liberal-arts students connect to the workplace, I am aware of the challenges you and your fellow students face. And I am concerned with what is happening at colleges these days as they cut back on foreign language, philosophy and Classics programs. While I understand the tough sell students face in the job market, a college education is more than just a ticket to a job. Classes which teach students to communicate, think, analyze and solve problems will always be relevant in any economy.

Unfortunately, many liberal-arts colleges generally are not doing enough to help their students connect to the job market—and unfortunately some don’t want to or don’t see career preparation as their responsibility.

Liberal-arts students need to be taught to articulate the value of their degree to an employer—and they must also acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to enter the 21st-century workplace. Long gone are the old “management training” programs in retail and other fields where liberal-arts students were trained by their employers, and I’m not sure that the typical liberal-arts curriculum has kept up with the changes in the workplace. Unlike most business or other pre-professional programs, too few liberal-arts programs require internships or career-related classes—many never even encourage a discussion of such issues in the classroom.

As a result, the students are often not as well-prepared to enter the job market as their counterparts in pre-professional programs. And yet they are competing directly with those students for the same jobs.

The good news is that liberal-arts students are smart, creative and interesting, and they can learn these skills rapidly when needed. They need to focus on not only the features of their education (GPA., quality of school, major, etc.) but also on the benefits: why should an employer want to hire a history major, for example.

Employers need to know the value of your degree, so it’s up to you to sell it. Think about the classes you took, the knowledge/skills you gained. Who succeeds as a history major, for example? What does it take to be good in history? A good memory? Attention to detail? Ability to analyze? Strong research skills? A “dog on a bone” attitude for finding facts? A relentless curiosity for information and learning? Then tell the employer how those traits will make you a great employee. So focus on your strengths, your experiences, your ability to draw from a variety of fields (psychology, economics, history, philosophy, etc.—all those “general ed” courses!) to solve problems and analyze situations.

I like to use the analogy of the award-winning BASF advertising campaign designed to market their chemical formulas: “We don’t make the product—we make the product better.” In liberal arts, we don’t make the banker—we make the banker better. But we still need to help students acquire the necessary job search skills to become the banker.

Thanks again for keeping this dialogue going.

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