Liberal Education

Friday is a day off, so no addition to the journey today. However, there are a couple of posts about the conference that are brewing in my mind, and this is one of them.

Our keynote speaker the other night was Carol Geary Schneider, the president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She talked about the changing nature of a Liberal Education, which is something close to my heart.

She (and the AAC&U in general, I guess) sees a Liberal Education as shifting from an elite, non-vocational curriculum, designed for the fortunate few, to a necessity for all students to succeed in the global economy. She doesn't see it as getting less broad. She just sees that breadth as being what students need for academic success. In her mind, then, our chief job is to convince students, parents, employers, and politicians of that need.

She was somewhat negative about "learning for learning sake." There were those at the conference who disagreed with her, but I think that I see her point. I have long advocated learning for learning sake with the argument that you never know when you're going to need it. A math major should study literature because it will give them insight into the human condition that could make it easier to handle some real person somewhere down the line. Of course, in the back of my mind, I think that a math major should study literature because it's so much fun.

Schneider seems to be arguing for taking that argument public. A broad education is necessary becaue narrowly trained people can't do their jobs as well. That argument bothers the purists, but face it, it's going to be a better sales pitch. It will attract students, please employers, satisfy funding agencies (such as the government.)

She even went as far as to suggest, I think only half jokingly, that we simply abandon the language of a Liberal Education, in favor of a new "brand." She reported an employer who asked her (in jest, I think) "Couldn't you call it the 'moderate arts'?" I think that this is a suggestion worth taking seriously, although the inertia that would need to be overcome is tremendous.

Anyway, the AAC&U has a major program, called Liberal Education and America's Promise, with three initiatives: public advocacy, a Campus Action Network, and a research initiative. The program is designed to make sure that a "Liberal Education" meets the needs of students, and to make sure that everyone involves understands that it meets the needs of the students. Any of my academic-type readers are advised to check it out. For the rest of you, I promise I'll be back to pasting my photo into the Nebraska landscape tomorrow.